So what do I do now? Contract the council about creating Gauss Canon equivalents for arranger? Contact the council about balancing arranger bullets like Gauss rifle bullets? Make up things and say how much I think they would cost? I need to know, quick! I need more guns to continue my transformation to mech warrior.
Hmm. We have Haebi flesh and brain, so there's no reason for this to be expensive. 1t, plus an extra 2t initially for the forcefield cladding, because forcefields are expensive. Note that this makes the barrel explosive, and the gun will explode if dropped in its acid.
Remember that tokens are not only a measure of resources needed to build something. They're also a measure of trust. Do you really want to give someone the ability to melt an Avatar of War for 3 tokens? And to make holes in almost anything for one token? Without suffering the results of a nuclear explosion?
If you feel like you need to justify the cost, say it's because the ammo canister is also armoured.
Irrelevant: I really liked your pun.
As to the arrranger bullets, that's magic, and I don't know how magic works or if there's supposed to be limitations. Ask PW if I can just hand you magic bullets and a price.
As to the acid cost, I've thought about it more, and I still think it's fair. For three tokens, one can buy the gun and have enough sticky goop to disable a battlesuit at short range (with a bit of luck). Add another two, for the barrel, and they can have acid to actually finish it off. Yes, it's powerful, but it's powerful for a logical reason and I've always been in favor of that.
While the armoring is a decent idea, I forsee it being abused by people asking for refills. I think it would be better for the ammunition itself to just cost two tokens, if the council decides it's too cheap.
It would make sense to have an electrolaser blaster rifle variant.
About the same price as blaster, shoots electricity rather than laser, doesn't work in vacuum, has a non-lethal mode.
Electroblaster?
That's pretty much what NAV's doing with his Gungnir update--it can be mounted to blasters. Unless you mean literally shooting just lightning, like the Tesla Arc. I'm not sure how you could do that without essentially making a lightning bomb. Not necessarily a bad idea if you're insulated...
While I'm at it, I should also mention one of my first tinker ideas, the single-shot electroblaster bazooka.
Yeah, this would be so powerful you basically can't insulate yourself enough to survive. It's a bomb, really.
Similar to the Gungnir, yes, but as a complete weapon, so that it doesn't need a Handi roll to assemble.
And for both of these weapons, they have a very weak laser component, like the hand laser/red hand, not to deal damage, but to guide the electricity to it's target. Consequently, these are weapons for use in-atmosphere only.
Oh, hmm. HRM.
Okay, so, this seems like something very likely to get nerfed by the council. 3t for a laser rifle with a power equal to a hand laser, and tesla-saber level shocking. Battery powered.
Completely useless against insulated foes, nearly useless out of atmosphere, but very very good when neither of those are problems.
Hey, I appreciate you pointing out potential problems, and I realise it's a problem for the Weevil degenerators, but I don't really know how to fix that problem.
Anyway, with a design like that, could you ballpark the price for me?
How big a tarp do you want? I don't remember you specifying.
I'll assume it's seven feet by four feet, as that would be a comfortable walkway even for our more heavily armored troops. I'll
very loosely say 4t, because you can split it into smaller sections, and weevils are probably expensive. That gets you one 3.5'x2' crawlspace per token.
7c. Can a Pocket Dimension feed directly into a Matter Saver cartridge?
7c.Uh. I'm not sure what you mean, but it sounds extremely dangerous. I invite you to try it yourself, though. You're in M26; you can afford it.
Basically, can I arrange a Pocket Dimension Exit and Matter Saver Cartridge so that stuff that exits is immediately saved?
Ask PW. I don't know how the Matter Saver works.
Ooh I wanna get in on the monoblade market.
I've got two designs.
Number 1 is a halberd.
or more specifically a profesional high flex golf club with a heavy iron club head that contains the field projector.
It uses the immense G-forces generated by the flex of the shaft as the heavy iron weight snaps forward when swung, and the weight of the club head itself, to force the blade to cleave through whatever its swung at.
