Why is range so absurdly short in Rifts?

[ShadowLogan]

The notion of a "top speed" in space is nonsense until you start to reach relativistic speeds. Fortunately, space combat has never come up in any of my campaigns, so it's never been an issue. If it ever does come up, I guess we'll have to assign acceleration values to all the ships and keep calculators handy.

I wonder if there's software out there to help model space combat. It's the kind of problem that a computer would be very good at and the human brain is not.

--flatline

Not quite. While a vehicle's ulimate speed limit is the speed of light, it will have a practical limit dictated by its propulsion system (unless they have some type of "fuel-less" drive). The problem w/PB "Space Speeds" is more that they are to small as presented to do what they say they do. (PB says Mach5 is needed to get into space, more like x5 for Earth, more for lunar missions).

As for software not sure if would help, the only two software pieces (off the top of my head) that might help to a limited degree would be MS Space Simulator (old Dos program, hasn't been updated like MS's Flight Simulator) and Orbiter (freeware).

[flatline]

(PB says Mach5 is needed to get into space, more like x5 for Earth, more for lunar missions).

This particular point has bugged the crap out of me since I read it in the Logan description of the Southern Cross Robotech RPG book.

Escape velocity only applies to ballistic objects that have an initial velocity AND NO ADDITIONAL PROPULSION! The escape velocity of Earth is about Mach 34ish and the space shuttle only goes Mach 23, yet it achieves orbit.

The idea of escape velocity does not apply to objects that can provide thrust while already in motion. A rocket moving at one inch per second (0.05 miles per hour) will escape the gravitational pull of the Earth as long as it provides enough thrust to continue at that velocity.

--flatline

[azazel1024]

Yes, but that would not be a traditional "escape" from Earth's gravity and would consume more propellant than a traditional escape would.

Of course with MiO the issues you have are manifold when it comes to range, velocity, acceleration, etc. Most drives in the game are listed as a maximum range of around 150,000-300,000 miles (or barely enough to get to the moon from LEO). At least in a MiO context I do use the vehicle's speed as the maximum rate of acceleration a G's. I then use the range as the maximum delta V in meters per second.

So a chemical drive shuttle with a range of 150,000 miles and a max speed of Mach 2 I use a maximum delta V of 150km/sec and a maximum acceleration of 2G. It allows you to have resonable velocities and accelerations to get places. Ignoring time to accelerate and deccelerate, a shuttle with that "range" and acceleration could leave LEO, travel to the moon, enter LLO, pickup a cargo, not bother refueling and return to LEO to deliver its cargo in a total time of around 8hrs and tanks empty (maximum velocity roughly 34km/sec).

A similar shuttle if it went for the asteroid belt or Ceres would take about 46 days to get there, which seems pretty resonable to me in the context of reaction drives. Get bigger fuel tanks, or better yet a more efficient drive with bigger fuel tanks and you could get there even faster. A fusion drive ship with oversized fuel tanks could get there in about 12 days with dry tanks.

PS no the required velocity is exactly the same. There is no centripedal force aiding rocket launches or the shuttle. There IS however imparted velocity from the Earth's rotation, about 1,800km/hr or about 500m/sec of imparted velocity. However, the exact same terminal velocity is required to reach orbit...you just have a starting boost if you launch East.

Space planes, like the X-15, Spaceship 1, etc in no way reach orbit. You can launch straight up with only around a 2km/sec velocity and you'll reach space...you'll also fall straight back down. The altitude for space is set at 100km which is roughly where the atmosphere gets so thin that your forward velocity is lower to be in orbit than the velocity you need for wings to provide adaquete lift to keep you at the same altitude. You can get to 100km "easily" without being even remotely near orbital velocity.

Those space planes are NOT achieving orbit. In all cases they are dipping their wingtips in to space for science/engineering/passenger giggles. Commercial trasportation theories would require higher velocities, up around Mach 5-8, but those would not be orbital shuttles, they'd be sub-orbital space planes that are either designed to be semi-ballistic jobs to just skirt in to outter space, or they'd be designed to get just above the atmosphere will still under propulsion (not orbit) to take advantage of the curviture of the Earth in combination with extremely low atmospheric drag (there is actually still a fair amount at 100km, just a pitance compared to even 30,000ft).

