High tech devices in SDC settings

[Mack]

It's a game balance issue.

If you want an "in-game" explanation, then the dimensional portal used to transport the squad has a unique side-effect.

[The Beast]

Back in '93 my group did a RT, HU, and Rifts crossover for a few weeks. During the course of it my mutant picked up some CVR-3 armor to wear around. We then went back to our home realms, but we focused on playing Rifts and RT more than HU. About a month after this, I decided to write that PC onto a new sheet and during the course of this I just transfered what was on the old sheet to the new sheet, but didn't really fill in details on the weapons and armor.

Anyway about two months go by and we pick up our HU game again. A few sessions go by, during which my mutant manages to never gets hit during combat. Finally someone gets a Nat 20 on him with a really powerful weapon, and at first I say it's coming off my SDC/HP. The GM pauses a second and asks if I had any armor. I glance over the sheet real quick and see that I have CVR-3 body armor, but there's no SDC amount listed. So the other player grabs his book and starts looking for itm and can't find it. So then we all get our HU books and start looking for it, when the GM realizes why we an't find it.

He points out it's MDC armor, and after a moment of silence while everyone thought of what to do, he asks if I had any MD weapons. I did not, the only weapons the mutant used (aside from his powers) were his katanas (katani?). So after a moment, we all decide to keep it MDC, but magic would still damage it. Not long afterwards we made another trip to Rifts Earth so I could turn the armor back in. We had a good laugh out of it though.

Anyway, if that happened today, I'm pretty sure we'd just follow the rules in the Megaversal Builder book on this sort of situation.

[Talon Starblade]

My table top GM tried an odd ball game world under this idea… the campaign was a disaster. MDC weapons and armor remained fully functional, but magic had problems… the Ley lines were deliberately submerged and suppressed to keep the Super natural baddies from being too powerful, and mages from Rifts Earth still retained their mega magic potency till their PPE storage dropped to the SDC equivalent (if you had 120 PPE from Rifts, then you had 12000 from this world). After a near “Total Party Kill,” things only got worse. Once the enemies knew we had such powerful weapons, they started using our own weapons against us. After initiating a calamity that destroyed everything with 5 miles (something like 4-million sentients), we became the most hunted and hated beings in that planet. In the end, only myself and an NPC were left alive, and we disappeared into another race’s territory. End campaign.

Anyway, back on subject… I’ve read a couple of times in Palladuim books and I think forum discussions on this…

One of the first (I think in Palladium 2nd Ed) discussed how to allow people and equipment from Hi-tech worlds In to Palladia. Simply put, High tech gear either didn’t work, or the universe converted them to SDC equivalent function. The reason for this, according to that piece of print, was that the Gods (good AND evil) feared that such powerful mortal equipment could destabilize and destroy the world they watched over, and for some, they themselves (against such weapons, even they are not invulnerable).

A second reasoning on function that I’ve heard of is the dimensional polarity theory. Think of it as every dimension carries a kind of charge, like the North and South of magnet, and positive and negative for electrical polarity (Matter and Anti-matter can be considered too, but that interaction is far more destructive). While this polarity field doesn’t appear to effect living beings (Splicers weaponry and armor would be interesting to see in Palladia), physical objects interact with this in varying degrees: physical firearms work normally, but anything electrically based looses functionality depending on the dimension’s polarity rating. Ratings typically are positive, negative, and neutral. Some GM’s may also use variants on how closely related the field polarity is, alloing functionality, but at less capable output.

A third option I’ve found, deals with “belief.” “Seeing is believing, believing is see.” Reality itself can be distorted just by the beliefs of the people around you. After all, magic for a mage can only function so long as the mage has absolute belief that his power over reality can function. Because of this, reality itself can alter because of the beliefs of the people. If each person is only the equivalent of a AA battery (1.5 volts) then 6-billion can power surprising things. The same can be said about reality. If the “collective consensual belief” is that such outrageous possibilities of damage dealing and taking are not possible, then it becomes possible that the reality of a world will reflect this, in effect shifting the laws of physics to keep the reality intact. In theory, as more and more people believe in the possibility of the tech working as it’s supposed to, then reality might begin to shift, and the weapons and armor start functioning as they used to.

Truthfully, it’s GM fiat on how you wanna play this. After all, the right high-tech can be indistinguishable from magic. So good luck on things.

Update: Megaversal builder… THAT’S where I say that polarity stuff..

