Questions on Hyperspace and Computer software

[Heretic]

Question 1. What does it mean when the Core rulebook says "A hyperspace drive consumes no extra fuel"? Does it mean I don't have to calculate fuel for jump, or is there a hidden cost that I didn't see that I could negate?

Question 2. I'm confused on the Intellect Program. It say that they are improved Agent programs that use Expert Skills, but when combined with an expert skill it lowers the rating. For example, an intellect/1 and a Expert Medic/3 gives you an effective Expert Medic/2. They try to explain it on the opposite sidebar with the Kathya example, but it still confuses me. It seems to subtract the intellect and Expert to get a rating, but then it wouldn't make sense to have a higher rating intellect program.

Thank you for the time.

 

[hdan]

1) No jump fuel, just power plant fuel for the time the ship is running. The fact that you need a power plant large enough to power the hyperspace drive helps deal with the cost of fuel.

2) Expert programs always work at one level lower than they are rated. I personally believe that this is because there's no Expert/0 program, so Expert(Skill)/1 gives you Skill/0, etc.

BTW - The Kathya example shows that her Computer/3 can only run up to Rating 3, so she can't use the Expert/3, and must only run it as Expert/2. In my games, I usually add the Intelligent Interface program as a specialization on "personal computer" type computers.

The Intellect program allows the computer to use the Expert program itself. Imagine the classic "Talking Computer" from scifi. You ask the computer to analyze something, and its intellect program consults the Expert program to do the work. If you used the Expert program yourself, you would not need the Intellect program.

An Intellect/1 program can consult one Expert program. An Intellect/2 program could consult two Expert programs (of whatever level). All provided your computer has the operating capacity of course.

The skill rating for the "Expert" is controlled completely by the quality of Expert program you are running. The number of Expert programs the computer can operate automatically is controlled by the quality of the Intellect program.

Agent is a subset of this, and ONLY has Computer/X, where X is the level of the Agent program, but it can perform Computer skill related tasks without either a human or Intellect supervising it.

Let's say you're a Computer/2 character trying to hack some encryption. Your computer has Intellect, Agent/2 and Expert(Computer)/3 installed on it.

If you set the Agent to work on it, it will roll with a +2 bonus.
If you try to hack the data yourself, you'll get +2 for your skill
If you have the Intellect try to hack it with Expert/3, it will also get +2
If you use the Expert program to help you, you'll get +1 because it's higher rating than you are. (Note that you'll need to run an Intelligent Interface to do this, but they are cheap.)

If instead you had Expert/2, then you'd get no benefit from using it because it doesn't know as much as you do. You could have the Intellect run it to assist you though. The Agent is probably not smart enough to assist you, but that would be the Ref's call.