The second is a curved sword.
Basically this one is gonna be similar to a kilij.
Its got a blade that continues straight for two thirds of its length, the curves back at a 35° angle for the rest.
now behind this is gonna be a curved metal rod with a heavy metal bulb on the end reminiscent of one of those plastic tennis ball throwers.
it operates on the same principle as the weapon above.
I'd prefer you consolidate your posts. And by that I mean I might ignore all posts aside from the first, if multiposting gets common.
Halberd is 3t, +0 dex, +1/2(?) unc. Much easier to use than the sword since you have a very visible weight to hit the target with. Much easier to break, too, and can't do as much damage since it's harder to force the massive metal weight through the target.
I remember watching some videos of a guy just hacking a pig to pieces with a kilij. I dunno if he was just really strong or if the design helped out, but it was impressive all the same. 4t in any case, and has the same flaws/benefits as the halberd. Price increase is because you have to have multiple projectors to get that angle in the blade.
yeah sorry about the segregation, ill try to reign that in.
Hmm... that doesnt seem right. The point of these weapons is to increase the damage dealt since they rely on user strength.
Halberd and Kilij modification
What if we projected the forceblade out of the front of the club heads, but have the two thirds or three quarters of the blades extending outward past them.
That way you just need to swing the club directly in front of your opponent and the weight doesnt get in the way of the cleaving action, but if they do get hit by it they still take some damage.
also is the second field emitter on the kilij really necessary? i thought the shape mimicked that of the anchor material.
okay dokey, at Nik's behest its time for more armor tinkering.
possibly for warplate inclusion, possibly standalone.
Idea #1, Heavy ablative armor.
okay the idea here is we take one of the heavy duty battle plate layers and replace it with hexbug lattice, not a hexbug plate.
Now this here anti-kinetic lattice should still be reasonably thick, not an aerogel nano-lattice, and we are gonna fill it with hexplate or hexsand or whatever we decided to call it.
this should allow for it to easily shrug off attacks from any single weapon type and remove the instant vulnerabilty to certain weapons we suffer when the arnors surface layer is breached.
idea #2, probably gonna need piecewise help on this one.
We have heat eating meta-crystals and stock battleplate layers that are specifically desinged to disperse heat over a wide area.
How effective would it be to line one of the lower layers of this material with a number of small cryotic crystals?
Alternatively, we have nigh unbreakable hexbug armor that melts faster than an australian icecream,
how effective would it be to stud it with cryotic crystals and place a metal sheet over the top of it that has high thermal resistance?
alternatively do we have any heatproof impact gel?
Let me clarify--these weapons would do more damage than the regular forceblade, when wielded by normal humans, or wielded against very tough enemies. Remember that guy who attacked Renen? He would have done more damage if he had a force halberd, because the heavy weight would have added more energy to the blow. However, if
Renen had a force halberd, he would have had more difficulty doing what he did, because the halberd's projector wouldn't slide neatly through Iveson's head. Renen doesn't need the heft, so it's only a disadvantage to him.
True monoblades have a higher cap to their damage, because they don't need to make much room for themselves. Your weapons have a lower cap, but are easier to do damage with when operating within that cap. Understand?
Moving the weight towards the hilt would help with that issue, though it would also mean the weight doesn't help as much with the cleaving action. I'm pretty sure it would also make the kilij into a regular scimitar, since the entire point is to have weight at the tip.
((Please bullet your questions. It makes it easier for me to answer them.)
As the kilij's emitter, I misunderstood what you wanted to do. It could work if the forcefield projector follows behind the entire length of the blade, but you're not reducing total mass spent in projectors, which is the issue.
But eh. I'll let you have the kilij for 3t, because I'm supposed to let people have fun, and because I haven't exactly made it easy for other people to learn how FFs work.
Heavy ablative armor:
I think this might be something PW is supposed to answer? It's material science, at least. Eh.
