Thread: Prime Base
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Old 11-10-2011, 06:36 AM
dragoon500ly dragoon500ly is offline
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Default Prime Base Repairman Part II

"A) The environment that is stipulated for Hidden Valley will not lead to lizards developing endothermy (warm bloodedness). The constant temp of the environment is perfect for ectothermic animals (cold blooded). I'm also uncertain if, even under the worst conditions, that you can get lizards to mutate that fast. I had a fix for this. In my campaign NASA was much more a going concern. They were about to terraform Mars when the war broke out (2012). Part of the terraforming was to use biological organisms to change the Martian environment by biological action. Additionally, they also wanted to use animals and plants that could live on Mars. Instead of engineering each organism, they decided to let the environment do the job for them. To ensure that they would get organisms that could live on Mars a virus was developed that would mutate lower lifeforms and went to work on local animals."

I always found the flora and fauna of Hidden Valley to be a very poorly considered idea. Never liked it, never used it.

"B) The Project had almost no need of transuranic radioactives. Fusion uses Hydrogen and makes Helium (and a neutron). The radioactive sludge at the bottom of Prime Base has no reason to be there. Additionally, NO ONE (except the Federal Government at Hanford) stores high energy radioactivies this way. What did the Project do? Place its idiot children in the safety department? Write this stuff out, its stupid!"

Concur.

"C) There is not enough housing on the base. Some day count up the number of places people work in the base. It comes to way more than the number of adults that can be housed in the base. Even with the fact that not all the jobs need to be going on at once, there just isn't room for all the people needed. Add to this the fact that some of these jobs need to be done 24-7 and things get even more sticky. The quick fix for this is to duplicate the Life Module. Stick it next to the existing one in that big hole that Morrow Industries dug in the ground. This will give a base of 4 (not 3) cylinders. The good thing about this is that you don't need to do any extra work, just duplicate the life cylinder."

According to the module, with just 3 cylinders, Prime Base had a maximum capacity of 448 Project personnel and 390 dependents (i.e. 838 people). It is also stated that there were actually 247 Project personnel and 160 dependents (407 people) living in Prime Base when the war began. The original author certain had a point about the need for 24-7 operations, but I feel that with 448 active personnel, Prime should have been able to handle the critical posts. Otherwise, the war simply happened before Prime was fully manned.

"D) The defenses of the base have always seemed capable of defeating any attack through the main entrance. However, if you really want to screw with players here are some things that you can do: place booby traps in the hallway. They may no longer work, but they are scary; every 25 feet put up a screen of wire mesh, this was both to slow movement and to prevent some Rambo from firing a LAW at the guard post. Since a LAW would have done a number on the weapon turrets, this will prevent that. As long as the weapons function, ain't nobody getting down this hallway; fill the hallway with water, it sucks being a player character; fill the hallway with Chlorine gas cylinders, bobby trapped to open of the hallway is entered."

Kinda of getting into the old Killer PD mode here. From a defensive standpoint, I can see Claymores set into recesses in the walls and roof, and controlled from Post One and the wire mesh screens are simply common sense protection from rockets. The water and Chlorine, overkill. If any of my players are reading this, I did not include this. No! Really!
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