Old Clones, New Tricks

There are more ways to de-chassis a catbot, and more specialties than the main rules suggests. The following range of additional specialties can be offered to players seeking to fill holes in their skill set, but unable to find anything satisfactory from the current offerings.

Management Specialty

Pattern Recognition

Simple Description: Spotting something has changed.

The innate instinctual approach to procedure and process that makes for gut reactions in response to change, addition or omission in structures. Faced with a situation, device or process, a successful Pattern Recognition check will alert the character to inconsistencies. A simple success will suggest that something is wrong, while a large margin (5+) will highlight a distinct area of change and what the upshots of that alteration. For example, a character, observing the interaction between an admin clerk and another Troubleshooter, may notice failure to complete a necessary form (which might suggest incompetence, sadistic intent or the interaction of two members of the same Secret Society). On the other hand, picking up a laser pistol a success may present a sense that something is not right, while a significant margin may result in the distinct feeling that a component of the capacitor array has been removed, reversed or tampered with.

Learned knowledge stands as a limiting factor in the resolution of Pattern Recognition. If the character has absolutely no concept of how a laser works, the gut-feeling of Pattern Recognition may guide them to a specific component, but practical repair comes down to possession of an appropriate Weapon Ops and Maintenance specialty.

Check failure provides a lack of feedback or a bad response if the margin of nonsuccess is significant. The character may incorrectly identify a missing aspect not normally expected or incorrectly observe an interaction or process. For example, the character may confuse a closely related process or mistake a Model C34 phase inducer for a Model C-2A phase inductor and finger Commie saboteurs where none exist.

Stealth Specialty

Cryptography

Simple Description: Cracking codes.

Familiarity with writing and reading codes and ciphers, secure forms of information rendering. The complexity of codes depends on the relative skill and success of the cryptographer. The difficulty of breaking a cipher, therefore, depends on the success of the original encoder. Therefore, a code prepared with a Success Margin of 5 can be broken with a success check of a 5+ Margin. The same is true of writing code – the measure of success represents the degree of code security.

A check that shows success, but doesn’t exceed the required margin, fails to decode the message but may give a vague suggestion of its content or provide grounds for a positive modifier in further attempts. A success check five points greater than the basic code security allows the character to not decode the message, but also to deconstruct the whole cipher.

Failing a cryptography check leaves the code unbroken; while significant failure presents a complete misreading, revealing fragments of a message that has absolutely no relation to the original content. The fragments should provide the basis for a wild goose chase or a chance to spend an evening at an IntSec interrogation room revealing baseless secrets and rumors.

Violence Specialty

Remote Weapons

Simple Description: Shooting stuff you can’t see.

Hitting something you cannot actually see with an indirect weapon, such as a mortar, cannon or orbital death ray. Remote Weapon usage is far from an exact skill, and requires a certain degree of haphazard target assessment. The character effectively combines knowledge of propellant systems, atmospheric variances, geometry and weapon construction to estimate the best possible position and angle of launch. A successful check result indicates a hit, and follows standard rules for application through the Universal Hostility Formula. If the character wishes to fire another shot at exactly the same spot, enhance the next check with a +4 modification to hit.

Failure does not represent a completely lost cause, as information in respect of the point of impact can help ensure the next shot finds the intended target.

• Margin of failure up to 5: +4 to next attempt
• Margin of failure up to 10: +2 to next attempt
• Margin of failure greater than 10: no bonus to next attempt
• Margin of failure greater than 15: -4 to next attempt

In the final instance, the failure was so great that the character is completely flummoxed and believes that he was far closer than he really was. Maybe he misread the bounce of a mortar-launched grenade, or could not see where the death ray struck for all the smoke and scattering charred flesh.

The bonus offered by reasonable failure assumes the next shot is at the same target location. If the target was a moving one and it has since shifted somewhere else, there is no benefit from using the data of old failures.

Hardware Specialty

Medical Tech

Simple Description: Fixing medical-related tech.

Operating and repairing medical systems. Deals with the whole range of bio-maintenance systems, ranging through life support, decompression chambers, biomonitors, anesthetic/drug delivery regulators, and the critically important machines that go ping. Focus aside, Medical Tech works exactly like the other Engineering specialties.

Software Specialty

Legacy Programming

Warning! Warning! This specialty is classified BLUE. Use or knowledge of this specialty at lower clearances is treason, and is punishable by summary execution.

Simple Description: Programming Old Reckoning software.

A general grasp of antiquated, Old Reckoning programming language. Given the sheer variety of actual programming languages that exist, the character actually possesses an understanding that represents a fragmented pigeon tongue at best. Many of Alpha Complexes key systems find their foundations in Old Reckoning Legacy software. It requires a success check of 5+ to modify existing software at the root level; 10+ to write completely original legacy software. The difficulty of understanding the complexities of the various programming languages means that a success lower than 5 provides an understanding of the function of the software and the ability to overwrite a small piece of code, but such changes are easily visible to others who are looking for Legacy code hacking.

Failure means that the nature of the Legacy programming is completely misunderstood and the character makes modifications, additions or deletions that will become very evident, very quickly. Changing the core of local maintenance and management systems may result in brown outs, airflow cuts, bot instability, or uncooperative elevators. Truly diabolical failures may result in completely formatting of sections of the local subnode.

While security restricted, Computer Phreaks may possess Legacy Programming as an Unhealthy Secret Skill.

Wetware Specialty

MemoMax Science

Simple Description: Techniques of managing difficult transfers and reconstructing MemoMax backups.

While Memory Tranfer is a narrow specialty of Cloning, specifically dealing with the handling of MemoMax operations, MemoMax Science handles the greater complexities of the process and the underlying technologies. MemoMax transfer protocols are not an exact science and without expert knowledge it is quite possible for non-standard transfer to go terribly wrong. In the worst possible cases a failed MemoMax may leave a new clone irretrievably brain damaged. In these circumstances it is necessary to complete restructuring and neural-reengineering to entirely rebuild memory backups from available secondary copies and fragments.

In instances where MemoMax transfer has been damaged, interrupted, corrupted or interfered with, a MemoMax Science check is necessary to rescue and complete the transfer without damage to the clone in receipt of the download. If the transfer has been hacked, the margin of success for the check needs to equal or exceed the success margin of the Operating Systems check made to corrupt the transfer originally. Basic failure means the MemoMax transfer cannot be rescued, while significant margins of failure may simply aggrevate the situation, leading to the sort of personality problems and false memory overlays common to hacked transfers.

Unlike Operating Systems, MemoMax Science is not a treasonous skill. The specialty is very common, thankfully, amongst Tech Services cloning personnel of mid-range security clearances and higher. Synapses remapping during repatterning of traitors utilises MemoMax Science.