[Lenwen]

This may have been covered in a sourcebook somewhere but here goes.
If a squad of Coalition troops gets rifted to the Palladium world why exactly don't there weapons do an obscene amount of damage i.e. SAMAS rail gun 1d4x100 SDC per shot or 1d4x1000 per burst? I mean I understand Magic is strong on earth and beefs up supernatural stuff. But can the presence or absence of magic affect technology? About the only way possible is if magic/ leyline energy can fundamentally alter the laws of physics and all of the forces within....this is a bit of a stretch to me.
What do you all think?

In my Megaverse, Tech as we know it does not work going from Rifts Dimension to Palladium dimension ..

Power matrix wise .. I've slightly altered them ..

[Gamer]

Update: Megaversal builder… THAT’S where I say that polarity stuff..

Yeah read that dimension sourcebook a couple days ago in fact, the "neutral dimensional energy matrix", only technology developed in that particular dimension, in this case Palladium can function..

[Mallak's Place]

This may have been covered in a sourcebook somewhere but here goes.
If a squad of Coalition troops gets rifted to the Palladium world why exactly don't there weapons do an obscene amount of damage i.e. SAMAS rail gun 1d4x100 SDC per shot or 1d4x1000 per burst? I mean I understand Magic is strong on earth and beefs up supernatural stuff. But can the presence or absence of magic affect technology? About the only way possible is if magic/ leyline energy can fundamentally alter the laws of physics and all of the forces within....this is a bit of a stretch to me.
What do you all think?

Sure thay would still do M.D. but you'll have to remember somethings
* Ammo runs out
* Coalition Soldiers are used to the Idea of having to fire on something more then once
* SAMAS Piolots are used to fireing bursts
* One shot one kill, doesn't matter if the shot is the Goblin bandit or the Dragon, and Goblin Bandits are way more common.

Now take these ideas and Run with them. Coalition Squad of 5 men and a SAMAS gets rifted into palladium, soon after thay are attacked by a large Group of 30 Orc bandits charging in swords drawn. what's going to happen?

The SAMAS is going to open up full burst, Every CS Soldier is going to Open Fire with their main weapons, Some might throw a Grenade or two. They end up obliterating the Orcs, but they probably ended up firing off 10-25% of their Ammo

[keir451]

This may have been covered in a sourcebook somewhere but here goes.
If a squad of Coalition troops gets rifted to the Palladium world why exactly don't there weapons do an obscene amount of damage i.e. SAMAS rail gun 1d4x100 SDC per shot or 1d4x1000 per burst? I mean I understand Magic is strong on earth and beefs up supernatural stuff. But can the presence or absence of magic affect technology? About the only way possible is if magic/ leyline energy can fundamentally alter the laws of physics and all of the forces within....this is a bit of a stretch to me.
What do you all think?

Sure thay would still do M.D. but you'll have to remember somethings
* Ammo runs out
* Coalition Soldiers are used to the Idea of having to fire on something more then once
* SAMAS Piolots are used to fireing bursts
* One shot one kill, doesn't matter if the shot is the Goblin bandit or the Dragon, and Goblin Bandits are way more common.

Now take these ideas and Run with them. Coalition Squad of 5 men and a SAMAS gets rifted into palladium, soon after thay are attacked by a large Group of 30 Orc bandits charging in swords drawn. what's going to happen?

The SAMAS is going to open up full burst, Every CS Soldier is going to Open Fire with their main weapons, Some might throw a Grenade or two. They end up obliterating the Orcs, but they probably ended up firing off 10-25% of their Ammo

AH! But what if one of the soldiers is CS technical offecer w/the electricity generation skill? Couldn't he rig up a small hydro electric generator out of a nail, some copper wiring and a couple of magnets and use that to recharge the weapons?

[azazel1024]

Its covered in megaverse builder and others, anything MDC or MD becomes SDC.

Think of it as the rules of physics being different in different universes. Rifts Earth, the coming of the rifts so altertered the physics of the entire universe the MD became possible.

For physical objects I just consider them having or doing double their stated damage in SDC since they are supposed to be really high tech and powerful.

So the Samas would do 2d4 or 2d4x10 damage from its railgun.
-Matt

[Gamer]

Its covered in megaverse builder and others, anything MDC or MD becomes SDC.

Think of it as the rules of physics being different in different universes. Rifts Earth, the coming of the rifts so altertered the physics of the entire universe the MD became possible.

For physical objects I just consider them having or doing double their stated damage in SDC since they are supposed to be really high tech and powerful.

So the Samas would do 2d4 or 2d4x10 damage from its railgun.
-Matt

Plato says in his description of Palladium in the Megaversal builder book that the "neutral dimensional energy matrix" makes any device not developed in the Palladium dimension not even function, and is suspecteded in slowing or preventing higher technological development, although an editor note says K.S. uses the mdc to sdc in his games.