Making hexbug into a lattice will
significantly reduce its kinetic resistance. It'll be heavier for the same degree of resistance, even before accounting for the hexsand. The hexsand will help with energy weapons, but will lose a significant degree of energy resistance because it is spread out.
I think the final result would be very resistant to kinetic small arms, with lasers and such relatively easily melting around the hexsand strands. So, better than warplate against kinetics, but worse against energy weapons (but much thinner, if not lighter). This is because hexbug is very easily melted, whereas the metal in BS plate--aside from the reflective fibers--is more resistant to heat.
That being said, we're very much getting into how
I think things work, which is not necessarily how things
really work. Maybe hexbug is actually more heat resistant by cost than base BS plate metal, and the fiber/lattice system is more effective than I give it credit for. *shrug*.
Cryotic Crystal Carbon Rod armorExcessively effective, but very very expensive. IIRC, those rods were expensive, and had a relatively short range, so you'd need to line the armor with them all over the place. Furthermore, the rods would make things necessarily very bulky, which would prevent you from using this strategy near the joints and hands.
Still, your main body would basically have true immunity to any sort of heat based weapon, which is half of them. You'd also be able to tank a nuke pretty well, better than even FFs.
Get a price on one of those rods, and I'll give you a price for a full layer of armor.
Why not me too?
Let's finalize Chem Thrower extra chems.
1. Doomsday, 10 uses canister.
2. Haebi acid, 10 uses canister. Perhaps separate one time purchase of 1 token forcefield tubing to prevent it melting the weapon?
1.I don't remember exactly how effective Doomsday is, and I don't feel like searching. I think it was like a megavirus or something?
2.Hmm. We have Haebi flesh and brain, so there's no reason for this to be expensive. 1t, plus an extra 2t initially for the forcefield cladding, because forcefields are expensive. Note that this makes the barrel explosive, and the gun will explode if dropped in its acid.
Doomsday is liquid that liquefies organic matter on contact. It is listed on armory, you lazy bastard, but it was never used. Anyway, quote from Limbo:
Noticing business set up by Eddie Ulrich establishes competing business line: Meditation. Less you move, less our precious and limited resources you are burning. More you train your mind, better you can resist immaterial alien reproductive organs being forcefully inserted into your brain.
While I meditate I think about expanding ammo variety for Universal Chem Thrower.
- Doomsday. Is this gaseous or liquid substance? If fitted for standard thrower canister would it still be 1 token per canister?
- The Ram. Likewise price check. Does this thing need special strength canisters?
- Gauss Rifle seems to have "melter" rounds. "Filled with nasty chemichals, this will ruin the day of everyone not wearing chem-off." Is this viable for chem thrower?
- Likewise "Vit-O-Phage", Armory Master's mystery coctail of horrible death. What type of chemical is used there?
- Haebi acid, should we be able to produce it by now or in near future.
You would basically spray it in a sort of fluid or mist but would turn to gas fairly quickly. Depends on the volume of the canister
It would need a special coating, but thats it. Again, volume of the canister.
Eh, it would basically be the same thing as ram.
I forget.
Yes. Please speak to the nearest man with a haebi arm for an unlimited supply.
If he asks you to jerk his arm off, he may be unreliable.
How about using chem-off to protect against acid instead of forcefields?
Doomsday:
One token. The current armory entry has 2.6 gallons to the token, which might be far more or far less than the UCT's 10 units per canister. Balance wise, I don't see how this is any more powerful than namite or haebi acid anyway. Even Mk.Is act as perfect armor.
Chem-Off:
Nyyeeh. I'm not entirely certain chem-off's good enough for haebi acid. If it is, 1t, and no explosions. The council's gonna up that for sure, though.
@syvarris Yeah, I think going for the "costs" price is the best approach here. The Council is out there for balancing anyway, and Piecewise's main function in pricing was to provide the base cost price (which could be further tweaked a little, but not too much). "God help us, it's a cheap and distressingly effective weapon" was said for a reason, after all.
