Eclipse Phase: Glory

[Dog Pants]

I was assuming it would be the latter. I've seen it done that way in other games (WHFRP, Unknown Armies) and it means the higher your skill the more scope you have to beat the other guy. Actually, now I think about it, they both do that. The second one still makes more sense to me, even if it does mean I might be fucked with this particular roll.

[Joose]

Actually, now I think about it, they both do that. The second one still makes more sense to me, even if it does mean I might be fucked with this particular roll.

That's just it really; they are both statistically the same but the second one seems to "feel" more natural. I'll go with option two then.

You float around the side of the asteroid, keeping your thrust to a minimum and keeping to shadows as much as possible, and get your first real view of the Flower. It is, as expected, not exactly in prime condition. Its clearly been cobbled together from disparate parts and hasn't been all that well maintained. The bulk of the thing is split between the Greenhouse module, which is about 100 meters long and 20 meters in diameter, and the crew torus, which is a big wheel about 250 meters in diameter. At the front is the Ops centre, and at the other end sticking off the end of the greenhouse module are the engines.

Fab, do me a Hardware or appropriate Knowledge roll to see what extra details you can make out from here.

By the way, at this point Unlabelled and DCOM can communicate all nice and securely/stealthily via direct comms: your suits can use low power lasers to communicate without any worries of it being intercepted or even noticed. Theres a big rock between you two and Usagi now though, so if you want to talk to him or vise versa you will need to use mesh comms. This will work fine, but has a chance of being noticed if anyones looking for it as it is basically just fancy radio.

[fabyak]

...
...
...

Would a spaceship interest roll do?

If so: (40) + help from Barry if I can have it:

Roll(1d100)+0:
42,+0
Total:42

Or Hardware: Electronics (50)

Roll(1d100)+0:
22,+0
Total:22

I'm going to get screwed any second now when the rolls turn against me...

[Joose]

That'll do. From here you can make out the docking spar and can see that the thing is ripped to shreds. Purely through neglect, it's the wear and tear of several years worth of minor impacts that nobody has bothered fixing ever. The airlock itself looks fine. This implies that they haven't docked with any ships for years, but that's not really that surprising.

You also notice the engines. There's the old main chemical thruster in the centre, that's probably the original engine that was used to give it it's initial push sending it on its way to the rim, but surrounding that are a whole load of additional thrusters that look like they have been salvaged off a bunch of other ships and have been fitted recently. They all look nuclear, but you would have to board to see what they are using for fuel. They are not active at the moment, which is probably a good thing as there doesn't seem to be any shielding on them at all.

The other thing of note is that the whole hab is facing the wrong way. It's come from earth orbit and was on course for the rim, but from your position it should be engines to the right, ops to the left. The ops centre is actually to your right and the engine to your left. It's been rotated, and the fact that it's not still spinning tells you it was done in a controlled manner.

[Dog Pants]

I'm glad I have a direct comms link with Unlabelled.

[Joose]

Carrying on then?

[Dog Pants]

Lets get hacking. I'm sure there's something significant about it facing the wrong way, but it doesn't affect our current plan.

[Joose]

Righto. You have to get right up close to the hab before the mesh signal picks up. You are practically touching the hull, but the signal is strong enough.

Aaaaand I can't remember how hacking works and I can't check the books right now. Fab - if you feel like looking it up yourself feel free to make the necessary rolls. If not, no worries, you will just need to wait till I can have a read.

[Joose]

OK, so, hacking:

Firstly, a mild issue: to hack you need an Exploit program, and you don't have one. That's really my bad for not noticing though, so I'll retcon you as having acquired one before heading off. We can work out the cost and suchlike later. Moving on then...

You don't need to identify the mesh ID as it is the only one anywhere near you (not counting DCOM, Usagi or either of the shuttles, which you can eliminate because you know what they are), so we can skip that bit.
You don't have any stolen codes or anything, so you will need to hack in. As you probably don't have the time to monitor the network and spoof some legitimate users or the ability to forge codes it will be a regular intrusion test.

The intrusion test is actually pretty straight forward. Its a Task Action with a time-frame of 10 mins. What this means is you need to make an Infosec roll (your skill is 50) and for every 10 you roll under your skill knocks a minute off the time it has taken you to carry it out. You can also take your time to give yourself a +10 for every minute you take, for a max of 6 minutes for a +60. This will give you standard user rights, if you want security access it would be a -20, admin access is -30. Depending on how well you do on the roll you will either get Hidden status (the system doesn't even know you are in there), Covert status (you look like a legitimate user), Spotted (the system knows something is up but hasn't pinned it down to you yet. Alarms!) or Locked (you have access but the system knows you shouldn't and is kicking off about it, pointing at you and screaming for security).

So, your skill is 50. If you want to take the full 6 minutes extra (+60) and go for Admin (-30) you will need to roll under 80 (50 + 60 - 30). If you got 79 you will be in and it will have taken you 16 minutes, if you got 00 you will have taken 8 minutes and got in invisibly. Roll away!

[fabyak]

Sounds like a plan to me!

Wot Joose said:

Roll(1d100)+0:
9,+0
Total:9

errrr, wow. I am rolling the right dice arn't I? (Using the DnD dice roller)

Unlabelled looks a DCOM and grins. As a smile is such a rare thing for him though it may just look like he has wind

[Dog Pants]

I probably can't see it through the helmet. At any rate DCOM returns a blank look.

[Joose]

Jesus, you filthy haxxor. Yep, that was the right roll to make.

So, yep, you are in in a mere 8 minutes, you have Admin access and the system has no clue you are there.

The mesh in this thing is a mess. The Ops centre and engines are cut off from the mesh entirely, and are probably running on a separate, hardwired system. There is a firewall, but its been intentionally disabled at some point and no one has turned it back on again. The internal and external cameras are entirely borked, so unless someone happened to be peering out of a window there is no chance they saw you coming. Some of the systems seem to have been reconfigured at random: you are fairly sure that enabling the external lights (which are currently off) would open some (but not all) of the internal non-airlocked doors for example, and the temperature of the water system has been tied in to the proximity sensors, so if a big asteroid gets close the hot water will get slightly hotter. Some of the systems are working fine though: the environmental systems, airlock control and internal lighting are all accessible. You also seem to have access to the darkcasting system to some degree: there's logs and controls for the egocaster itself and some controls for a dozen or so ego-bridges/morph stores for people to be resleeved on the station.

Anything in particular you want to take a closer look at or try and access?

[Dog Pants]

Is it worth checking out the darkcast logs (and maybe potential destinations as a bit of trade info) before we space everyone?

[Joose]

Slightly off topic: just stumbled across two pictures of Locus.

From the inside:



From the outside:

[Joose]

Is it worth checking out the darkcast logs (and maybe potential destinations as a bit of trade info) before we space everyone?

You can download them easy enough, but if you want to look at them in detail now you will need to do a research test and it will take you a while. Of course, you can just snatch them and look through them later when you have more time. Normal Egocasting logs would include travel times and the ego IDs of everyone coming and going, but with darkcasting being basically people smuggling you might find less (or possibly more depending on how paranoid/immoral they are) in their logs.

[Dog Pants]

Could we set the egocaster up so that anyone using it would be resleeved into jars?

[Joose]

You could set it so that it just wont re-sleeve anyone incoming. Wouldn't kill them, it would just store people in memory until told to do otherwise.

[Dog Pants]

And then we could kill them?

[Joose]

And then we could kill them?

Well, if you want. It would be more a case of deleting them though.

[Joose]

Anything in particular you want to take a closer look at or try and access?

Fab?