[Elthbert]

I allow high tech to be MDC in SDC worlds, however, it depends on the world and the laws of nature in it. For example I am running a D&D game right now, which is being invaded by a Splugorth, but in this world there is no magnetism, electricity yes, but magnatism no, Iron, nickle, Cobalt are just not magnetic, there is no electromagnetic force, ther is however electricity in the form of lightning etc. THis change means that there is no high tech weaponry at all. No electromagnetism means no lazers, plasma weapons, rail guns, switches etc. I don't think I am technically allowed to explain how I have delt twiththe MD armour issue. The Splugorth in question is facinated by this other dimension where the laws of reality are so differant and interspecies breeding is possible, but a full fledged invasion has been put aside while his scientist figure out why their technology doesn't work.

It has been great fun as my players ( though they have played Rifts, a lot) have still not figured out that it is the Splugorth. You know if you just give a physical discription of a Kydian and give him a Fairy weapon instead of a pasification staff, you would be amazed who doesn't put 2 and 2 together. I am waiting to see the looks on there faces when they figure it out.

[azazel1024]

Its covered in megaverse builder and others, anything MDC or MD becomes SDC.

Think of it as the rules of physics being different in different universes. Rifts Earth, the coming of the rifts so altertered the physics of the entire universe the MD became possible.

For physical objects I just consider them having or doing double their stated damage in SDC since they are supposed to be really high tech and powerful.

So the Samas would do 2d4 or 2d4x10 damage from its railgun.
-Matt

Go read the Wikipedia entry on railguns, sounds like MD to me....

Your going to get me on my glitterboy high horse again. For the recoil to be realistic something like a Samas simply can't fire a rail gun that would be much more damaging then about a 20mm canon, which is still a lot, but isn't really going to gut a tank like keeping it at x100 damage would. My take is that megadamage has to do with physical constraints that only exist in a megadamage world. Take that to an SDC world and the physics that allow megadamage don't exist.

The kind of railgun that is being developed for the navy in the real world is on the order of over 100x more powerful then what a boomgun would be able to manage. A man portable, or even PA portable, rail gun wouldn't be much more glorified then a somewhat higher velocity .50 caliber machine gun that doesn't use chemical propellants.
-Matt

[Xar]

Update: Megaversal builder… THAT’S where I say that polarity stuff..

Yeah read that dimension sourcebook a couple days ago in fact, the "neutral dimensional energy matrix", only technology developed in that particular dimension, in this case Palladium can function..

I would play with either this rule in effect, and make the High Tech stuff inert...except what if a Full-Conversion Borg went dimension hopping? "Welcome to the Western Empire! Oh, your giant metal golem seems to be dead."

Sure thay would still do M.D. but you'll have to remember somethings
* Ammo runs out
* Coalition Soldiers are used to the Idea of having to fire on something more then once
* SAMAS Piolots are used to fireing bursts
* One shot one kill, doesn't matter if the shot is the Goblin bandit or the Dragon, and Goblin Bandits are way more common.

Now take these ideas and Run with them. Coalition Squad of 5 men and a SAMAS gets rifted into palladium, soon after thay are attacked by a large Group of 30 Orc bandits charging in swords drawn. what's going to happen?

The SAMAS is going to open up full burst, Every CS Soldier is going to Open Fire with their main weapons, Some might throw a Grenade or two. They end up obliterating the Orcs, but they probably ended up firing off 10-25% of their Ammo

I think I would go with this, but make a gradual shift as the physics of the equipment comes into phase with the new world's physics. So, I'd have a straight 1:100 MD:SD conversion for a period of time, then 1:75, then 1:50 etc until the equipment was on a balanced power level. Also, resources deplete.

AH! But what if one of the soldiers is CS technical offecer w/the electricity generation skill? Couldn't he rig up a small hydro electric generator out of a nail, some copper wiring and a couple of magnets and use that to recharge the weapons?

Sure, and get great rp experience points for it as well. However, there would be significant loss of efficiency due to use of equipment in the the field, poor tool selection, etc. I really wouldn't let the same character be able to build a great recharger from a nail, some copper wiring and a couple of magnets and use that to recharge the weapons on Rifts Earth either. Clever, but futile idea...

[Shadow Wyrm]

MD Tech unfortunatelly dosn't translate to an SDC setting without making drastic changes.

Converting MD to a 1:10 ratio insted of 1:100 helps work it out.

