Quote:
Originally Posted by cosmicfish
You have to step carefully with Damocles. If you make it too smart and too far-reaching then it becomes a literal Deus ex Machina. If it can find Prime Base, the proverbial needle in the haystack, how much must it know of the KFS? Or Krell? Or any other vaguely technologically-advanced society? If the team can befriend Damocles, do they need to do anything else at all in the game?
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It is a good question about what Damocles was netted into when the war happened. However as you stated most if not all of the sensor networks will be down within days of the war, so his ability to gather SIGINT even a few years later will be very much minimized. His operational mode will prevent him from being able to reach out very much. So he may catch occasional signs of the return of technological society, but how much will he really get of the short ranged coms being used?
That being said if he is not isolated from the many and varied military networks when the balloon goes up he will potentially have a huge storehouse of knowledge about the war. This, and the data he collected after the war COULD point players who ask the right questions in the direction of Prime Base. He may know that during the war and until his nets went down there were no warheads delivered to where Prime Base is. He will almost certainly have a data base of where every nuclear detonation was during and after the conflict. His on site sensors would be able to detect ground burst nuclear weapons fairly readily. The huge number impacting during large scale strikes might be tough to sort into individual impacts but a stand alone one should be clear as a bell.
Any SIGINT from the period leading up to the nuclear detonation at Prime might have additional clues.
Damocles doesn't have all the data, and data only works if you ask the right questions. He won't. It will be up to the Players to do that.