Electro Magnetic Pulse Party

Hoping to kick off a discussion about EMP weapons and effects and how to protect ourselves from them. I think there are a couple of different ideas and rules bouncing around. Would be good to settle stuff. Cut and Paste from the CSC p 111 (bold text added for emphasis) Electromagnetic Pulse: EMP rounds cause a massive flare of electromagnetic radiation which will not harm personnel but will cause unshielded electronics to shut down for 1d6 minutes – some systems may be ‘fried’ by heating caused by electromagnetic induction. EMP will also briefly ‘white out’ many forms of sensors and can flood the airwaves with static. TL TYPE Destroyed 5 Civilian 8+ 5 Military 9+ 6-7 Civilian 5+ 6-7 Military 6+ 8-9 Civilian 6+ 8-9 Military 7+ 10-11 Civilian 9+ 10-11 Military 10+ For every TL a system is above 11 the target number is increased by one Low tech technology is significantly more robust than later Tech Levels, making them far more resistant to damage from an EMP pulse. Shielded electronics apply a –3 DM to the roll to see if the electronic system is destroyed. There were rules in another supplement somewhere that covered EMPs, but the the life of me I can't remember where to find them. From memory they were very basic. You stuff if fried if it isn't shielded, and if it is then it's immune. The CSC rules are a bit different. There are two levels of friedness. One is how many minutes your piece of gear is KOed for. After that time you check to see if it's permanently dead of if it was was just temporarily ionized. The table is actually very cool. Low tech gear is more resistant to EMP than mid tech gear is. After that the chance to resist destruction from EMP goes up one point per TL. Shielded stuff gains a -3DM to avoid being totally destroyed. So shielded stuff will never be temporarily fried. It will only be either totally fine or totally fried. If anyone knows where the other EMP rules are please post them here. When it comes to setting up an EMP booby trap near our airlocks, we could use the artillery shell rules in CSC to knock something up. Either that or we could mount an automated RAM launcher turret near airlocks that are loaded with EMP grenades. EMP grenades cost 100cr each.

It should be noted that gear made by Darrians for Darrians is EMP-shielded due to the nature of its construction ; Darrian electronics (digital logic gates, analog amplifiers, what-have-you) is all based on optical properties of matter rather than electrical ones; there’s very little electrical there for an EMP to hit, and any such part gets shielded by a tiny Faraday Cage or whatever. As a Darrian whose day job was and is to walk into hostile situations, many of which were due to rogue technology rather than due to combat, Charoux values hardened equipment that will survive whatever havoc the murdered mad scientist’s stolen equipment does . In game terms, I applied a modifier consistent with (but not actually found in) the Darrian equipment tables to whatever electronics I purchased on Darrian. Darrian computers are smaller than their Imperium equivalents, so I hastily drew a conclusion that all Darrian electronics was smaller; while certainly true for anything that relies on digital logic, analog circuits could actually be bigger... but there’s nothing to back up either conclusion, so I assumed that lazy authorship means it’s all the same. Note that this applies to “off-the-shelf” equipment purchased in the Darrian Confederation that is not an Imperial Import (which are frequently an option when survivability is unimportant and price is, such as for a child’s toy, or a poor elementary school’s computer lab). Here’s the modifier I used... Standardized “Darrian, Compact & Modified” Electronics Modifier: Cost Multiplier: *2 Volume Multiplier: *0.2 Mass Multiplier: *0.2 Normally, this “modifier fishing” is a really bad idea ; but the Darrian book has grossly little detail about how standard equipment there is different from Imperial counterparts, even for things that obviously would exist, and obviously would  be different.

So, you made it up.

I do remember reading in the Darrian sourcebook somewhere that Darrian gear is shielded. Like TT said though, I can't remember actually seeing any specific mechanics for it. Same with those rules in the CSC for EMP artillery rounds and grenades. It mentions that shielded gear gets a -3DM on the roll to save it from being permanently destroyed by EMP, but I haven't seen any way to make something shielded in that book (yet)

Wolfen, I did a careful comparison between the costs, volume, and weight of Imperium Computers and Darrian Computers. The modifier as proposed is consistent with the largest subset of available values. As Alby notes, the book mentions the existence of this “modified equipment” as a universal truism of Darrian culture, and then fails to provide much in the way of a modifier, an equipment list, or anything else of that nature, in order to legitimately work from. So yeah, I “made it up”, in the sense that I made a best-effort of reverse-engineering the source material, in a context that pretty much required it. From a quality of game materials perspective, it’s more work than should be necessary to get the equipment my character requires; but from a character motivation perspective, it’s only natural that Charoux would want Darrian equipment.

Relax, TT. I was just teasing. ;)