Ruling usefull magic like sub-partical acceleration (generally used for recharging E-clips) is no longer powerfull enough to recharge e-clips, is another helpful tip.

But, in general its a pain to get the setting cross-over right without alot of work.

[Elthbert]

Its covered in megaverse builder and others, anything MDC or MD becomes SDC.

Think of it as the rules of physics being different in different universes. Rifts Earth, the coming of the rifts so altertered the physics of the entire universe the MD became possible.

For physical objects I just consider them having or doing double their stated damage in SDC since they are supposed to be really high tech and powerful.

So the Samas would do 2d4 or 2d4x10 damage from its railgun.
-Matt

Go read the Wikipedia entry on railguns, sounds like MD to me....[/quote

Your going to get me on my glitterboy high horse again. For the recoil to be realistic something like a Samas simply can't fire a rail gun that would be much more damaging then about a 20mm canon, which is still a lot, but isn't really going to gut a tank like keeping it at x100 damage would. My take is that megadamage has to do with physical constraints that only exist in a megadamage world. Take that to an SDC world and the physics that allow megadamage don't exist.

The kind of railgun that is being developed for the navy in the real world is on the order of over 100x more powerful then what a boomgun would be able to manage. A man portable, or even PA portable, rail gun wouldn't be much more glorified then a somewhat higher velocity .50 caliber machine gun that doesn't use chemical propellants.
-Matt

No need to get on any high horse, a C-40R round should be hitting wit about 40,000 ftlbs of energy, which is about 3.5 times what a standard .50 cal bullet hits with.


Here is my reasoning behind that from a previous thread.

A 750 grain .50 cal Browning has about 11050 ft lbs at about 2600 ft per second, In Rifts a .50 cal ramjet round hits for 1d4 MD just like a rail gun round. Now Ramjets only work up to about mach 6 so we can assume that the ramjet round cannot be going faster than that,however, but they work best about mach 3; since that is only about 3300 ft per second I figure we can splitthe differance and say about mach 4.5 a 750 grain bullet would leave the muzzle with about 40000 ft-lbs. I would say that is a good ideaof the energy needed for a 1d4 md projectile, though I assume material makes a lot of differance here, the .50 is an sdc lead bullet the rail gun is not, I assume that no more than that is required.

... Assuming that a CR-40 is shooting at about Mach 8 I would guess a CR -40's ammo is about 235 grains or around the size of a .45 ACP bullet. that means that 2000 rounds of ammo would weigh about 67lbs, however, an ammo drum weighs 190lbs (CWC 114) assuming a full third of this is the actual drum that still puts the ammo at about 470 grains
which means the gun only needs to fire at about 6200 fps ( Mach 5.6) in order to get a full 40,000 ftlbs out of it. If indeed the projectiles are MDC material then it might not even have to fire that fast.
Since the Glitterboys gun is mentioned to propel them at MAch 5 I think this is not an unrealistic speed, but remember you still have plenty of room to play with with the mass of the projectile, it could be 650 grains or so which would make the speed slower to generate the required energy.

C-40R is 92lbs, if it is indeed firing a 470 grain projectile at 6200 ft per second it wouldhave a recoil of about 29 ft lbs and a recoil speed of 4 ft per second.

to give you some comparisons a 30-06 shooting a 180 grain bullet at 2900 feet per second in a 6.5 lb gun has a recoil of about 13 ft-lbs and 11 ft per second.
a 12 gauge shotgun shooting a ounce slug at 1760 ft per second (3 inch shell) has a recoil of about 24ftlbs and a recoil seed 14 ft per second.

Shot per shot it would hit about like a 12 gauge and the recoil itself would be a lot less sharp. (I remember now why I prefer 2 3/4 inch shells for slugs). While a high rate of fire at this kind of recoil would be a problem for a human, I don't se why a robotic suit of powered armour couldn't handle it fine.
A 50 cal M2 machine gun weighs in at about 83 lbs and would have a recoil ( withthe ammo given in the abouve post ) of about 18ftlbs at 3 ft per second. so the C-40R whas about a third agian as much recoil as a M2 machine gun. Even at a really high rate of fire this should be handleable by a suit of PA like the Sam which weighs inat 800 to 900 lbs or something once you include the ammo, the gun itself and the pilot. That is a lot of mass for not that much recoil.

[Gamer]

I would play with either this rule in effect, and make the High Tech stuff inert...except what if a Full-Conversion Borg went dimension hopping? "Welcome to the Western Empire! Oh, your giant metal golem seems to be dead."