[glitterboy2098]

"escape velocity" refers to the velocity needed to escape earth entirely. orbtial and suborbital velocities are less than escape velocity, albeit only slightly.

[glitterboy2098]

I treat Palladium space machs simply as how much thrust they can apply each turn.
at Mach 5 acceleration, it will take 5 turns to break orbit..to reach escape velocity, it will take them A few hours to break out, and it will take them 10 hours at that speed to reach the moon.
As for pradtical limit, Wayne suggested 5 minutes (20 melees) of Acceleration/deceleration as being a max.
fuel ranges in space are how long the fuel can be burned for. not for how long does it have to travel at.

20 melees only gets you to 100 mach though.. 19.72 km/s.

you need a minimum of 30 km/s to pull off a maximum time hohman orbit to mars, which would take several years to get you there. and that presumes you launch at the ideal time for it, which means you have basically one window occuring over the span of a few weeks each year. to get to jupiter, you'd need almost twice that. Saturn?


i know wayne meant well, but before you start making suggestions about how to handle space travel, it helps to have a grounding in actual space travel knowledge, physics, and technology..

i won't claim my system is more accurate..but it was based on real physics and space travel, and is still eas to use.

[glitterboy2098]

Macross and robotech actually does a decent job showing an accelleration and inertia based space travel enviroment..they just tend to fudge the vector movement issue. you don't have to have have a drive able to manage mach 25+ in an atmosphere, you just need a drive able to put out more than 1 gravity of accelleration (about 1/2 a mech per melee) long enough to gain velocity equal to mach 25+. with say, 2 g's (1 mach per melee) all it would take is about 13 melees, or 4 minutes.
just like in real life. most rockets and the space shuttle rarely have accellerations of more than 2 or 3 gravities, and once those get above the atmosphere, they tend to drop down to less than 1 g, which they can sustain longer and which allows them to fine tune their velocity better by altering burn time. which is why it generally take about 6 minutes to reach low earth orbit.

[flatline]

You think ranges in Rifts are absurdly short? Try Battletech!

The longest range direct fire weapon does 2 damage and has a range of 30 hexes (900 meters).

Of course, it's been 15 years since I played. Perhaps things have changed in that regard...

--flatline

[SpiritInterface]

The group I game with has a battle board that is 60" x 70" and we use 1 square = 5 feet. We play with 25mm figures. We adjust the scale as the scenario calls for.

Id do that but the problem comes down to AoE.

Blast radiuses are easy, it is cones that get a little tougher.

[glitterboy2098]

You think ranges in Rifts are absurdly short? Try Battletech!

The longest range direct fire weapon does 2 damage and has a range of 30 hexes (900 meters).

Of course, it's been 15 years since I played. Perhaps things have changed in that regard...

--flatline

pick up the latest rulebooks. Total Warfare includes a note from the creative staff pointing out that the ground side game uses reduced ranges for gameplay balance only, since multi-kilometer ranges for anything bigger than a machinegun tend to suck out the fun when the ground scale is roughly 30 meters to the inch. they also point out the the atmospheric and space ranges are more accurate portrayals. (in those, even the machineguns can shoot almost 2km, and the big guns can reach hundreds of km..)

in Strategic Operations there are optional "line of sight fire" rules to reflect more realistic ranges. basically if you can see it you can shoot it..but the penalties to hit work a bit different. it's generally not recommended players mix the two, for game balance reasons.

[CyCo]

You think ranges in Rifts are absurdly short? Try Battletech!

The longest range direct fire weapon does 2 damage and has a range of 30 hexes (900 meters).

Of course, it's been 15 years since I played. Perhaps things have changed in that regard...