I assume that my questions were also included in the pm, so I will wait for its results as well. Mostly because it'd give both you and me the OOC GenKnow basis for working with the designs to come.
Anyway, then I'll assume Sharksuit 1.5 and Milno-plate brain-casing (right, interference with braincase modifications, as usual) are finalised, and ask the Council on the matter of Emergency Wireline price (free or not free) and MCP 1.1 chassis upgrade price (whether or not those other things qualify as free).
In loving memory of Simulacrus Ferratum-Inanis. Sleep peacefully, my dear Queen of VR addicts.
- Brisant-compatibility
Take Hand Cannon ammo types. Take Arranger ammo types. Take gauss rifle special ammo types (G-shells mostly - whatever are left in the stocks, but also Organgrinders and other appropriate stuff). Take all the assorted grenades in the armory that aren't Brisant-compatible.
Make them Brisant-compatible.
(For reference, Brisant's calibre is 40mm 50mm, just checked.) - Brisant 1.5 & variants
First, let's revamp the Brisant slightly with the modern tech advances. I am aiming at bringing the price down to 2 tokens or, if impossible, slightly upgrading the capabilities without increasing the cost. So: advanced generators (yeah, we do have them) for cheaper energy supply; hexplate (hexsand?) barrel coating for decreased barrel/coil wear from heat and friction (and possibly better precision); cheaper wiring/capacitors; anything else you, Tinker assistance or my character can think of but I cannot (by all means, roll Intelligence, if you wish).
Second, firing approaches: Let's settle this question once and for all. Make two Brisant variants available: One with a bipod and slightly longer barrel (for greater precision; I believe this is how the original Brisant was meant to be), one more "cut down"/"carbine" variant that has a bit less precision, but can be more easily fired on the move/from the hip/etc. Both are intended to have identical price of 2-tokens (if the first paragraph succeeded).
(Per discussion.)
Oh, and let's throw in the timer/explosion delay function into the gun/grenade controls. The grenades already have enough the electronics, the matter is about adding a few more buttons and several lines of code. - Antimatter dawn
What's with trapping antimatter? I assume ER tech knows how to do that, and can do so cheaply (well, far more cheaply than us)?
(Consider utilizing the super-conductive materials we have discovered, for example, or stuff like that. Or wait, just forcefields should work too, though not sure how cheap that would be, compared to other approaches.)
IF it can be used (and I don't see reasons why it cannot, given the advanced ER state), let's consider its use for:
Propulsion (by tiny microblasts)
Large-scale explosives (cheaper, bigger and badder "nukes")
Small-scale explosives (extra-powerful grenades and explosive ammo) - Grenade fun
Let's tinker some new Brisant grenades, shall we?..
(Note that, by tradition, grenades are sold in 3-packs, so if relevant, please consider the split-token effective price this convention enables - i.e. 1/3, 2/3, 4/3 etc.)
- Crystalline Frag grenade, designed to detonate and spray everything with crystal-seeds in the radius. Note that apparently it can already push out the crystal-seeds somehow, or "explode" into fragments on occasion, so this might be as easy as slightly modifying the magazine of the weapon.
(Aiming for default 1-token 3-pack.) - EMP grenade 2.0 - Upgraded with the modern tech advances, including the blueshard power supply (which should cut the cost drastically).
(Aiming for somewhere between 1-token grenade and default 1-token 3-pack) - PSL AP Frag grenade, since you mentioned it yourself.
(No idea about the price.) - Antimatter grenades - (if the tech is available, per above point) in two variants: "Hey, Not Too Rough" 0,1 mcg payload; "Ultra-violence" 11 mcg payload. Probably contained in other ways than magnetic chamber, because of the gauss propulsion of Brisant - unless it can be circumvented somehow (I don't know, would Faraday Cage even work here? Maybe a specialised variant?..).
(No idea about the price, but please do refer to its production cost, not its "balanced price". We have the Council for that. First and foremost I want to know if it is even economically viable.) - Spray bomb B-type - take Doomsday/Organgrinder/Vit-O-Phage, put under (some) pressure, rig the container with a little explosives for better spread. Bonus points if using the force fields is economical here.