I wouldn't care if the GM killed my borg off for something like that.
Once you set a precedence stick with it or else you will screw it all up.
What fun would it be to have players running around with small arms weapons that rivals a modern tanks main cannon, body armor that can shrug off pretty much everything.
The more evil of people would have used such things to get the rune magic secrets and such or just to cause chaos.
Converting to sdc is still massively overpowering for the setting, I wouldn't enjoy it and wouldn't play it.
Like playing god mode in a video game, for many people it's "why bother" *yawn.

[Elthbert]

I would play with either this rule in effect, and make the High Tech stuff inert...except what if a Full-Conversion Borg went dimension hopping? "Welcome to the Western Empire! Oh, your giant metal golem seems to be dead."

I wouldn't care if the GM killed my borg off for something like that.
Once you set a precedence stick with it or else you will screw it all up.
What fun would it be to have players running around with small arms weapons that rivals a modern tanks main cannon, body armor that can shrug off pretty much everything.
The more evil of people would have used such things to get the rune magic secrets and such or just to cause chaos.
Converting to sdc is still massively overpowering for the setting, I wouldn't enjoy it and wouldn't play it.
Like playing god mode in a video game, for many people it's "why bother" *yawn.

I just don't like the fiat nature of MDC tech not working on an SDC world. Give it a reason, or make it inert, but don't simply say well that light beam can blow up a tank on Earth but it can't kill a horse here. The world should make sense, in my game mentioned above technology beyond chemical propelants is out becuuase there is no magntism, no moters, no plasma weapons, nothing works, but there are effects in the low tech group too, no compasses for example.

[azazel1024]

Its covered in megaverse builder and others, anything MDC or MD becomes SDC.

Think of it as the rules of physics being different in different universes. Rifts Earth, the coming of the rifts so altertered the physics of the entire universe the MD became possible.

For physical objects I just consider them having or doing double their stated damage in SDC since they are supposed to be really high tech and powerful.

So the Samas would do 2d4 or 2d4x10 damage from its railgun.
-Matt

Go read the Wikipedia entry on railguns, sounds like MD to me....[/quote

Your going to get me on my glitterboy high horse again. For the recoil to be realistic something like a Samas simply can't fire a rail gun that would be much more damaging then about a 20mm canon, which is still a lot, but isn't really going to gut a tank like keeping it at x100 damage would. My take is that megadamage has to do with physical constraints that only exist in a megadamage world. Take that to an SDC world and the physics that allow megadamage don't exist.

The kind of railgun that is being developed for the navy in the real world is on the order of over 100x more powerful then what a boomgun would be able to manage. A man portable, or even PA portable, rail gun wouldn't be much more glorified then a somewhat higher velocity .50 caliber machine gun that doesn't use chemical propellants.
-Matt

No need to get on any high horse, a C-40R round should be hitting wit about 40,000 ftlbs of energy, which is about 3.5 times what a standard .50 cal bullet hits with.


Here is my reasoning behind that from a previous thread.

A 750 grain .50 cal Browning has about 11050 ft lbs at about 2600 ft per second, In Rifts a .50 cal ramjet round hits for 1d4 MD just like a rail gun round. Now Ramjets only work up to about mach 6 so we can assume that the ramjet round cannot be going faster than that,however, but they work best about mach 3; since that is only about 3300 ft per second I figure we can splitthe differance and say about mach 4.5 a 750 grain bullet would leave the muzzle with about 40000 ft-lbs. I would say that is a good ideaof the energy needed for a 1d4 md projectile, though I assume material makes a lot of differance here, the .50 is an sdc lead bullet the rail gun is not, I assume that no more than that is required.

... Assuming that a CR-40 is shooting at about Mach 8 I would guess a CR -40's ammo is about 235 grains or around the size of a .45 ACP bullet. that means that 2000 rounds of ammo would weigh about 67lbs, however, an ammo drum weighs 190lbs (CWC 114) assuming a full third of this is the actual drum that still puts the ammo at about 470 grains
which means the gun only needs to fire at about 6200 fps ( Mach 5.6) in order to get a full 40,000 ftlbs out of it. If indeed the projectiles are MDC material then it might not even have to fire that fast.
Since the Glitterboys gun is mentioned to propel them at MAch 5 I think this is not an unrealistic speed, but remember you still have plenty of room to play with with the mass of the projectile, it could be 650 grains or so which would make the speed slower to generate the required energy.

