About
Striker, being science fiction, relies on technology to tell part of its story. The tools of technology are all-pervasive.
Artefacts
Every completed item is considered an artefact. An artefact can therefore be any armour, bot, computer, cyberware, geneware, implement, tool, vehicle, or weapon. In fact, it can include creatures, both biological and robotic. At Striker's technological level, the artefact is actually the last in a line of manufacturing stages.
Scaffold
The nearest to completion is the scaffold, which is the starter kit for an instance of the artefact. Items are often sold as a scaffold, which the user activates, using a power and matter source. When activated the scaffold becomes the artefact it was designed to be.
Schema
More primitive than a scaffold is a schema (a set of instructions and starter nanobots that can make either scaffolds or artefacts of a type, once activated).
Conjugate
Finally, the most primitive is the conjugate, which is a schema template, that must be completed, and turned into a schema, before activation.
Thus there is a progression in the manufacturing of artefacts:
conjugate -> schema -> scaffold -> artefact
Users of equipment only see the last two, but engineers get their hands into everything.
CC, CC-Q & CC-S
Regardless of the stage that an item is in (conjugate, schema, scaffold, or artefact), it has a complexity. This is often the same as its cost in credits, if you were to buy it. This complexity determines the base difficulty of the common actions, and this is captured in the Complexity Challenge (CC).
The CC is the most basic number that you must overcome to carry out skill actions on the artefact. The complexity is the first number of the cost of the artefact. Thus if an item is listed as costing 45:2 credits or 800:1 credits, the complexity numbers are 45 and 800, respectively.
The following table presents the conversion of the complexity component of the cost into the CC (plus some other details).
Complexity and Build Costs
| Complexity | CC | Time days (Cost 50%) | Tooling Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 12 | 1 | kit |
| 1K | 13 | 3 | kit |
| 10K | 14 | 10 | kit |
| 100K | 15 | 20 | pack |
| 1M | 16 | 40 | pack |
| 10M | 17 | 80 | facility |
| 100M | 18 | 160 | facility |
| 1G | 19 | 320 | facility |
The times shown are the times to make the artefact to schema or conjugate level, and assume that you are spending 50% of the normal cost of the artefact in doing so. You halve the time taken to design the schemas, by doubling the cost, similarly you can halve the cost by doubling the time.
Going from the schema to the finished artefact involves activating the schema: this has its own build time. The only time in the game we see moving from a conjugate to an artefact is in contest conjugation by chopper or engineer characters.
Certain skill checks for some of these actions need to be compared against the Quality CC (CC-Q), or the Security CC (CC-S), rather than the CC. Both the CC-Q and the CC-S are equal to the CC by default, but both can be higher.
To save you from consulting the above table all the time:
- the CC is listed against artefacts in the equipment tables. The CC-Q and CC-S are listed only if they are different from the CC.
- the CC is nearly always also equal to 9 + the number of decimal places in the cost. Therefore if the cost is 1200 credits, the CC = 13 (or 9 + 4). Another way to remember it is 10 + the number of places after the first number.
So the three CCs for equipment, vehicles, weapons and armour are:
- CC. The Complexity Challenge of the artefact, derived from the complexity component of the item’s cost.
- CC-Q. The Quality Complexity Challenge of the artefact, usually equal to the CC, but can be higher in items of better quality (easier to diagnose, repair, or detect hacks in)
- CC-S. The Security Complexity Challenge of the artefact, usually equal to the CC, but can be higher in items of better security (harder to hack, easier to detect hacks and counter them).
Complexity & Rarity
Most purchasable equipment carries a cost trait - this representes the [money] required to buy it
24000:2(cost)
This lists an item at complexity 2300 and rarity 2.
- If you wanted to see if you can recall what an item is, you add twice the rarity number to 10 for the challenge
- If you want to see if you can fix an item (usually with an engineering skill), you add the decimal places in the complexity number to 10 for the complexity challenge.
To know something about the item above the challenge is 14, and to fix the item the complexity challenge is 15.