Laying in bed considering some items I left off the ships equipment list in a game I was trying to decide what to do about scanners- go AD or ZEBs<br /><br />I seems to me that the best choice is go STar Trek.<br /><br />I handed out proto type CAS scanners from Zebs for PCs to feild test during a Volturnus campaign and the players largely ingnored them and I suspect some of them thought they were stupid. Well that isn't fun.<br /><br />and the AD scanners seem a little silly- a vapo and a geo scanner both have mass spectrometer capability so they aught to be one scanner.<br /><br />if you consider the Zebs CAS (Computer Analysis Scanners) the Fauna, MED, and flora scanners all have the ability to scan a life form and present info on it. you could just make these one scanner<br /><br />The atmospheric, chemical, geo CAS all have the above mentioned mass spec capability plus a few other features and the demolitions scanner must have this to be able to tell you what explosive is being used.<br /><br />The mechanical, robo, demolitions, electrical all suggest an ability to scan and present a display of circutry almost like a CAT scan for inanimate objects <br /><br />the odd man out is the megnetic scan<br /><br />rather than try to keep track of all these scanners why not just lump like with like or better yet just lump them all together in one package call it a tri-scanner or quadcorder if you like- suddenly its one item with tremendous capability and everyone would carry it pretty much like every boy scout likes to carry the 46 blade swiss army knife just in case they need one of those blades. <br /><br />it saves on record keeping and I think players will resort to using them more often since it does everything like magic. <br /><br />The limitations on the scanner would be the PCs skill- a scan all device is great but for some applications it really requires a skill to properly interpret the info. The device just presents information but its the character's skill that interprets it.<br /><br />EXAMPLES:<br />1: it will present a schematic on the circutry and security features of a computer but it requires comp skill to do anything in the way of by passing the security in fact the device can be used to gain a bonus on the skill check (same goes for demolitions and medical skills)<br /><br />2. areas that would overlap the toxy rad gauge- no skill required any one can scan a sample and say this is X item from the periodic chart. If fact I'd allow unskill use in areas that would normally require a skill but the scanner will only tell you that the most basic info- PC scans a disguised bomb, the scanner tells him its a bomb but since he doesn't have demo skill he wont learn much more than that the mass spec says its TD-19<br /><br />3. obviously it would make a great aid in fixing things +10? bonus. No ships engineer would be caught dead without one.<br /><br />make it the cost of the original enviromental tool kit: 500cr but make it the wt of ? The original eviro kit was 10kg which seems to heavy. The ZEBs CAS's are 2kg or 3kg for a Duo (with 2 scanner functions in one device). Personally I'd prefer 1-2 kg or even negligable wt. <br /><br /><br />
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