C-40R is 92lbs, if it is indeed firing a 470 grain projectile at 6200 ft per second it wouldhave a recoil of about 29 ft lbs and a recoil speed of 4 ft per second.

to give you some comparisons a 30-06 shooting a 180 grain bullet at 2900 feet per second in a 6.5 lb gun has a recoil of about 13 ft-lbs and 11 ft per second.
a 12 gauge shotgun shooting a ounce slug at 1760 ft per second (3 inch shell) has a recoil of about 24ftlbs and a recoil seed 14 ft per second.

Shot per shot it would hit about like a 12 gauge and the recoil itself would be a lot less sharp. (I remember now why I prefer 2 3/4 inch shells for slugs). While a high rate of fire at this kind of recoil would be a problem for a human, I don't se why a robotic suit of powered armour couldn't handle it fine.
A 50 cal M2 machine gun weighs in at about 83 lbs and would have a recoil ( withthe ammo given in the abouve post ) of about 18ftlbs at 3 ft per second. so the C-40R whas about a third agian as much recoil as a M2 machine gun. Even at a really high rate of fire this should be handleable by a suit of PA like the Sam which weighs inat 800 to 900 lbs or something once you include the ammo, the gun itself and the pilot. That is a lot of mass for not that much recoil.

My glitterboy high horse was more relating to the energy in the projectile then actual recoil.

I agree whole heartedly, my point is that just because some giant navy rail gun puts out an amazingly massive amount of damage doesn't mean that a man portable one is anything even remotely like it. Based off what you are saying, and I pretty much agree completely, in an SDC setting something like the C-40R should maybe be doing around 1d4x10 damage per round and 1d4x100 per burst of 40 (based on the 10x damage for 40 rounds). That is still a huge amount of damage, but no where near 1d4x100 per round and 1d4x1000 per burst.

Of course that still doesn't take in to account how armor and impact physics work since a decent MBT is still going to shrug off the impacts without probably even a serious dent (just not enough energy to permenantly deform or breach several inches of steel or composite armor).

My reason for MDC tech not working properly in an SDC setting is that the laws of physics are subtlely different so what can inflict MD in one setting can maybe just inflict fairly heavy SDC damage in an SDC setting.
-Matt

[Elthbert]

Its covered in megaverse builder and others, anything MDC or MD becomes SDC.

Think of it as the rules of physics being different in different universes. Rifts Earth, the coming of the rifts so altertered the physics of the entire universe the MD became possible.

For physical objects I just consider them having or doing double their stated damage in SDC since they are supposed to be really high tech and powerful.

So the Samas would do 2d4 or 2d4x10 damage from its railgun.
-Matt

Go read the Wikipedia entry on railguns, sounds like MD to me....[/quote

Your going to get me on my glitterboy high horse again. For the recoil to be realistic something like a Samas simply can't fire a rail gun that would be much more damaging then about a 20mm canon, which is still a lot, but isn't really going to gut a tank like keeping it at x100 damage would. My take is that megadamage has to do with physical constraints that only exist in a megadamage world. Take that to an SDC world and the physics that allow megadamage don't exist.

The kind of railgun that is being developed for the navy in the real world is on the order of over 100x more powerful then what a boomgun would be able to manage. A man portable, or even PA portable, rail gun wouldn't be much more glorified then a somewhat higher velocity .50 caliber machine gun that doesn't use chemical propellants.
-Matt

No need to get on any high horse, a C-40R round should be hitting wit about 40,000 ftlbs of energy, which is about 3.5 times what a standard .50 cal bullet hits with.


Here is my reasoning behind that from a previous thread.

A 750 grain .50 cal Browning has about 11050 ft lbs at about 2600 ft per second, In Rifts a .50 cal ramjet round hits for 1d4 MD just like a rail gun round. Now Ramjets only work up to about mach 6 so we can assume that the ramjet round cannot be going faster than that,however, but they work best about mach 3; since that is only about 3300 ft per second I figure we can splitthe differance and say about mach 4.5 a 750 grain bullet would leave the muzzle with about 40000 ft-lbs. I would say that is a good ideaof the energy needed for a 1d4 md projectile, though I assume material makes a lot of differance here, the .50 is an sdc lead bullet the rail gun is not, I assume that no more than that is required.

... Assuming that a CR-40 is shooting at about Mach 8 I would guess a CR -40's ammo is about 235 grains or around the size of a .45 ACP bullet. that means that 2000 rounds of ammo would weigh about 67lbs, however, an ammo drum weighs 190lbs (CWC 114) assuming a full third of this is the actual drum that still puts the ammo at about 470 grains
which means the gun only needs to fire at about 6200 fps ( Mach 5.6) in order to get a full 40,000 ftlbs out of it. If indeed the projectiles are MDC material then it might not even have to fire that fast.
Since the Glitterboys gun is mentioned to propel them at MAch 5 I think this is not an unrealistic speed, but remember you still have plenty of room to play with with the mass of the projectile, it could be 650 grains or so which would make the speed slower to generate the required energy.