--flatline

pick up the latest rulebooks. Total Warfare includes a note from the creative staff pointing out that the ground side game uses reduced ranges for gameplay balance only, since multi-kilometer ranges for anything bigger than a machinegun tend to suck out the fun when the ground scale is roughly 30 meters to the inch. they also point out the the atmospheric and space ranges are more accurate portrayals. (in those, even the machineguns can shoot almost 2km, and the big guns can reach hundreds of km..)

in Strategic Operations there are optional "line of sight fire" rules to reflect more realistic ranges. basically if you can see it you can shoot it..but the penalties to hit work a bit different. it's generally not recommended players mix the two, for game balance reasons.

I'm only just getting back into Battletech after an absence of about 20 years, but isn't one of these books the 'munchkin' book of the BT universe. The one that went beyond 100 ton mechs and included 3 legged mechs?

[glitterboy2098]

You think ranges in Rifts are absurdly short? Try Battletech!

The longest range direct fire weapon does 2 damage and has a range of 30 hexes (900 meters).

Of course, it's been 15 years since I played. Perhaps things have changed in that regard...

--flatline

pick up the latest rulebooks. Total Warfare includes a note from the creative staff pointing out that the ground side game uses reduced ranges for gameplay balance only, since multi-kilometer ranges for anything bigger than a machinegun tend to suck out the fun when the ground scale is roughly 30 meters to the inch. they also point out the the atmospheric and space ranges are more accurate portrayals. (in those, even the machineguns can shoot almost 2km, and the big guns can reach hundreds of km..)

in Strategic Operations there are optional "line of sight fire" rules to reflect more realistic ranges. basically if you can see it you can shoot it..but the penalties to hit work a bit different. it's generally not recommended players mix the two, for game balance reasons.

I'm only just getting back into Battletech after an absence of about 20 years, but isn't one of these books the 'munchkin' book of the BT universe. The one that went beyond 100 ton mechs and included 3 legged mechs?

no.
Total warfare is the base rule book (mechs, protomechs, vehicles, VTOl's, fighters, dropships, industrial mechs, support vee's)
techmanual is the book with construction rules for the above.
Tactical operations provides advanced rules for tactical level games (advanced weapons, rules for artillery, mobile structures, and so on)
Strategic ops provides advanced rules for strategic level games (additional advanced weapons, rules for jumpships and warships, rules on repair and such.), as well as rules for Battleforce and the related Quickstrike.
the upcoming tactical ops will have 'era specific' material like LAM's, drone warships, nukes and other WMD's, Manei Domini, as well as additional advanced and primative weapons that only appeared in specific time periods.

Superheavy mechs did appear in the last Jihad books, the WOB deployed a few prototypes to try and stop the fall of terra to the united IS forces.. they are basically just 'super assualts'. slower, not much tougher, and not much more firepower. more drawbacks than advantages. the general consensus so far is that they're not really worth taking except in the historical scenarios.

the game hasn't even hit the 'Dark age' and 'age of destruction' eras as covered by the clix game..and while catalyst games is required to follow up and explore that time peroid, it'll be 2014 or so before we see any real detail on it, and they've promised they'll provide proper detail and moderate the apparent absurdities to make it fit into the feel of the battletech game setting. so yeah, we'll eventually see rules for 3 legged mecha, but they'll conform to the actual fluff. a handful of prototypes pressed into service by a splinter faction of the republic of the Sphere, and not that effective.

[CyCo]

You think ranges in Rifts are absurdly short? Try Battletech!

The longest range direct fire weapon does 2 damage and has a range of 30 hexes (900 meters).

Of course, it's been 15 years since I played. Perhaps things have changed in that regard...

--flatline

pick up the latest rulebooks. Total Warfare includes a note from the creative staff pointing out that the ground side game uses reduced ranges for gameplay balance only, since multi-kilometer ranges for anything bigger than a machinegun tend to suck out the fun when the ground scale is roughly 30 meters to the inch. they also point out the the atmospheric and space ranges are more accurate portrayals. (in those, even the machineguns can shoot almost 2km, and the big guns can reach hundreds of km..)

in Strategic Operations there are optional "line of sight fire" rules to reflect more realistic ranges. basically if you can see it you can shoot it..but the penalties to hit work a bit different. it's generally not recommended players mix the two, for game balance reasons.

