On 11 March 2016 at 20:41, Evyn MacDude <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 12:07 PM, Timothy Collinson <xxxxxx@port.ac.uk> wrote:

While I'm here, is anyone familiar with Book 9: Robot from Mongoose?

I'm trying to design a liquid metal TL16ish  pre-Maghiz 'defensive' robot (or two) for the PCs to, ummm, encounter.  (Die at the hands of?!)

But I keep running into not being able to fit almost anything into due to the slot limits.  I was imagining something a bit smaller than a human (but not human shaped which is a no-no for Darrians), so 8 slots for the frame, with antigrav  (should be 6 slots at TL11, but I'm going to arbitrarily extend the table to 4 slots at TL14 and 3 slots at TL16), but some comms like holographic input and output is already another 3 slots, manipulators are 2 (presumably *each* but I was going to pretend not) and I've used up the 8 slots before I've begun to add armour or weapons.  Which were kind of the point.

Am I missing something and the things don't all have to go into the frame slots, or is to force specialisation and have a gun robot, a medic robot, a comms robot, a repair robot and so on?  The latter is not quite what I'd imagined.   (I was picturing something like a *small* version of Fagor from Earthsearch - a radio series (and book) from the 80s by James Follett I'd highly recommend if you don't know it.)

Any pointers appreciated before I just give up and say "the Referee should determine the abilities of the robot the (unarmed!) Scientists are up against".  Which seems a shame when there's a book that should help define things.

1st off the 13Mann Robots book is better..... For building at least.

The number in the construction system of Book 9 are wonky, seriously wonky, put the features you want down then guesstimate a final size. 

But seriously the 13Mann book is better....

I quite agree.  I was going to give it one more shot in the morning when I was fresh and then switch to that as much simpler...  Shame, but there it is.

(though to be fair, I never found the CT Robot book very easy either.)

Very tempted to go with 

"You see a very nasty looking, well armed dustbin floating in front of you.  It's drawing a bead on you as you watch.  What do you do?"

That's all that's *really* needed!  :-)

tc

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