(Aiming for default 1-token 3-pack or 2-token 3-pack) - Spray bomb N-type - same as above, but put the Ram inside instead. N for Necrochemistry, of course.
- Spray bomb P-type - same as above, but put the Haebi acid inside instead. Will likely require forcefields, so greater price, but also greater destruction.
- Gas bombs - same general design as above, but adapt for gaseous substances instead. For a test variant, let's go with paralysis gas.
(Aoshima, great thanks for all the chemicals links!)
1.Done. Unless the council complains.
2.I don't like handing out arbitrary upgrades like "better generators" unless we have a reason for the generators to be better. So the Brisant is stuck at 3 tokens unless you can name some non-arbitrary tech which would cut costs.
2.1.You can make a more accurate bipod variant, but it costs an extra token if you want any meaningful change. Cut-down carbine version (for 3t) is fine, though it'll have reduced power of course.
2.2.Timer/Explosion delay controls being added to the gun is fine.
3.FFs should trap antimatter fine. Should be pretty cheap, since small amounts of trapped antimatter are still extremely useful. All your suggested uses are fine, but I want you to go talk with PW before you start actually utilizing AM.
4.1.I like the idea, but I don't know how those crystals work exactly, so talk to PW.
4.2.2t for 3-pack.
4.3.1t for 6-pack. I checked my old tests with actual crystal frags, and the tradeoff you get compared to actual frags is that, while the shards maintain exceptional lethality out to a good distance, there aren't many individual shards which form; You could stand ten feet away and be missed entirely, or stand a hundred feet away and have one penetrate your helmet.
4.4.See 3. FFs should be fine containment, since the tiny amount of antimatter you need to contain means you don't need a lot of projecting mass.
4.5.1t for three. You know that Maurice's name will be on these in-universe, right?
4.6.1t for three. Behaves similarly to ClF
3 grenades.
4.7.Hmm. I'm unsure how haebi acid compares to Ram. Go ask PW.
4.8.Paralysis gas? 1t for four. More expensive than those canisters because these grenades are fairly complex. Also, Doomsday apparently prefers to be a gas, so you already have a gas grenade type.
As for forcefield explosives - the problem with them is that regular explosives are simply more efficient/economical (the idea was brought early on). It's when the "containment" part gets added to the equation that they begin to rival mere conventional explosives.
Actually, this isn't quite true, because PW contradicted himself to some degree. The strongest FF we can make has a yield of ~.7 kilotons per pound. Standard nuclear bombs cost 7t for a kiloton, and are quite heavy and bulky. IIRC, of course, but I checked this stuff fairly recently. I was gonna make use of this excessive yield with micro FF bullets, but I don't even know if I
can tinker anymore.
Hey, Syv, assuming you get the answer you're waiting for from piecewise, could you give me an estimate about what you think a good price for battlesuit sized arranger, battlesuit sized light shield and battlesuit sized light sphere projector? I'm especially interested in those last two. I think they could have very interesting uses that fit with my playstyle.
I got the answer I was waiting for, and that answer is the poke thread. I can't give you a price for a BS-sized arranger or light projector.
@Aoshi: You can try lining the barrel with Chem-Off. It won't explode, and might be cheaper.
We should give all our deathtubes a standardized rail system as part of the armory cleanup.
More stuff ready for Council!
Take the Heavy Exoskeleton and give it heavy armour. It has one layer of hex-composite over the torso and helmet to protect from heavy weapons, and one layer of battlesuit plate over the entire body to protect from small arms. The closest a human can get to a walking tank and still fit comfortably through doors. As with most heavy armours, the joints are rather vulnerable.
Recommended price: 12 tokens (ideal) to 14 tokens (extreme).
When you shoot a laser, it turns the air to plasma. This plasma conducts electricity. So when you shoot a laser through electricity, it turns into a lightning gun.