I'm only just getting back into Battletech after an absence of about 20 years, but isn't one of these books the 'munchkin' book of the BT universe. The one that went beyond 100 ton mechs and included 3 legged mechs?

no.
Total warfare is the base rule book (mechs, protomechs, vehicles, VTOl's, fighters, dropships, industrial mechs, support vee's)
techmanual is the book with construction rules for the above.
Tactical operations provides advanced rules for tactical level games (advanced weapons, rules for artillery, mobile structures, and so on)
Strategic ops provides advanced rules for strategic level games (additional advanced weapons, rules for jumpships and warships, rules on repair and such.), as well as rules for Battleforce and the related Quickstrike.
the upcoming tactical ops will have 'era specific' material like LAM's, drone warships, nukes and other WMD's, Manei Domini, as well as additional advanced and primative weapons that only appeared in specific time periods.

Superheavy mechs did appear in the last Jihad books, the WOB deployed a few prototypes to try and stop the fall of terra to the united IS forces.. they are basically just 'super assualts'. slower, not much tougher, and not much more firepower. more drawbacks than advantages. the general consensus so far is that they're not really worth taking except in the historical scenarios.

the game hasn't even hit the 'Dark age' and 'age of destruction' eras as covered by the clix game..and while catalyst games is required to follow up and explore that time peroid, it'll be 2014 or so before we see any real detail on it, and they've promised they'll provide proper detail and moderate the apparent absurdities to make it fit into the feel of the battletech game setting. so yeah, we'll eventually see rules for 3 legged mecha, but they'll conform to the actual fluff. a handful of prototypes pressed into service by a splinter faction of the republic of the Sphere, and not that effective.

Ok, thanks for the quick update. I was under the impression that the rules for the 100+ ton and 3 legged mechs were already available. At least that's what I'm sure someone had told me when I played BT in the FLGS late last year.

[Premier]

Great question and one that has surfaced before. I discussed this with Kevin and got clarity as to what it really means to preserve game balance entertainment value and playability. Yeah, realistically a sniper can hit targets 1 plus mile away, let alone futuristic technology & or alien tech, but when it comes to "game balance" and canon playability, things shift into more carefully considerations.

Example: A player who has been playing a character for 3-5 years and has enjoyed the experiences of developing & playing that character joins a game/campaign. The team are out tracking or patrolling a given area that has plenty of surrounding high cover and vantage points. First thing that palyer sees is the GM rolling dice and having no clue as to why, but it could be for inititiative. Next thing a call shot by a sniper has hit the player's character dead center through the eye/head without the player having very little to being able to stop it. Now a "good" player how has invested such fun and time into a character who hasn't done anything intentionally foolish has to suffer the loss of a character due to "realism." Other players try to take cover but they have no clue where the gun fire is coming from and another is dropped with the next shot. Where is the fun in this gaming, even though it is realistic? Sure a GM doesn't have to be so realistic or unfair, but "realistically" what Sniper type OCC or Sniper rifle armed NPC is going to logically give up their super long range advantages to make the combat "fun"?

Sure from a Player 's point of view with a Sniper rifle or weapon it is cool as heck with rewards in taking out or hammering enemies from afar, but if it can be availed to players it can also be aviled to GMs and this is where game balance has to be considered by Writers, let alone the CEO who approves and seeks to preserve the game balance and long term entertainment value of the game.

[glitterboy2098]

honestly, the main problem comes from the balance between infantry and vehicles scales. at the moment, huge tank gun has a range the same as an infantry gun. most of the 'big guns' on vehicles should have ranges of at least twice what the books give them. three times ideally. i mean, a 120mm cannon like on the IHA tanks should be able to fire more than 4000ft. a real world tank gun of the same calibre is 'officially' able to fire out to over two miles, or about 11,000ft. in actuality more like 3+ miles. and this is just the effective range where your likely to hit. part of it of course is the stabilization systems and targeting computers modern tanks use, but even a hand aimed non-stabilized gun can accurately hit targets over 8000ft away, unless moving at a high clip.

and frankly, there is little reason to reduce 'big gun' ranges so much. i mean, even minimissiles can reach out to a miles range, with SRM's closer to 5 miles and MRM's and LRM's being able to be fired indirectly at targets hundreds of miles away. so why are all the non-missiles nerfed so much in range?

