Cyberpunk Equipment

[hal]

Hi Folks,
In the GURPS ULTRATECH data file I have, it lists all of the Bionics and Brain implants as Advantages.

If I wanted to create a file that listed the bionics and brain implants as "equipment" that gave the "advantages" of the equipment with a cost, legality class, etc - how would I go about doing that?

For instance, if you could show what Acclerated Reflexes would look like as "equipment" that gives the same advantages as it does under the "advantages" table, I'd appreciate it.

Of course, if it can't be done, how would I link it so that equipment has to e purchased in order to gain the advantage (much like the Weapon Master Advantage requires that the sword be purchased and modified with _Weapon Master.

I'm looking for ways to go back to where buying equipment grants advantages without having to pay character points to gain them.

My general "style" as GM when running a cyberpunk campaign is that equipment purchased with character points doesn't require that the character buy it with money, and after the start of play, the character spends down time recovering from operations and undergoes surgery with an NPC's skill roll being rolled to determine success/failure of the operations.

As a consequence, I'd like to have both options available where the equipment is listed as equipment, and as advantages/disadvantages.

Thanks,
Hal

[Armin]

This is actually a bit more problematic than it ought to be, but I think I can provide the easiest way to do this (at least, so far as I can see right now).

I'll be back in another post in a bit.

[Armin]

Doing what you want is complicated a bit from a couple different things in how GCA works, including that it doesn't work really well to mix different types of parents and children, which makes just having an equipment item do everything not a great solution.

Instead, if we mix a little bit of equipment with some simple copy and paste to the existing advantages, we can get something that may work for you.

To start, the existing Accelerated Reflexes advantage is currently built like this:

[ADVANTAGES]
<Ultra-Tech - Bionics>
Accelerated Reflexes, displaycost(20), cost(0),
	description(TL:10),
	page(UT212),
	adds(_
		AD:Extra Attack (Accelerated Reflexes) _
			with "Temporary Disadvantage (Electrical), -20%, group(_General), page(B115)" _
		), parentof(AD:Extra Attack (Accelerated Reflexes))

What we want to do is make a copy of this that can be used as gear, without removing the advantage version. So, in your custom data file for your cyber gear, you'll want to copy the above item, and give it a few new items, shown below in red:

[ADVANTAGES]
<__Ultra-Tech - Bionics As Gear>
Accelerated Reflexes (Gear), displaycost(0), cost(0),
	description(TL:10),
	page(UT212),
	adds(_
		AD:Extra Attack (Accelerated Reflexes) _
			with "Temporary Disadvantage (Electrical), -20%, group(_General), page(B115)" _
			and "Gear,*0,group(Gear)" _
		), parentof(AD:Extra Attack (Accelerated Reflexes))

The new category is to simplify separating these from the regular gear, if you want. The two underlines at the front aren't necessary, and I only included them for simpler testing. You can name the category anything you like, such as "DO NOT TAKE THESE DIRECTLY", but that won't help if the user is just browsing the main list.

Name extension added to mark this clearly as the Gear version. Displaycost() changed.

The and line ensures that this piece of gear doesn't cost any character points. For items that don't include a with section, this would be a with instead.

Otherwise, this is the same item as the starting advantage.

Next, you'll need to create the equipment item that the user will actually take. It would look like this:

[Equipment]
<__Testing Cyberwear>
Accelerated Reflexes, tl(10), techlvl(10),basecost(0),
	initmods(Cyberware,+0,group(Cyberware),formula("AD:Extra Attack (Accelerated Reflexes)"*1000),forceformula(yes)),
	needs("AD:Accelerated Reflexes (Gear)")

This gives equipment stats for the gear. The initmods() section is there to calculate the cost of this equipment based on the related advantage. I just made it a leveled cost based on the included Extra Attack that is given, but for most of this gear, a flat cost without a formula is probably sufficient.

The needs() ensures that when this piece of gear is taken by the user, the associated advantage is also added.

End Result:

You have an entry in both the Advantages list and the Equipment list for each item, but the user should pick from the Equipment list.

When the equipment item is taken, the free advantage is added. If the user changes the level of the Extra Attack, the cost of the equipment item should change. (Note that due to trickle-through calculation issues, you may not see this update unless you trigger a refresh on the Equipment Tab. On the QuickView, you should see the change.)

If the advantage is added from the Advantages list by itself, there won't be anything telling you that the required equipment is missing, so that's something to look out for. This is because GCA can't correctly resolve reciprocal prereqs, so adding a needs() to the advantage would result in both the advantage and equipment always having the P marker, even though both items existed.

Alternative:

If you'd rather have your user always select items from the Advantages list, rather than having items listed in both the Advantages and Equipment system lists, you can simplify the system a little bit:

<__Ultra-Tech - Bionics As Gear>
Accelerated Reflexes (Gear), displaycost(0), cost(0),
	description(TL:10),
	page(UT212),
	creates(_
		{EQ:Accelerated Reflexes, basecost(0),tl(10),techlvl(10)} _
			with {Cyberware,+0,group(Cyberware),formula("AD:Extra Attack (Accelerated Reflexes)"*1000),forceformula(yes)} _
		),
	adds(_
		AD:Extra Attack (Accelerated Reflexes) _
			with "Temporary Disadvantage (Electrical), -20%, group(_General), page(B115)" _
			and "Gear,*0,group(Gear)" _
		), parentof(AD:Extra Attack (Accelerated Reflexes))

This creates the Equipment items on demand for the character sheet, when the Advantage item is taken by the user. Otherwise, this functions largely the same as the above system, there just aren't any Equipment items for the user to select to add the gear to the character.

[hal]

Thank you for the example Armin :)

Now to see if I can understand all of this enough to make sense of it.

[Armin]

You're welcome. And we're here if you have more questions.