------------------------------
1999 #1302
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 16:22:34 -0500
From: Ian Ferguson
Subject: RE: Glitches after maintenance
John Buston writes:
>My players are currently having their ship undergo repairs/annual
>maintenance in a lower tech starport than the ship. They are also
>performing self-maintenance on the jump drive, fusion reactor and
>thrusters, as well as using an experimental jump drive component.
>
>Anyone have any nice glitches I can throw at them during the
>shakedown?
Software incompatability between the main computer and control subsystems in the drives:
"WARNING: POWER PLANT SYSTEM ERROR, PLANT WILL BE SHUT DOWN UNLESS EMERGENCY OVERRIDE ENGAGED" or "NONRECOVERABLE SYSTEM ERROR, MAIN COMPUTER MUST REBOOT, SAY 'REBOOT' TO CONTINUE"Critical part failure, as a low tech spare folds under the stress of the advanced drive:
"WARNING: PRIMARY COOLANT LOSS IN POWER PLANT, PLANT WILL BE SHUT DOWN UNLESS EMERGENCY OVERRIDE ENGAGED"or "What's that burning smell coming from the sensors panel?"
Substandard part performance: "That smell in the fresher? It looks like the new filters in the water recycling system are impeding the flow..."
Replacement parts that work fine, but don't do everything that they are supposed to: "What do you mean we can't reduce the floor-plates to 0.5G?"
Parts that are not compatable with other parts: "Why won't the vacc suit air tank fit into the @#%*! recharger?"
Miscellaneous mistakes caused by unfamiliarity with the vessel's systems: "Here's why the jump drive burned out, none of the warning systems were properly hooked up."
Oh, those poor PCs.
Peez
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#1302
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 13:25:20 -0900
From: "William F. Hostman"
Subject: Re Shakedown Glitches
>Anyone have any nice glitches I can throw at them during the shakedown?
One fun one would be to have the experimental drive component result in chromatic variations, for example, red shift everything, or none of the frequencies in the greens can propigate, etc. Fairly harmless, unless you're tweaking with teltales and other displays...
William F. Hostman
"Smith & Wesson: THe original Point and Click interface!"
Aramis 0602 C55A364-C S kk+ as+ hi+ dr+ va++(--) so+ zh++ vi+ da++ sy- ge-
533
Mailto:aramis@gci.net http://home.gci.net/~aramis http://www.alaska.net/~mhaa
ICQ:14640742 AIM:AKAramis ARM 1.0: 3 R H++ P+
IMTU 1.0: tc tm++ tn- t4-- tt+ to- tg-- ru+ ge 3i+ c+ jt-() au+ st- ls
pi+() ta+ he+(-) kk+ as+ hi+ dr+ va++(--) so+ zh++ vi+ da++ sy- ge- pi+
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#1303
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 16:48:31 -0800 (PST)
From: Craig Berry
Subject: Re: Glitches after maintenance
John Buston writes:
>Anyone have any nice glitches I can throw at them during the shakedown?
These are all based loosely on my rl experiences building a large distributed computer-controlled heating, ventillation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system:
| Craig Berry - cberry@cinenet.net
--*-- http://www.cinenet.net/users/cberry/home.html
| "They do not preach that their God will rouse them
a little before the nuts work loose." - Kipling
------------------------------
#1304
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 22:21:07 -0500
From: Mark Urbin
Subject: RE: Glitches after maintenance
John Buston writes: >Anyone have any nice glitches I can throw at them during the shakedown?
Oh...a gearhead's delight here... take a look at: http://www.ultranet.com/~eclipse/SV/TRAV/traveller_maintenace_blues.shtml
Of course the air will smell funny. Let them swap the filters a few times before they start tracing down the air shafts (small maintance bot perhaps) and find:
------------------------------
#1304
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 20:24:38 PST
From: Leonard Erickson
Subject: Re: Glitches after maintenance
In mail you write:
>>Anyone have any nice glitches I can throw at them during the shakedown?
> * A 'routine' wiring repair turns weird when an unknown component is found
> behind a panel.
And from an old post here (or possibly elsewhere), upon removing panels to repair battle damage (or the once in a lifetime meteor strike that penetrates the hull), you discover that the <bleep><bleep><bleep> automated wiring robot that did that cable run had used some gizmo you don't have to ID the wires in the cable by sending signals thru it. And hadn't used color coded wires. Thus:
If you know the tricks, it'll take a couple of assistants and a few dozen or so measurements on each of the two cable "segments" just to establish that there are no open or shorted wires. If you don't know the tricks, it'll take some ungodly number of measurements (200 factorial?)