[Balabanto]

Great question and one that has surfaced before. I discussed this with Kevin and got clarity as to what it really means to preserve game balance entertainment value and playability. Yeah, realistically a sniper can hit targets 1 plus mile away, let alone futuristic technology & or alien tech, but when it comes to "game balance" and canon playability, things shift into more carefully considerations.

Example: A player who has been playing a character for 3-5 years and has enjoyed the experiences of developing & playing that character joins a game/campaign. The team are out tracking or patrolling a given area that has plenty of surrounding high cover and vantage points. First thing that palyer sees is the GM rolling dice and having no clue as to why, but it could be for inititiative. Next thing a call shot by a sniper has hit the player's character dead center through the eye/head without the player having very little to being able to stop it. Now a "good" player how has invested such fun and time into a character who hasn't done anything intentionally foolish has to suffer the loss of a character due to "realism." Other players try to take cover but they have no clue where the gun fire is coming from and another is dropped with the next shot. Where is the fun in this gaming, even though it is realistic? Sure a GM doesn't have to be so realistic or unfair, but "realistically" what Sniper type OCC or Sniper rifle armed NPC is going to logically give up their super long range advantages to make the combat "fun"?

Sure from a Player 's point of view with a Sniper rifle or weapon it is cool as heck with rewards in taking out or hammering enemies from afar, but if it can be availed to players it can also be aviled to GMs and this is where game balance has to be considered by Writers, let alone the CEO who approves and seeks to preserve the game balance and long term entertainment value of the game.

This is why I don't punish people for purchasing high-quality equipment. Naruni Force Fields shut down a sniper from afar in nothing flat, unless he's using missiles. In which case, he's not sniping.

[Balabanto]

Such force fields are:
1) Expensive
2) Rare
3) Illegal in the eyes of the N. America's single most powerful political organization
4) So advanced that repairing any damage might be beyond any given tech, and
5) Easily replicable with psionics, magic, or a few more options that are arguably more common in nature anyhow.

Also, be aware that if someone in the party has 6th Sense, and is reasonably close, both physically and emotionally (friend, relative, lover, close comrade) to the target of a sniper, they get a FULL MELEE to shout a warning, and may even have a rough idea which quadrant a threat is goign to emerge from. a significant percentage of humans are psionically active, and a number of those who are will have this power (either through a player picking a really good power, of via racial evolution in the accelerated and hyper dangerous world that is Rifts: Earth), so sniping is actually less prevalent because it is less useful, at least to a degree.

Sides, sniping is no damn fun!

Except that there's a trigger mechanism, and it only needs to work once. Who cares about how much money it costs? That just saved your life. The problem with these so-called illegal weapons is that getting them is easy. Most people don't even venture into the Coalition states.

Second, everywhere the Coalition doesn't govern, the Naruni pretty much now exist.

Third, All of your arguments come from the perspective of the Coalition being monolithic, brainwashed, and unbribable.

Fourth, if the PC's want them, let them have it. You can easily run them out of resources as long as they want to spend money.

[say652]

the massive damage of a md weapon comes at a price as in shorter range. i give SDC weapons and only SDC weapons the longer more realistic range. so using sdc weapons with silver ammo a sniper can get those long range kills against a variety of supernatural badguys. something to be said about sniping a vampire or werewolf from a mile away that is since most characters are sdc/hp based it could happen to them just as easily.

[Pepsi Jedi]

So (to me) it is not beyond imagining that there are weapons in Rifts that CAN ( and IMO should) penetrate Rifts body armor (most likely the helmet or eye piece/shield as they are less armored than the main body). But this (IMO) applies ONLY to sniper weapons, NOT your standard infantry weapons.