C-40R is 92lbs, if it is indeed firing a 470 grain projectile at 6200 ft per second it wouldhave a recoil of about 29 ft lbs and a recoil speed of 4 ft per second.

to give you some comparisons a 30-06 shooting a 180 grain bullet at 2900 feet per second in a 6.5 lb gun has a recoil of about 13 ft-lbs and 11 ft per second.
a 12 gauge shotgun shooting a ounce slug at 1760 ft per second (3 inch shell) has a recoil of about 24ftlbs and a recoil seed 14 ft per second.

Shot per shot it would hit about like a 12 gauge and the recoil itself would be a lot less sharp. (I remember now why I prefer 2 3/4 inch shells for slugs). While a high rate of fire at this kind of recoil would be a problem for a human, I don't se why a robotic suit of powered armour couldn't handle it fine.
A 50 cal M2 machine gun weighs in at about 83 lbs and would have a recoil ( withthe ammo given in the abouve post ) of about 18ftlbs at 3 ft per second. so the C-40R whas about a third agian as much recoil as a M2 machine gun. Even at a really high rate of fire this should be handleable by a suit of PA like the Sam which weighs inat 800 to 900 lbs or something once you include the ammo, the gun itself and the pilot. That is a lot of mass for not that much recoil.

My glitterboy high horse was more relating to the energy in the projectile then actual recoil.

I agree whole heartedly, my point is that just because some giant navy rail gun puts out an amazingly massive amount of damage doesn't mean that a man portable one is anything even remotely like it. Based off what you are saying, and I pretty much agree completely, in an SDC setting something like the C-40R should maybe be doing around 1d4x10 damage per round and 1d4x100 per burst of 40 (based on the 10x damage for 40 rounds). That is still a huge amount of damage, but no where near 1d4x100 per round and 1d4x1000 per burst.

Of course that still doesn't take in to account how armor and impact physics work since a decent MBT is still going to shrug off the impacts without probably even a serious dent (just not enough energy to permenantly deform or breach several inches of steel or composite armor).

My reason for MDC tech not working properly in an SDC setting is that the laws of physics are subtlely different so what can inflict MD in one setting can maybe just inflict fairly heavy SDC damage in an SDC setting.
-Matt

Well I agree the whole way MDC works is kind of an issue, with real world material science. However, if the projectile itself is MDC, and say as hard as a dimond 40- 40000 ftlbs projectiles, in an extremly tight rapid burst may indeed chew through MBT armour ( probably wouldn't destroy the tank, but it might chew a hole in her.

[azazel1024]

If it can hole it, it'll probably kill the crew. Even if the rounds aren't pyrophoric (IE after armor incindiary effect) fragments or whole rounds are likely to ricochette around the interior after penetrating. It is likely to wreck the controls, kill the crew and possibly detonate ammunition and/or fuel.
-Matt

[Shadow Wyrm]

A 30mm round has 40,000 ftlbs. of energy, so I would say that they kill the tank.

[azazel1024]

A .50 cal BMG has about 13,000ft-lbs of energy or 17,000j for the metric. The GAU-8 avenger fires 30x173mm rounds that weigh 15oz at 3,250ft/sec, 435/990 for the metric numbers. That comes out to 213,000j of energy or about 160,000ft-lbs for the standard numbers.

That is a hell of a far cry from 40,000ft-lbs.

Heck the 25mm round from the GAU-12 in the Harrier hits with about 80,000ft-lbs of energy (107kj).

40,000ft-lbs of energy is more about what a 20mm round from an M61 manages and that certainly will not penetrate heavy armor.

The 30mm rounds from the GAU-8 also tend to penetration the top armor of a tank, which is much more thinly armored then anything else. They don't have anything like the penetration power to punch through the glacis or bow armor of a tank, and likely not even the rear armor of a modern MBT.
-Matt

[azazel1024]

Anyway this is kind of all off topic. The rules listed either state that MDC tech plain won't work or it does SDC. House rule as you see fit.
-Matt

[Kalidor]

Seems to me, and I'm a bit rusty on the subject after a good 15 year hiatus... but it seems to me I recall some time travel rules in one of the TMNT book that explained the time stream as a physical 'flow' of temporal energy. The further back in the time line you got, the more forceful the flow, the further forward you got, the weaker the pressure.