And if you didn't think to label the wires as you did that set of tests, you've got to do another set of as many again to ID the wires. Then you can get down to splicing them. Have fun!
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort
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#1305
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 01:43:04 EST
From: "Gypsy Comet"
Subject: Re: Glitches after maintenance
John Buston asks:
>Anyone have any nice glitches I can throw at them during the shakedown?
An alarming but (apparently) harmless rattle/hum/whine when the thrusters are brought to full power, or when the fuel begins flowing into the jump mechanisms.
A carelessly crossed wire (that will take a long time to find again) causes the ship to do its own jump-dimming without anyone actually turning down the lights.
I could go on...
GC
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#1310
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 19:39:43 PST
From: Leonard Erickson
Subject: Re: Glitches after maintenance
In mail you write:
> b. A really colorful mold with lots of smelly pores that drift in the wind
For extra fun, have it closely resemble the picture of some really nasty organism in the ship's database. Only a specialist (or a very lucky PC) will find the picture of this harmless organism buried 12 (obscure) cross-references away.
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort
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#1311
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 15:57:59 -0800
From: "Antony Farrell"
Subject: RE: Re Shakedown Glitches
>Anyone have any nice glitches I can throw at them during the shakedown?
Or how about the experimental component is not callibrated to the ship its fitted to resulting in jump grid variation, not enought to cause a mis-jump, but bad enough that the characters suspect they are undergoing one. Ie some sick crew, display fluctuations in jump drive performance etc.
Antony Farrell
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#1313
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 16:01:26 +0200
From: Jussi Kenkkil
Subject: Vs: Glitches after maintenance
>Anyone have any nice glitches I can throw at them during the shakedown?
Have one of the major components suffer a fake malfunction. This means that when they run a self-diagnostic program, it gets convinced that there's something wrong with some esoteric part. The characters can check it, "repair" it or even replace it, and the program is still convinced there's something wrong. Finding out the problem with the electronics involved in the self-diagnostics can take time. (Especially when the "malfunction" is on some vital piece of machinery, and it can't be used because of inbuilt safeties.)
ps. I've run into similar trouble with "intelligent" photocopiers a few times.
-J2K
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#1314
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 11:31:05 -0600
From: "Chad Russell"
Subject: Vs: Glitches after maintenance
J2K wrote:
> Have one of the major components suffer a fake malfunction.
This could be especially effective if the PCs have ever seen '2001: A Space Odyssey'...
HAL9000: "Just a moment... just a moment..."
Hapless Frank: "What's the trouble, HAL?"
HAL9000: "I am detecting a problem with the AE-35 unit; I predict it will go 100% failure within 72 hours."
Frank & Dave think to themselves as they prepare to make the repair: "This is great! At last, something to break the tedium around here!"
Little do they suspect the real malfunction...
-Chad
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#1315
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 11:10:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Craig Berry
Subject: Re: Glitches after maintenance
>> Anyone have any nice glitches I can throw at them during the shakedown?
>
> Have one of the major components suffer a fake malfunction.
This is particularly annoying when the problem with the electronics also causes the death of three members of the frozen watch, near-death due to vacuum exposure of another crewperson, and a poignant rendition of "Daisy, Daisy" during the repair process.
| Craig Berry - cberry@cinenet.net
--*-- http://www.cinenet.net/users/cberry/home.html
| "They do not preach that their God will rouse them
a little before the nuts work loose." - Kipling
------------------------------
#1317
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 15:51:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Glenn Goffin
Subject: Vs: Glitches after maintenance
>Have one of the major components suffer a fake
>malfunction.
That's how Dave and Frank determine that Hal isn't functioning properly. "I read your lips while you were in the pod. I couldn't let you take any action that might jeopardize the mission, Dave."
--Glenn
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#1318
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 16:08:05 PST
From: Leonard Erickson
Subject: Re: Vs: Glitches after maintenance
In mail you write:
> Little do they suspect the real malfunction...
And, alas, few people who have only seen the movie know what the real malfunction was. As was (not very well) explained in the movie version of 2010, the problem was that security concious idiots told HAL that under no circumstances could he reveal the real mission to the crew until they arrived at Jupiter. And at the same time they told him the mission must accomplish its goal.
The natural result was that at some point these hidden instructions led to a conflict because he couldn't tell the crew why they couldn't change plans, but he couldn't let them change plans either.
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort