Tom Carman

Re: A clockwork solar system?

Has anyone seem Mister E and River Song in the same room at the same time?

Given that Dr. Song has a time travel device, what would that prove?

Re: Few questions about point costs

I don't find beating an injured man "heroic". This has been an issue for a lot of Supers games where the PC's hit the downed villain one more time "just to make sure he doesn't get up after post segment 12". From a Stun perspective' date=' I find the fact that a target at 0 to -9 STUN doesn't necessarily fall over adequate, since a hit while he is (RULES) knocked out, but (PLAY) reeling and staggered seems like ending the battle rather than hitting a man when he's down.[/quote']

 

House rule in the game I play is: -10 STUN is on GM's Option recovery chart. In other words, there's nothing between "staggering but recovering every phase" and "out of the fight unless someone puts full-time effort into helping me recover". It helps to eliminate those unheroic "kick him in the head to be sure he stays down" moments. Hmm. Maybe someone could get themselves back up without help by a Stun Regeneration power or auto-triggered Stun heal, but that has never come up.

Re: Force Wall base size (5E)

So in 5th, a 2" by 1" Forcewall can completely "bubble" a single hex by surrounding it (6 hex sides) and the top and bottom come "free" by long-standing convention.

Re: Woman in the Moon

According to the person who uploaded it in YouTube' date=' it was banned by the Nazis because it hit too close to home when it came to their research on rocketry.[/quote']

 

Foolish. During WWII the FBI investigated some scifi authors who submitted stories including "atomic bombs". The stories were not suppressed for fear that it would tip off the Nazis that we were working on nuclear weapons. Because by that time atomic bombs were already a known scifi trope.

Re: A real laser pistol? Power from vacuum? Photons affecting more than one electro

I never read the article' date=' but I think Outsider did and we have discussed it. IIRC the article claimed they wouldn't be able to tell much of anything about the Silicon computer chip. they would basically percieve it as a solid piece of contaminated silicon.[/quote']

 

In 1944 maybe, but in 1949? I wouldn't think so because transistors had already been invented at that point. Integrated circuitry was still in the future, but circuit boards were familiar and the number of wire traces attached to that little chunk of silicon would tell any competent electronics engineer how important it was to the whole unit.

Re: Teleport an Object to me

"Limited Range" does not make sense to me, when the power defines the range. But I think the "Ranged" advantage should be added to this power; I always use it for Teleportation powers acting at a distance, like when a base TP pulls you in from a remote location. TP is a travel power, UOO lets others travel (voluntarily) with you, and UAA moves them even if they don't want to go. But acting on an object at a distance is a ranged ability.

Re: 'Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970'

Using a bunker is one way and they did had a similar idea to use a concventional tnt as first explosion.

But that only helps for the first explosion for a manned vehicle or the mayor impuls of a unmanned one. Try to get a manned one into orbit with such a one-shot and your astronauts get...squishy.

One reason the ship has to be heavy is, that the heavier it get's the more impuls/bomb you can use without killing your astronauts.

I don't think the blast-in-the-bunker was intended as one-shot-to-orbit. It was probably intended to eliminate the initial ground-burst and ensure that all of the open-air blasts are the much-lower-fallout aerial bursts.

Re: Megascale costs

Requiring such adders/advantages is overkill in my opinion. I wouldn't allow a character to use a similar ability with UAA to have the target arrive upside down and moving at 1000 mph. Similarly' date=' I would not have a character who paid for Flight at a supersonic level leave sonic booms in his wake, get killed crashing into birds or such similar realistic results, nor do I check to see whether FireLad burned his fingers when he Blasted Pulsar with his SuperNova Blast.[/quote']

 

Doing that with UAA I think comes under the heading of "trying to buy a mega-Blast or KA by special effect", ie. cheating. However, my GM docked us for not having those when we made a long-range 'port: we materialized and promptly blew sideways through a few walls. Forcefields protected us from damage, but the stun promptly put us on GM's option stun table. The non-persistent shields dropped, but the KO triggered our base's emergency extraction TP (which did have the required advantages/adders).

Re: 'Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970'

A reactor designed to produce plotonium or one that is used to produce energy? There is a great difference between both results.

Chernobyl is a good example of the differences. The Soviets used that reactor type for power generation, but it was designed for plutonium production. It was moderated by graphite but cooled by water. Consequently, the nuclear chain reaction DID NOT shut down when it lost coolant. Think of how catastrophic Fukashima Daiichi could have been if the reactors were still going full blast instead of just dealing with the residual heat from decaying isotopes.

Re: Megascale costs

Don't forget some adders or advantages on Teleport that don't get too much play at tactical ranges, but can have lethal consequences at planetary ranges: Position Shift, Velocity Cancellation and Safe Blind. A velocity-conserving 'port from one side of the planet to the other would leave you moving at about 1000 mph relative to the ground (and upside-down).

Re: 'Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970'

Perhaps. But how can you generate enough thrust that way? Also, in space it is more difficult to refuel on watter and water is both moderator and energy carrier for nuclear reactors.

Overall it's way easier to produce an uncontrolled explosion than a controlled reaction (first we build the bomb, then the reactor). I mean we have psuedo-fusion bombs for a few decades now but still try to make it work as a generator.

Actually, we had controlled fission reactors before we had bombs. Very few bombs used purified U235; most use plutonium which is produced in reactors. Water is only one of several reactor moderators. We use it in power plants because our plants are basically steam generators, and it's convenient that water does double-duty as both coolant and moderator.

Re: NASA Unveils New Spaceship Plans

How long would the trip to Mars take?