So if you picture a water hose, coiled up like a telephone wire and then looped and coiled on itself, you have a basic picture of the timeline. It would be a lot like a phone cord shaped like a spring.

Anyway, if you went back in time or took things with you back in time, living creatures would start to revert to more primitive creatures, become stupider and less advanced, while technology would be pushed on so hard by the unseen temporal forces they would become weak, brittle and may even fall apart depending on how far back you went.

To me, this has always been the default explanation as to why MDC tech can't exist in the past, at least not for more than a few hours.

The opposite is true though -- stuff from the past would be very sturdy in the future and like brand new, and living beings would 'evolve' into more advanced stages, become smarter and more powerful.

I can't remember which book it was.

[Kalidor]

Oh look, I found the wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transdimen ... ja_Turtles

[Gamer]

Anyway this is kind of all off topic. The rules listed either state that MDC tech plain won't work or it does SDC. House rule as you see fit.
-Matt

Rules have stated before that technology shouldn't function, but the revised Rifts Source book One has one borg having been to Palladium where he was transformed by some sort of super techno-wizard into a creature of magic.
Which means there is already a precedent for Rifts technology to function on Palladium at least and would end up being converted to SDC at worst, the only thing left to worry about is the mdc to sdc conversion.

[Kalidor]

Time doesn't have a whole lot of meaning in regards to multi universe travel. If it's in the SAME dimension, and just far away, it would be in the same relative timestream. If it's ANOTHER dimension then maybe that universe is younger and despite being concurrent with our timeline, their timeline energies are more forceful because it's closer to the start of their universe than we are to our start.

Anyway, it's an idea.

[Elthbert]

If it can hole it, it'll probably kill the crew. Even if the rounds aren't pyrophoric (IE after armor incindiary effect) fragments or whole rounds are likely to ricochette around the interior after penetrating. It is likely to wreck the controls, kill the crew and possibly detonate ammunition and/or fuel.
-Matt

Well the crews are in MDC armour so they are likely to live even if the crew compartment is the part that is breached. During WWII both sides rutinly patched and and sent out tanks that had been "killed" meaning the crew was killed and the tank damaged, but the tank itself was not destroyed, the washed them out, fixed the armour and sent them back out on the line. had the crews not been killed the tank would have still be operable, well WWII crews were not in MDC enviormental armour. I suspect that sveral holes could get punched in an MDC tank without destroying it.

[dark brandon]

AH! But what if one of the soldiers is CS technical offecer w/the electricity generation skill? Couldn't he rig up a small hydro electric generator out of a nail, some copper wiring and a couple of magnets and use that to recharge the weapons?

I don't know much about energy and it's production, but the amount of energy needed would have to be obscene to regenerate one elip. It could take a year to recharge one eclip, and he'd be in the field working with sub-standard equipment which means his energy production might be low or impossible to generate at all. Just to give an idea...a "normal" magical lightning bolt would do 1D6 SDC damage in palladium world. An exploding eclip from that partical acceleration spell does 2D6x10 (or 2D6x1000 SDC). So you'd have to generate (by my poor speculation) something like 2-12 thousand times of energy as in a normal "magical" lightning bolt (which I am equating to a normal lighting bolt).

About the only way possible is if magic/ leyline energy can fundamentally alter the laws of physics and all of the forces within....this is a bit of a stretch to me.
What do you all think?

Not really, not anymore at least for me. I watched an episode of "Universe" on History channel. In the show it makes theories on traveling to other universes, and suggested that the laws of physics in other universes would/could be different than the one's we know of here. Taking it that in a sort of science fiction/theory it's possible IRL, it's not so far of a stretch to think that in other universes the laws of physics are altered just slightly enough that the material from RIFTS or any tech nation doesn't allow for such dense/powerful/molecularly arranged material are not as strong in other universes but are not so radically different living beings explode or melt into "wierd" matter or other things that make a game not fun.

[Rahmota]

Tech is tech. I leave it the same stats including MDC no matter which universe it is in. Which means that a CS soldier can take down a palladium dragon. No big deal. I mean I see utterly no reason why unless the laws of physics change for tech to suddenly get weaker. The only thign that can change is if magic exists or not within that world. And even then I do apply certain rules and controls to magic.

But it is the support systems that keep that high tech going that I get people on. As a squad of CS on patrol getting rifted to Palladia will be cut off from their support vehciles and resupply so no e-clip recharges, no more mini missles etc...

Sort of like an old time game I had when I had a group of vietnam era marines get sent back to the crusades. They went nuts for a while. Until they ran out of bullets and grenades and realized that the the tech infrastructure was not quite ready to supply the kind of stuff they needed.