Mechanoid Ships.

[Jesterzzn]

Since they are alive would they be subject to TeleMechanics?

[Carl Gleba]

Given the size of the ships I'd doubt character with telemechanics would be able to control a whole lot. Depends on how you play it too. It they do small minor stuff like open doors and control elevators fine. Now start doing funky stuff like trying to make the reactor go super critical, then I'd say it would be a mental wrestling match between the character and the mechanoid.

Good question

Carl

[Killer Cyborg]

Since they are alive would they be subject to TeleMechanics?

No.

I would allow a character with telemechanics to make mental contact with the mechanoid mind, though... just like it works with AIs and such.
They could talk to it, but nothing more unless the Mechanoid allowed it (which it wouldn't...)

[Jesterzzn]

Since they are alive would they be subject to TeleMechanics?

No.

I would allow a character with telemechanics to make mental contact with the mechanoid mind, though... just like it works with AIs and such.
They could talk to it, but nothing more unless the Mechanoid allowed it (which it wouldn't...)

Okay, but what is he only wants to get a schematic? Would the ship have to have a mind block or something similar? I have already ruled that the ship could not be "hacked" but have gotten some flack from my players. Just seeing how others might have handled it.

[Killer Cyborg]

Since they are alive would they be subject to TeleMechanics?

No.

I would allow a character with telemechanics to make mental contact with the mechanoid mind, though... just like it works with AIs and such.
They could talk to it, but nothing more unless the Mechanoid allowed it (which it wouldn't...)

Okay, but what is he only wants to get a schematic? Would the ship have to have a mind block or something similar? I have already ruled that the ship could not be "hacked" but have gotten some flack from my players. Just seeing how others might have handled it.

My understanding is that Telemechanics normally works like this:
If you use the power to scan the device, and you gain all knowledge about that device including full blueprings.
If you use the power to scan an AI, then the AI says, "What are you doing, Dave?" and you have to come up with a really good explanation.

I'd say that it would work the same with mechanoids.
Alternatively, it might be that the power just doesn't work on the ships at all... Most of the Telemechanic power won't work on Borg parts that are attached to a living being.

[Jesterzzn]

Well we played again last night. It went well, and I allowed the group to get basic information about mechanical operations of the ship. This seemed to satisfy them, the big beef being that the Mind Mage said he would not have taken the power had he known about the ship before hand. I still did not let him have any detailed info, and if he went anywhere near software, I had the ships brain on him so fast his head spined.

[devillin]

Since they are alive would they be subject to TeleMechanics?

I would allow a character with telemechanics to make mental contact with the mechanoid mind, though... just like it works with AIs and such.
They could talk to it, but nothing more unless the Mechanoid allowed it (which it wouldn't...)

Quick question. Don't the Mechanoids have some type of device that disallows Telemechanics from working on their stuff? I seem to remember there being a mention of ARCHIE-3 copying this technology to keep people from being able to snoop into the inner workings of his Titan robots.

[Killer Cyborg]

Since they are alive would they be subject to TeleMechanics?

I would allow a character with telemechanics to make mental contact with the mechanoid mind, though... just like it works with AIs and such.
They could talk to it, but nothing more unless the Mechanoid allowed it (which it wouldn't...)

Quick question. Don't the Mechanoids have some type of device that disallows Telemechanics from working on their stuff? I seem to remember there being a mention of ARCHIE-3 copying this technology to keep people from being able to snoop into the inner workings of his Titan robots.

If so, then it would be mentioned in that Rifter article about Archie (or possibly Aftermath). I don't have those books, so I can't say.

[The Narrator]

Okay, according to Mechanoid trilogy, on larger spaceships the mechanoids have organic brain-organism thingies... a pod with a warm fleshy glob, and any psychic can touch the surface and initiate an information exchange.

First, the glob does a full probe of the subject's knowledge, no saving throw is given so I assume that if you agree to touch, you subconsciously agree to the probe. All info the person has is transferred to the main brain, and then you are free to request whatever you wish, and apparently you get whatever you ask for.