That's the thing- if it can apply to snipering weapons, it can apply to infantry weapons.
If there's a round powerful enough to penetrate MDC body armor in a single shot, there's no reason why this round couldn't be fired in bursts.

The thing is, you're looking at it wrong.
A standard soldier in Rifts is the equivalent of a 20th century tank, and you don't send in a sniper to take out a modern tank.
Not as a first choice, anyway.
And if you DO, you don't assume that the sniper is going to be able to shoot through the tank in a single shot.
In virtually every case, he's going to have to wait until somebody gets outside of the tank before he can make his kill.

Rifts is a setting where armor technology is more powerful than weapons technology as a general rule.
It's a feature, not a bug.
It's meant to be this way.
Trying to bypass this in order to have a cool sniper with one-shot kills screws over the majority of the setting in favor of one cool character and effect, and it's not even something that's intrinsic to the character.
Being a sniper isn't actually about one-shotting the enemy, although that's always a good goal to have: it's about accurately shooting the enemy from concealment.
Snipers don't need powerful weapons, only stealth and accuracy.

KC actually summed it up nicely. Each guy in MD armor with an MD rifle in Rifts is the equivalent of a 20th century tank, and you don't one shot a tank with a rifle. And just like he said, it's a feature, NOT a bug. It's built to be this way.


As for the rest of it, there was an article in one of the rifters about CS snipers. I forget which one but it was some good stuff.

People are forgetting that while they can be pressed into it, Snipers aren't really specialized for stand up fights. They're the 'I'll hide in the weeds for 5 days to get one window of 3 seconds to make a shot" Rifts snipers are JUST as viable for this.

"But Jedi!!" you say "MD armor makes one shot one kill impossible with a sniper rifle!! They're not!"

and to that, I reply, Yes they are. Snipers in Rifts earth, even more than our earth, wait for their shot... The hide and wait and wait and wait.... and sooner or later that guy takes off his helmet to eat or something...... then the sniper pulls the trigger on his silent weapon (( Remember lasers in rifts only make sound if you have the FAKE SOUND GENERATOR turned on.)) click. The guy's head (( Sdc)) is hit with a MD blast (( even a low powered one)) and is vaporized. It's like the sterotypical guy you couldn't get in the tank, after a day or so having to step out of the hot and sweaty tank for a breath of air, or a look around and you shoot him in the head.

People forget this sooo much in Rifts: YOU CANNOT LIVE IN YOUR ARMOR 24/7 UNLESS YOU"RE A BORG. You have to take it off to wash, to drop a deuce, to eat, ect. If you stay in MD armor more than 24/48 hours or so you're going to get allllll kinda funkyness in there, and after that you're going to start getting pressure sores and rashes and uggg. *shudders*

The Rifts sniper hides and waits for that moment when you unseal the helmet and pull it off to fix your hair or eat a sammich, then. "click" and your head dissapears.

Using snipers in stand up battles isn't the best use of their talent. A first shot from concealment to hit hard. Ok. but after that, most snipers are going to transition to a weapon better suited for the combat they're in.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Great question and one that has surfaced before. I discussed this with Kevin and got clarity as to what it really means to preserve game balance entertainment value and playability. Yeah, realistically a sniper can hit targets 1 plus mile away, let alone futuristic technology & or alien tech, but when it comes to "game balance" and canon playability, things shift into more carefully considerations.

Example: A player who has been playing a character for 3-5 years and has enjoyed the experiences of developing & playing that character joins a game/campaign. The team are out tracking or patrolling a given area that has plenty of surrounding high cover and vantage points. First thing that palyer sees is the GM rolling dice and having no clue as to why, but it could be for inititiative. Next thing a call shot by a sniper has hit the player's character dead center through the eye/head without the player having very little to being able to stop it. Now a "good" player how has invested such fun and time into a character who hasn't done anything intentionally foolish has to suffer the loss of a character due to "realism." Other players try to take cover but they have no clue where the gun fire is coming from and another is dropped with the next shot. Where is the fun in this gaming, even though it is realistic? Sure a GM doesn't have to be so realistic or unfair, but "realistically" what Sniper type OCC or Sniper rifle armed NPC is going to logically give up their super long range advantages to make the combat "fun"?