How long does it take to travel 100 ft? (Depends on whether you are on foot, on a bike, in a car, or riding a rocket sled.)

By minimum-energy Hohman transfer orbit, figure 7-9 months. If your matter-energy-conversion engine lets you boost at a constant 1 g, I think you can get there in under a week.

Re: A real laser pistol? Power from vacuum? Photons affecting more than one electro

Just because you have a theoretical understanding of how some piece of ultra-tech works' date=' that doesn't mean you can reverse engineer it. It's too big a step all at once. Missiles, jet engines, jet fuel, nuclear warheads, radar--all of that was around. Even the concept of computers was. But they're still at the huge vacuum-tube, room-sized computer programmed with switches or punch cards at best. They may understand that that tiny piece of silicon with metallic designs etched into it is a very tiny computer...but they can't reproduce it. Even with an example to guide them, it will take many years, if not decades, to do so.[/quote']

 

Reproduce it, no. But I expect a big push to improve the transistors already in existence, and a much earlier move to integrated circuitry. I would also expect efforts to adapt the missile design concepts using contemporary tech. Possibly a minor contribution but still helpful: authoritative figures should be less inclined to make public statements about how 5 or 6 computers would be sufficient for the nation's needs. I'm afraid that advanced warhead designs might stunt rocketry development even further; then again, the first manned craft into space and orbit might be planes instead.

Re: Superhumans and their families

Landslide isn't in play yet (very soon now), but for her:

Lovelife: She had a boyfriend pre-rad accident, but since she has now a much higher density and way more strenght than she can controll, she had to break up. Man do find her post-rad accident look interesting, but she can only start a serious relationship with someone who has near invulnerability to being crushed...

In My Super Ex-Girlfriend, the solution was to get a suit of armor... and she still put them through the wall.

Re: Star (Trek) Hero Racial Templates

I have several PDFs from the old StarHeroFandom site.

Here is the TrekHero.pdf.

Unfortunately, the other two are too large to upload, and I don't have a copy of winzip anymore.

In WinXP, you can just select a folder, right-click and select Send To Compressed Folder. This makes it a .zip file, then you can go into Properties and select compression. This probably doesn't compress as much as a proper zip program, but it's simple and part of the OS. I'm sure it works in Win7 too.

Re: What sort of technology do you use in yiour games?

I maintain my character sheet in Hero Designer on my laptop. Since the character is a mage with a VPP, the "spellbook" is also open in HD for quick reference and redesign. I also keep Alter Ego's Metacreator program open for the dice roller.

Re: Using a D20

6E2 280 has a chart listing the percentage chance to roll any given number or less on 3d6. Since a 1d20 roll is an easy linear calculation of percentage, you can compare the two to determine relative effectiveness.

 

For example:

8- on 3d6 = 25.93% chance

8- on 1d20 = 40% chance

 

10- on 3d6 = 50%

10- on 1d20 = 50%

 

11- on 3d6 = 62.5% chance

11- on 1d20 = 55% chance

That doesn't quite convey the real difference because the numbers are clustered around the middle range. The ends of the bell curve are where it gets extreme. A d20 is always a 5% chance (1 in 20) for any given number. By contrast, a 3 or an 18 on 3d6 is a 1:216 chance IIRC.

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

That Phaser MP needs the 1d6 RKA with 3X Penetrating for the (admittedly few) times they show them slowly 'cutting' through really hard stuff with phasers.

Are you talking about those times in TOS when Scotty used a phaser pistol as a cutting torch on some Enterprise bulkheads? That seemed to me more like precision cuts through the outer shell with care to avoid damaging the inner circuitry.

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

I don't think I've ever seen someone get injured from a phaser hit in the shows--not when it's set on kill anyway. They really seem to be all-or-nothing.

Combat phaser settings in TOS were either stun or disintegrate, at least on screen. In The Omega Glory, Spock mentioned finding depleted phaser powerpacks among the remains of several hundred Yang bodies. So the phaser was being used at a reduced (but still very lethal) setting to extend its use.

Re: I need cheap(-ish) liftoff.

Looking at some numbers' date=' 900 mt to orbit in one piece is a [b']lot[/b]. That's almost 8 times the lift capacity of a Saturn V, or 5 times the theoretical payload of the Ares V. It's probably cheaper to send it up in modules for in-orbit assembly.

Hmmm, I think the Sea Dragon could have handled it. No, just checked: it would only lift a "mere" 550 mtons.

Re: 2 Planets found in same orbit

I would be not at all surprised if we eventually discovered a system somewhere in the Milky Way with two planets sharing an orbit in the habitable zone (and both are indeed habitable).

With a bit of planetary engineering, you could have 6 planets sharing an orbit 60 degrees apart. Each world would in the L3, L4 and L5 points of 3 of the others.

Re: Zeppelins

Except that the jet fuel commonly used these days is less flammable than previously, and will STAY in an adequately sealed container.

 

Still the same ol' Hydrogen, and it doesn't.

It was quite flammable enough to bring down the World Trade Center.

Re: Zeppelins

Hydrogen as the lifting gas ... boom!

Think of it as trading the flammability of jet fuel (which falls down as it burns) for the flammability of hydrogen (which flies up as it burns).

Re: A Newbie's first power

I never got 6th and don't have 5th on hand at work, so I looked it up in my trusty 4th edition PDF:

-1/4 • Beam Attack (for EBs only) Cannot

spread or bounce, must attack at

maximum damage

Re: A Newbie's first power

I haven't looked it up, but I seem to recall that 'beam' also includes 'cannot be bounced' in the package.