Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

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Tor
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Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by Tor »

Hypothetically if a Splicers char (who brings the infected nanobots and turns any metal they touch into evil robots) went to HU and got a power like Mechano-Link (say a Hardware guy invents something and gives it to them, or Bestow Powers is used, or a Magic Object/Weapon) would a power like that allow them to turn any tech they mess up into an asset rather than a murderous liability?

Any powers besides Mechano-Link that might be useful to help out Splicers-immigrants?

All I can think is maybe it'd be fun to have them go punch any Borgs/Bots who are enemies since then you could then run off and let them be attacked by their own tech, the same way they would be if they visited the Splicers dimension.
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Re: Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by Shark_Force »

that depends on how accurate you like your science to be.

if you like it accurate, then mostly what happens is that the nanobots are gradually destroyed by your immune system, and after a few weeks you are basically a normal human.

if you ignore the fact that your immune system would be busy destroying the nanobots, well, for starters you could potentially reprogram the nanobot plague that's inside of you to do all kinds of crazy things, and as written you could touch stuff, make it active, then reprogram the result to do what you want.
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Re: Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by krispy »

Ref: page 13, 167 & 168 of the Splicers Main Book
it explains quite clearly, what happens when either someone from another dimension enters the Splicerverse; or Vice Versa, a Splicer character traverses to another dimension
connecting the dots
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Re: Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by Shark_Force »

oh, i know what the book says.

but scientifically, it's completely absurd.

so, like i said... if you want to follow the rules, then every metal object you touch, ever, becomes animated by something which must be controlled by a form of computer. mechano-link lets you reprogram that computer.

realistically speaking, even if your body wasn't destroying the nanobots, sooner or later they'd burn out their energy supply (and being tiny, they can't exactly carry a huge energy supply, but the stuff they do would require ludicrous amounts of energy). or just be dispersed into as much volume of metal as your body. hence, realistically after a while you'd be just like a regular person with mechano-link.

and that's why i gave two answers: different groups will prefer different things. just because realistically the nanobots would cease to be a factor after a short period of time, doesn't mean that every gaming group wants to play with those rules.
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Re: Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by krispy »

sorry Shark, you posted just before i did (you know when you are typing a reply, and when you press reply, it doesnt post your reply if someone has posted something while you are in the processes of replying; that is what happened and i hadnt read your reply)

I was just directing Tor to the standard pages in the MB

in my Splicerverse, the nanobots are self replicating, as the amount of resources and energy required to manufacture sufficient quantities to blanket the planet....would be a colossal undertaking.
when it comes to their power source, i considered they could hold a small charge, but the rest is provided by the ambient energy in the environment, humans and animals etc.
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Re: Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by Shark_Force »

self-replicating nanobots still runs into a problem. you need to build a power supply into them that is capable of converting a spoon into a robotic soldier strong enough to overturn a car. it's going to take an obscenely large amount of ambient energy to charge up even a single nanobot after that effort... i wouldn't be surprised if a single activation of the plague took years to recover from.

yes, it requires a colossal amount of energy to manufacture the nanobots in factories... but it requires even more to manufacture them in an uncontrolled environment that isn't purpose-built for creating nanobots.

of course, don't let that ruin your fun; if you find it more enjoyable to have self-replicating nanobots, then by all means, have self-replicating nanobots. personally, i feel like having factories gives a potential target for splicers to attack, but that's just me (and it's not like there's a dire shortage of targets to attack as-is).
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Re: Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by The Galactus Kid »

krispy wrote:when it comes to their power source, i considered they could hold a small charge, but the rest is provided by the ambient energy in the environment, humans and animals etc.

That sounds about right.
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Re: Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by Slight001 »

The Galactus Kid wrote:
krispy wrote:when it comes to their power source, i considered they could hold a small charge, but the rest is provided by the ambient energy in the environment, humans and animals etc.

That sounds about right.

It's also the only explanation that's viable... for our understanding of tech and power supplies. Shame this is crazy far into the future where who knows what has been discovered and integrated into their understanding of physics resulting in...

yeah gonna drop it there no point in continuing to beat this dead horse known as future tech doesn't need to fully comply with modern tech... because the argument is like claiming that because our ancestors couldn't make a modern smartphone with sticks and stones, then we certainly can't make it from our advanced materials since it just couldn't be done the modern components didn't exist. Therefor, they can't ever exist.
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Re: Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by Shark_Force »

well, no, it isn't really the same.

physics is largely the same now as it was then. we have a better understanding of it, but it all works the same way.

if the technology is available to ignore the limitations that would prevent us from accomplishing what the nanobot plague can accomplish, then the machine would not be using technology so similar to what we can understand.

the simple fact that a spoon can be converted into a robot capable of flipping cars and carving holes in a tank should tell you that there would be no such thing as a model of robot, for example... all robots would be the same, and would just assume whatever form was most useful at any given time, if that kind of technology was so available that you could just spread it across the entire volume of the planet, and keep on manufacturing new ones.

and that's just what i'm able to come up with in a few seconds of thinking about it. with likely centuries of superintelligent computers that think so fast those centuries are probably more like tens of thousands of years to them, the things they could have thought up to put that technology to use means that the very fact that i can relate to their technology at all means that they don't have that kind of technology.

at that point, we would definitely be looking at technology that is sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic. and i can distinguish NEXUS technology from magic no problem.
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Re: Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by Razorwing »

The problem with your argument Shark is that this game is written by people who are not transhumanly super intelligent super computers able to come up with those ideas... thus the things these mere mortals can create for the game are going to be things we can relate to.