If you ask for Mothership schematics, a flood of information blasts your skull killing you, so don't ask for more than a human brain can handle. I would imagine it would be like having the Library of Congress jammed into your braincase within 10 seconds of time. It would probably cause your brains to fly out of your ears.

If however, you are attempting to telemechanicly connect to an actual Mechanoid, then you're crazier than any of my characters, and that includes both "The Pink Flamingo" and "Hector the Wierdo". Don't get me started on those two.

I'd say that due to the integration you could actually use Telemech as Telepathy, and listen to the Mechanoid scream bloody death, as it squishes your pitiful human body.

As for taking over the body... I guess I'd give a straight roll on a d20, the highest person gaining control for a minute or so, and psychic combat costing 5 ISP per minute. If you are a Master Psychic, you are even with the Mechanoid. If you are only a Major Psy, then the mechanoid gets a +3 to his roll, if you are a minor psy, then the Mechanoid gets a +6 to his roll... Or something similar.

[The Narrator]

Oh, and as an addendum, the rifter with Archie, I own it. It states that Archie had developed circuitry which circumvents telemechanic probes and appears as a redundant sensor system...

I don't like the wording on that entry, as it seems to indicate that anyone can put together a better computer, and thus completely negate one of the more Potent psychic powers (and one of my all-time favorite powers). This take would directly say that any advanced society could accomplish such a feat, and thus turn my favorite super-techs, the Operator OCC, into much more mediocre technicians.

I'm handling it that upon close inspection, memory storage would be identified, and annotated by a good technician, but due to it's position within the circuit, a typical hacker would look at the code or design, and say "Oh, okay, that's probably a redundant backup"... If he looked into how the redundant system actually worked, one would find substantial modification to a normal sensor layout, and the jig, as they say, "would be up".

[devillin]

Oh, and as an addendum, the rifter with Archie, I own it. It states that Archie had developed circuitry which circumvents telemechanic probes and appears as a redundant sensor system...

Question is, did he get it from the Mechanoids?

[The Narrator]

Ooooh... good one...

It indicates that he was able to develop the circuitry after gaining knowledge of mechanoid psionics and circuitry....

I have to go look up the specifics, but I'm 99.999% certain that the circuitry in question is not intrinsic to the mechanoids.

[Colt47]

According to psychological studies on human memory, assuming that a machine could put all the information of a 1,000,000 floor space craft into the subjects short term memory, the person can only hold about seven elements. The rest of the information just wouldn't register at all. However, assuming that various blocks of floors have the same general layout, the character could remember floor schematics in chunks by grouping the floors with the same layout into a single chunk. Would he remember what each room on each floor is used for? Not really. He would just remember that the schematics for all floors 9090-110,000 are the same, and he would remember what the basic layout would look like.

If a brain pool could throw all the schematics and information of a Mechanoid mother ship into the subjects brain (working memory, long term isn't accessible), the subject would get a giant "Chunk" of information that he would then have to divide and make sense of. So the mind would divide the big chunk into several smaller chunks and then it's a process of elimination. Over all, it's useless either way to ask for the schematics of an entire mechanoid mothership because the human subject wouldn't be able to remember anything useful even if the information was put into the mind directly using psychic abilities.

However, the interesting thing about the brain pool idea is that the user can actually request specific chunks before the information is even entered into the brain. That means there are two means of separating informational chunks during a mind meld.

Well, the important thing to note is that a person shouldn't take damage from asking for all the information about the mechanoids, or all the ship schematics, etc. because the person wouldn't be able to make sense of it anyway. Even an extremely well trained individual who has learned how to group information into chunks would only glean very limited information from such an exchange into long term memory.

Also, assuming someone who links with the brain pool can use the brain pools processing power, a human subject could stay connected to the brain pool safely and just use it to look at all the information available and then select specific pieces of information to place into a chunk that interest him, then have the information sent to the human brain to process.

Man I could go on and on about this brain merging thing. Just so many things one could do.