Terminator templates (T-800 and T-1000)

[elShoggotho]

Originally Posted by eddie

Or maybe the time machine was improved between the time the first terminator was sent back to kill Sarah and the second one was sent back to kill young John, so it COULD send back inorganic material.

In that case, they would have sent bigger machines. Hunter-killers. The T-1000 also arrived in a naked human shape, so it had the ability to mimic not only texture and colour, but also biological characteristics, and was good enough at it to be sent back.

[eddie]

Originally Posted by elShoggotho

In that case, they would have sent bigger machines. Hunter-killers. The T-1000 also arrived in a naked human shape, so it had the ability to mimic not only texture and colour, but also biological characteristics, and was good enough at it to be sent back.

But maybe they couldn't produce a field large enough to send through a large piece of machinery, such as hunter-killers. They had to travel through time crouched down in both the first and second movies.

Plus, a large autonomous machine would have a difficult time moving inconspicuously while it hunts for John, while the T-1000 (especially with it's shapeshifting abilities) could easily blend into a crowd and have a look around, and John would never have suspected a thing if it hadn't disguised itself as a cop.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Bruno

[1] my apologies to any Californians on the forum. I just love saying that word.

That's okay, so do we. Although personally I prefer "And So, Ahnuld ruled the State of California, with an iron crown heavy on a furrowed brow but that is another story..."

[Blood Legend]

Originally Posted by GhostInTheMachine

Wait a sec...I know in the first movie they sent the T back in time, but he wasn't carrying anything (including clothing). Apparently it couldn't fit into the time stream or whatever, but then how does his skin stay on him?

Dang...I know somewhere on the net there was a GURPS 3E Terminator conversion list with background and everything. I wonder if it got taken offline...

Only organics, or mimicing materials capable of simulating organics (not sure about this second thing) can go back through time. This isn't so much a product of the world so much as it is a product of the specific time machine. I'm guessing they built a better time machine for the T-X

Originally Posted by elShoggotho

In that case, they would have sent bigger machines. Hunter-killers.

Er no, at that point I'm guessing most major government officials would have gotten word of a HK Guardian storming through downtown-wherever with laser gatling guns, and send in a sidewinder missle...then get a jumpstart in robotics.

[Ragabash Moon]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Who did you email? Because SJG most certainly does answer rules and cannon content questions - the key is to not email the wrong staff member or department. The right man, I suspect, would be Doctor Kromm (aka Sean Punch), the GURPS line editor, who in the past has been nothing but cordial and quite willing to answer questions or forward them on to the correct authority.

Well, yes but my question was a question of whether "Steel" was "Reign of Steel" and that would be best directed to David Pulver. As his email isn't listed, I figured the general questions email they would either know, or they would be most likely to talk to him. Either way, it wasn't a rules question, as I see it. But yeah, I see what you mean, might be best to ask Kromm, he'd be better equipped to ask David Pulver than the interns they have answering the general questions emails (no offense meant to the interns).

[LemmingLord]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Name: T-800
Race: Cyborg

Bruno, I loved your terminator stats. Good work!!

I've been on a terminator kick lately with the new series and some additional ideas because of it.

1) Do you think the T800 should have indecisive? It seems to spend quite a long time analyzing possibilities (turning its head to and fro while it scans everything for possibilities). Whenever they showed the T800 get involved in conversations it showed him going through a list of responses... It really made me think of the indecisive disad. Finally, Kyle Reese tells Sarah to turn on all the machines in the factory to confuse it - and having indecisive would explain while it may have given her the extra time she needed.. If so, what CR would you think appropriate?

2) Do we assume the Cromartie terminator is a beefed up version of the T800? As someone already described, it was able to tear through the bank vault in relatively little time...I'm not sure the original terminator was shown to have that kind of strength...

3) Given that the time displacement brought Cromartie's head (but not the rest of his metal body) forward through time, would we hypothesise that there is something in the head (say the neural net processor) that produces the kind of biolectric field necessary for time displacement?

4) Is there something on your template that accounts for the "system resets" that the T800 seems to go through? After several shotgun blasts or being smashed through a plate glass window at high speeds - and such - it seems to take several moments to "reboot." Is that figured in?

[ed_209a]

One special thing about the Terminator franchise is the time travel aspect.

Causality regarding Skynet means that the succession of terminators don't have to be identical.

Lets suppose...

The original Skynet sends a single T-800 to prevent John Connor from being born. That terminator is defeated, and its remains recovered by Cyberdyne.

Because of the remains, Skynet and terminators are possible earlier, replacing the original Skynet and it's terminators. This shift in causality could explain why Skynet2 didn't send a T1000 to assist the T800 in the 80s. If Sarah Connor died in 1986, Skynet2 would never exist.

The destruction of Cyberdyne and the terminator remains erased Skynet2.

I am not sure how we then get to Skynet3 (the distributed Skynet). Maybe that software based line of development was waiting in the wings all along, but was suppressed by the existance of Skynet1 & Skynet2.

So then, who built the T-X and the T800 from T3?

And also the T800 series from the TV series...

[AOTA]

Originally Posted by ed_209a

So then, who built the T-X and the T800 from T3?

And also the T800 series from the TV series...

One of the interesting things about the new show it that it splits off from the movie timeline. Where Sarah Conner does not die of cancer and they skip ahead 8 years. That messes up things even more.

[Greystar]

Originally Posted by Bobzilla

One of the interesting things about the new show it that it splits off from the movie timeline. Where Sarah Conner does not die of cancer and they skip ahead 8 years. That messes up things even more.

According to the Timeline the TV series doesn't exist in the "Normal" Terminator universe. So you can essentially think of the Sarah Conner Chronicals as an Alternate Universe where very little if anything can change the "Normal" timeline. I like to think of it this way. When they triggered the time jump in thier normal timeline it caused a parrallel to emerge and they don't know it. Hence the reason that all these extra terminators are in the past AND the Resistance is there too.

Also turning on all the machines in the factory was to distract the radar equipment built into the T800 so it had to use normal visuals to follow them. The machines running also produced heat to prevent the T800 from using Thermals.

[Ragabash Moon]

The only thing that I have trouble with for 4th edition is Terminator SKIN. I mean, how do you now make it so they can lose skin yet not really take any damage? :P

DR with No Obvious Effect? LOL. I had a player do that once, he wanted a "revenant" type character that was like able to withstand massive amounts of damage, but he still looked all screwed up. So, he gave him DR 25 with No Obvious Effect, so we just kept track of how much "DR" he'd lost, and it healed normally for visual purposes (he had regen)