Sure from a Player 's point of view with a Sniper rifle or weapon it is cool as heck with rewards in taking out or hammering enemies from afar, but if it can be availed to players it can also be aviled to GMs and this is where game balance has to be considered by Writers, let alone the CEO who approves and seeks to preserve the game balance and long term entertainment value of the game.

And this, is reason number two for it. (( of three.)) If the players can do it, the bad guys can do it, and the bad guys could have hired 50 snipers. (( or just have 50 snipers.)) But the example given above by one of the best artists the game has, is the exact reason 2 that it's like it is. "Sure it's fun for your char to get the one long distance shot and kill now and then" but then the bad guys would be doing it to you all the time, and THAT sucks when you're playing the game. lol The example given is a very good one, with only one sniper shooting at your party. Snipers tend to work in pairs.... but nothing's stopping the NPC from fielding 2... 4..... 6.... 60....and if they're all concealed and waiting for you, hitting you from 2 miles out....

The third reason, with out going too much into it is 'Twinks/Munchkins'. If you allow the "One shot from a rifle to bipass all armor for a one shot one kill senero" then the Twinks and munchkins will use it all the time for everything and twist and do their thing on it. Again, you're back to the fun being gone because someone's abusing a ruleset.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Great question and one that has surfaced before. I discussed this with Kevin and got clarity as to what it really means to preserve game balance entertainment value and playability. Yeah, realistically a sniper can hit targets 1 plus mile away, let alone futuristic technology & or alien tech, but when it comes to "game balance" and canon playability, things shift into more carefully considerations.

Example: A player who has been playing a character for 3-5 years and has enjoyed the experiences of developing & playing that character joins a game/campaign. The team are out tracking or patrolling a given area that has plenty of surrounding high cover and vantage points. First thing that palyer sees is the GM rolling dice and having no clue as to why, but it could be for inititiative. Next thing a call shot by a sniper has hit the player's character dead center through the eye/head without the player having very little to being able to stop it. Now a "good" player how has invested such fun and time into a character who hasn't done anything intentionally foolish has to suffer the loss of a character due to "realism." Other players try to take cover but they have no clue where the gun fire is coming from and another is dropped with the next shot. Where is the fun in this gaming, even though it is realistic? Sure a GM doesn't have to be so realistic or unfair, but "realistically" what Sniper type OCC or Sniper rifle armed NPC is going to logically give up their super long range advantages to make the combat "fun"?

Sure from a Player 's point of view with a Sniper rifle or weapon it is cool as heck with rewards in taking out or hammering enemies from afar, but if it can be availed to players it can also be aviled to GMs and this is where game balance has to be considered by Writers, let alone the CEO who approves and seeks to preserve the game balance and long term entertainment value of the game.

This is why I don't punish people for purchasing high-quality equipment. Naruni Force Fields shut down a sniper from afar in nothing flat, unless he's using missiles. In which case, he's not sniping.

Only if you have the eclips to run it 24/7. Sooner or later you gotta turn it off. To eat or to crap or something, and that's when the sniper drills you.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Such force fields are:
1) Expensive
2) Rare
3) Illegal in the eyes of the N. America's single most powerful political organization
4) So advanced that repairing any damage might be beyond any given tech, and
5) Easily replicable with psionics, magic, or a few more options that are arguably more common in nature anyhow.

Also, be aware that if someone in the party has 6th Sense, and is reasonably close, both physically and emotionally (friend, relative, lover, close comrade) to the target of a sniper, they get a FULL MELEE to shout a warning, and may even have a rough idea which quadrant a threat is goign to emerge from. a significant percentage of humans are psionically active, and a number of those who are will have this power (either through a player picking a really good power, of via racial evolution in the accelerated and hyper dangerous world that is Rifts: Earth), so sniping is actually less prevalent because it is less useful, at least to a degree.