This is a kit that consists of a generator and second trigger that mount underbarrel, and a spark gap that mounts in front of the barrel. There's a dial on the side that controls power. At full power it delivers the same shock as a Tesla Saber, but requires a full turn to recharge.
This kit can be mounted on any laser weapon. syvarris thinks it should take a handi roll to attach, I disagree.
Effect:
In atmosphere: Your laser now shoots lightning. It fries any uninsulated electronics you shoot, and it fries any uninsulated people you shoot. Really good against people in vehicles or other ungrounded metal boxes, or in water. Might have a chance to arc to multiple people or electrocute them with a near miss. Can also be used as a taser.
In vaccuum: You have a taser bayonet.
In water: You die.
Recommended price: 3 tokens.
Other finished designs, just keeping them in one post.
An upgraded exoskeleton that's slightly bulkier and about twice as strong, the exact same strength as a synthflesh body in fact. It lets you wield even heavier weapons and use even more brute force. It doesn't have any real armour though.
Recommended price: 7-8 tokens.
A stylish hooded trenchcoat covered in black scales. The coat is made from the same reactive carbon nanofiber weave as a Civic Defender's Longcoat and the scales are made from laser-resistant ceramic hexsand. It will protect you from energy weapons up to a laser rifle, and it will protect you from kinetic weapons up to a gauss rifle but it won't last many hits against those. It has a hood to protect your head.
This is a flexible ultralight armour intended mainly for layering over other armours without increasing encumbrance. You can have regeneration and slightly better defense for the same price with a Sharksuit.
Recommended price: 3 tokens
EDIT:
Brain Preservation Suit Upgrade
I was looking through the armory and found this, designed by the Armory Master:
Brain Box.
Description: A rather large machine designed to hold a severed head and keep it preserved and ready for reanimation. Requires head to be hooked up to feed of chemicals and submerged in biogel. Machine is very heavy and large, technically portable but also fairly fragile.
Now we have no idea how big is "rather large", and we have no idea how much it costs.
I want to try miniaturizing it using our modern ARM technology, and building it into a suit. Not as a full suit, but as a replacement helmet/backpack thing to add to MK/MCP suits.
Effect: You don't lose stat points on tempdeath, at least not from regular tempdeath. Things like brain melting soundwaves will still cause stat loss.
Your brain won't go bad and become permadead after a few hours.
I would not be opposed to a standardized rail system.
The brain preservation thing... What do you mean by building it into a suit? Does it operate like the brain box, and a medic wears it around until it's needed? If so, 2t if it works on full heads, 1t if it works on just brains (and requires a med roll to seperate the brain). The patient might still lose statpoints if the medic takes awhile to get the head into the device.
If you mean that it's something which works on the wearer... I'm not sure how that would function. Could you explain it in more detail?
Would it be possible to make something like the CASIE implant from Deus Ex:HR? It uses pheromones or some other handwavey thing to help influence people. Say, two versions, one for squishy people, that uses their body to slowly replenish its "charges" and another for robutts that can only be refilled on ship. Something to help us that may or may not of dumped CHA to -2 be gooder with talkings at people. Say it has 2 or 3 charges before it must be refilled
Handwavey things can't be answered by me. Ask PW.
Yeah, you could say it was based off of the distracting ball thing.
...
I'm gonna make it formal so I get money if anyone buys it.
Sex Appeal Enhancer
Based off of the distraction ball thing, this piece of equipment (which may or may not be a bunch of really small baubles superglued to the user's genitals) raises the user's sex appeal to the point where it forces an attacker to roll willpower vs the user's charisma to actually attack him. This only applies to those who actually notice the device, of course.
Anyone wanna help me make this feasible?
And then see what happens when a person with -2 cha wears it?
Okay... The bauble says nothing about making people think better of anything, let alone the holder. In fact, the bauble's description says it might make people try to obtain the bauble for themselves. When obtaining an object, people tend to
seperate that object from its previous owner.