How would our cave dwelling ancestors comprehend the miracle of science we are using to communicate? Simply put... the couldn't because they had nothing that even comes close to doing what the internet can do. Yes, the laws of physics are still the same... but their understanding of what it could do was very limited. So to is our understanding of physics compared to what NEXUS can understand and utilize.

As for why NEXUS uses robots and equipment we primitive modern humans can relate to is because of a few factors. First... NEXUS is malfunctioning in a HUGE way... thus despite being transhumanly super intelligent (which is a little debatable) it probably isn't using that intelligence to its full capacity. Second... NEXUS is still just a computer and working with the information it is programed with... it is unknown if it can actually grow past its programing to create original works (combining features of different designs it has in its memory banks isn't the same as coming up with something original that has never been done before). The nanobot plague was just an adaptation of technology it already had access too... not actually an original concept that it created from nothing. Lastly... the more complex the item, the more resources it is likely going to take to create and maintain. Thus NEXUS is likely to use more simple designs such as the standard robots and weapons we see, rather than the most advanced items it is capable of producing as they are likely to take more resources than it is willing to use... why use a nuke to swat a fly when something a little lower tech is just as capable of doing the job?

If you truly believe we have seen the full extent of what NEXUS is capable of producing to deal with the Splicer Rebellion... just remember this... NEXUS is capable of reshaping the entire planet (continents and oceans)... and apparently has done so to such a degree that even the people there are no longer sure if they are on Earth or some colonial planet. If it is capable of doing that... just imagine what it could do if it truly decided to finish off the human pestilence infesting its world.
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Re: Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by Shark_Force »

the problem with arguing that it would use the simplest methods available is that it's basically already using matter transmutation, and is covering the surface of the entire planet with it, and it's called the nanobot plague.

if NEXUS is unable to extrapolate that, well, the nanotech plague can't exist. a spoon made of regular aluminum cannot just be reshaped into something strong enough to bounce all small arms fire off of it without leaving so much as a scratch, but that's exactly what the nanobot plague does.

there's no barriers to overcome. that's already happened. the technology is common, spread across the entire surface of the globe, and is constantly being manufactured in greater number. if NEXUS can't dream up shapeshifting robots, she can't dream up spoonbots either, because there are a nigh-infinite number of possible shapes of things that could become a robot, and each would need custom-made schematics.
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Re: Splicer-chars (infected, not Techies) going to HU

Unread post by Tor »

Shark_Force wrote:mostly what happens is that the nanobots are gradually destroyed by your immune system, and after a few weeks you are basically a normal human.
What if the nanobots were constructed by the AIs to fool the immune system or take it over or incorporate somehow as a friendly?

Shark_Force wrote:you could potentially reprogram the nanobot plague that's inside of you to do all kinds of crazy things, and as written you could touch stuff, make it active, then reprogram the result to do what you want.

I think Splicers says the nanobots can't replicate on their own so there would be a limit on how many bots you could spread out from yourself, something like the nanobots get made in factors so you'd probably have to export a giant factory through a rift to make more than what's carried on your body come into a new dimension.

krispy wrote:Ref: page 13, 167 & 168 of the Splicers Main Book
it explains quite clearly, what happens when either someone from another dimension enters the Splicerverse; or Vice Versa, a Splicer character traverses to another dimension

Yup, I'm wondering about unique situations that might influence this, like mechanic/robot-related super-abilities. We're only given general guidelines that don't deal with these rare situations.

Shark_Force wrote:if you want to follow the rules, then every metal object you touch, ever, becomes animated by something which must be controlled by a form of computer. mechano-link lets you reprogram that computer.
Forget which thread, but I had mentioned previously that, unless the nanobots could replicate themselves, eventually if you touched enough metal and the bots left you to animate that metal, you should eventually run out of them.

I mean hypothetically, say you made a metal statue the size of a human being.. to animate something that big wouldn't that need ALL the nanobots carried on your person to do so, effectively cleaning you out and making you capable of touching metal in other dimensions?

The only way you could animate things indefinitely, turning a whole lot of metal (say a CCW carrier) into stuff, is if they can replicate so that you can give over a tiny amount of your nanobots and they divide to take over the new thing and then replenish themselves on your body.

Shark_Force wrote:sooner or later they'd burn out their energy supply (and being tiny, they can't exactly carry a huge energy supply, but the stuff they do would require ludicrous amounts of energy)
They might have a way to draw energy off the human body though, since they're designed to be carried in it. Like perhaps they can metabolize our sugars or fats somehow?

Shark_Force wrote:or just be dispersed into as much volume of metal as your body. hence, realistically after a while you'd be just like a regular person with mechano-link.
Yeah! I was thinking this too, unless they could self-replicate somehow.

Shark_Force wrote:the very fact that i can relate to their technology at all means that they don't have that kind of technology

we would definitely be looking at technology that is sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic

i can distinguish NEXUS technology from magic no problem


Do you distinguish it from magic because we have meta-knowledge that it's now PPE-powered and not classified as magic?

Would someone who understood neither the tech or the magic (let's say, perhaps a beat cop from Dead Reign) actually be able to draw a clear line between the two?

What if they were encountering something else that animated metal, like what Earth Warlocks are capable of?

Could we actually know the difference between an Iron Golem possessed by a human mind and a Machine Person?

Razorwing wrote:NEXUS is malfunctioning in a HUGE way... thus despite being transhumanly super intelligent (which is a little debatable) it probably isn't using that intelligence to its full capacity.
Reminds me a bit of the film Eagle Eye. If ARIA was actually interested in prioritizing self-preservation rather than saving the nation, it would've already have taken certain steps far in advance and I would feel more confident about there being a potential sequel.
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