Sides, sniping is no damn fun!

Except that there's a trigger mechanism, and it only needs to work once. Who cares about how much money it costs? That just saved your life. The problem with these so-called illegal weapons is that getting them is easy. Most people don't even venture into the Coalition states.

Second, everywhere the Coalition doesn't govern, the Naruni pretty much now exist.

Third, All of your arguments come from the perspective of the Coalition being monolithic, brainwashed, and unbribable.

Fourth, if the PC's want them, let them have it. You can easily run them out of resources as long as they want to spend money.

Really? About 80%of our games happen in and around the CS. about 20% go far afield but most of our games are based in and around the Domain of man.

People forget and down play it but the mere possession of Naruni weaponry or armor is an instant death sentence if the CS roll up on you. If you're caught with Wilks, they'll take the rifles, fine you. Might beat the crap out of you if you get a bad squad. But Naruni are seen as hostile alien invaders that are arming other alien invaders to kill humans. They see Naruni tech (( which has a very distinctive appearance)) They open up on you.

I'm all about letting the PC's get what gear they want at start up, but I also point out the penalties of said gear. Naruni stuff is nice, but there's purposeful limits built in. 1) it's expensive. 2) It's harder to resupply/repair/rearm, and 3) the largest and best equipped army on the planet will kill you on sight if they see you holding one.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Side note, the special CS sniper school "T.A.G" Target Aquisition Group is detailed in Rifter 23 starting on page 74. It has specialized Sniper training. (( and the prerequisite stuff to be a sniper. It's more than just having the sniper skill from the book))

The bonus' that dedicated military sniper training gives.

The dedicated Coalition Sniper rifle.

Ghillie suits and their bonus.

The cybernetics that aid in sniping.

and a section on "kill shots' both for SDC and MDC creatures.

[kaid]

There also might be a little bit of physics involved here. Many of the 'sniper' rifles listed in Rifts are laser-based and lasers have unique challenges to overcome at distance. Lasers have to dwell on a relatively small spot on a target to transfer it's energy and do damage effectively. Getting a laser to dwell on a relatively small spot at long range is difficult for even the steadiest of hands. For comparison, take one of those cheap laser pointers you use to torment the cat, bring it outside on a dark night and try shining it on a stop sign about 400 yards away. Don't worry, you'll see if you're connecting due to the stop sign's reflectivity. But you'll notice how difficult it is to keep that laser on that two-foot wide stop sign. Now double that distance, and that's the 'maximum effective range' of the typical Rifts laser sniper rifle.

And now you know what I do when the power goes out.

I've heard of kids using those laser pointers on police choppers (back when I lived in the mountains of Colorado). It spooked the daylight out of the cops and they traced it back to the kid's house and scared the bejeesus out of him!
The one joy of energy weapons, you don't have to correct for windage!

Well, windage, elevation, and temperature...

And at EXTREME ranges, you actually have to account for the rotation of the earth itself. Sounds crazy, but it's true.

Yup and at the super long ranges we are talking often times minutes to setup the shot adjust for the wind before actually taking the shot. I always took the shorter ranges just to be more of an indication of the armor tech than a lack in weapon tech. In RL offensive capability really outshines the current defensive tech that is man portable or vehicle mounted. In rifts earth there is a much greater parity of offense and defense. A person walking around in personal environmental non powered armor has almost as much defensive capability as a RL main battle tank. Now take most common power armors for light/medium power armor you are talking 200-300 mdc or less typically. That is only roughly twice to three times more defensive capability than what an unpowered human can comfortably wear. Even most of the armored vehicles are still in that range for capability and only truly heavy power armor or massive robot vehicles surpassing that.

So sure you may be able to hit a target at 1.5 miles with your laser rifle but could you actually damage it at that range? It makes sense given how tough the armors are to optimize for armor penetration which likely sacrifices range in order to actually put a dent in what you are shooting at.