Are you
sure you want to superglue this thing to your genitals?
+1 to testicle baubles.
...
I'm not really sure how force fields work in ER, to be honest, and there's not much that I can find on the wiki about them. How much would forcefield variants of the Monosaws cost, and technologically, what would that entail?
Yeeeaah, I really should improve that materials page sometime. I've been keeping it up as a tab since its creation, as a way to constantly remind myself that I should add to it, but I am exceptionally good at procrastination. >.>
FF Radial Monosaw costs 3t, because while it needs less projector than the FF monosword, it has a strong motor. Has lesser stat requirements too, for the same reason unholy's FF weapons are getting stat cuts. It's essentially a disk which projects an invisible monoatomic circular saw around it, and is rotated rapidly by a motor.
FF chainsword is... eh, 5t, again assuming similar length to other swords. It's essentially identical to a regular chainsword except with invisible teeth. Shouldn't need any stat requirements either ('cept maybe strength), because you can't even see the teeth when using a chainsaw.
Reposting this since it's been quite a while since I've been trying to make this happen. I want a price and an answer about the modular design. Edit: And I also want to know whether the new, improved version of exoskeletons is being installed in MkIIIs.
How expensive would it be to make the Jump Pack capable of flight instead of simple jumps? We discussed part of this via IRC, about the potential of using replaceable blueradite cells or one of those miniature fusion reactors to supply the very large amounts of energy necessary for it.
Really, it depends on how far and how fast you want to fly.
About the same flight capabilities as a MkIII.
Does it need to be able to maintain continous flight to the same degree or would a few minutes at a time work?
How many minutes for the version that flies "a few minutes at a time"? Something like five or fifteen?
And what would be the price difference between that and continuous flight? I'd like to make the power input flexible for the case people want to add more batteries, generators or alien power sources.
Well, the thing of it is that flying around drains a lot of power. We'd have to have capacitors in there to allow it to store up power first. For continuous flight, you'd need a lot more capacitors and an even more powerful power source. For flights of specific times, we can make due with smaller power sources and more limited capacitors, so long as you're ok with a refractory period between flights. This means the pack will be smaller and cheaper. How much smaller and cheaper depends on the amount of time.
In order to reach continuous flight, we'd need to have a pack able to fly for 50~minute bursts. Anything under that and you'll not be able to fly continuously, but your costs and size will be reduced fairly significantly.
How many tokens for the version that flies continuously (50), one that flies for (25) and another that flies for (10)?
Can the 10 minute pack be made as a sort of basic mother module and the more expensive versions made as addons/expansions to be purchased later as necessary to upgrade the flight capabilities?
Blue radite or generator? Because blue rad is cheaper for buying but you'd need to buy replacement batteries when you use the first one up.
Reposting, just in case.
Generator for standard, but capable of accepting blue radite cells: generator for doing the usual, blue rad if people want to buy it for extra flight time during emergencies or speed boosts.
Lets put off the flight pack for the moment. But for the record, you could probably get reasonable flight periods of a few minutes with a small generator.
"We discussed part of this via IRC" :\
6t for a jump pack capable of
simple flight for ten minutes, recharge period of twenty minutes. 1t for a blushard battery capable of two hours of flight. Four extra tokens gets you continual flight.
It's capable of Mk.III level manuverability, but uses double power while doing so. The continual variant gives you ten minutes of acrobatic flight, with a twenty minute recharge during which you can still fly normally. It can still use blurad batts if that's insufficient.
Note that it does not include any extra features like an exoskeleton, suit, or armor. It's just flight. It
probably also doesn't work when you're out of atmosphere and not near anything, but the jump pack is essentially magic so I don't know.
As to MkIII exos, the "improved" exoskeleton design was incorporated to them back when the armory shift happened. It's the IC excuse for the MkIII getting a discount.
They don't get the heavy exoskeleton design that the one guy just made, though. MkIIIs only grant standard exoskeleton strength, and not synthflesh level strength.