JA-12

[Greyaxe]

Hey gang. I was perusing the Juicer uprisings again and noticed the JA12, kick ass right.... whew.
But it says its a knock off of a German design. who manufactures it? Triax?

[Nekira Sudacne]

I'm not aware of the actual baseline existing. I think it's just a throwaway line that was never followed up on.

[Comrade Corsarius]

Both JA-9 and JA-11 have been mentioned, at one time or another, to be a 'pre-rifts German design'. I would assume the JA-12 also fits this category.

[Athos]

I wish I could laugh at this...but its so true its pathetic. The JA-11 is the standby for munchkins everywhere...

Doesn't the JA-12 do more damage than the JA-11 ???

Wouldn't it be more munchie, or am I missing something?

[Zamion138]

Ja12 is the best rifle in rifts earth i can think of, nade luancher, scope, pulses, large drum and magazine. The thing has great range.
If i can start with i almost always do, its my go to rifle.
If it had an sdc setting it would be the only weapon you needed.
Personaly i dont care about verriable frequency, if i have only a laser rifle and a glitterboy shows up im surendering or running away. Hehehe

[glitterboy2098]

pretty sure the manufacturer in post-rifts time is going to be Northern Gun, if it's not some group currently unnamed and undescribed in canon.

IMO, the JA-11 and JA-9 were probably designed by one of Triax's rivals before the rifts.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Ja12 is the best rifle in rifts earth i can think of, nade luancher, scope, pulses, large drum and magazine. The thing has great range.
If i can start with i almost always do, its my go to rifle.
If it had an sdc setting it would be the only weapon you needed.
Personaly i dont care about verriable frequency, if i have only a laser rifle and a glitterboy shows up im surendering or running away. Hehehe

Actually, with the damage it inflicts, its just as good as a variable freq rifle - at half of its max damage (35) it can only do one point less than a max-roll on the variable frequency rifles (that mostly do 6d6 - max 36) and because of the way the damage is rolled, you're actually likely to do better average damage.

And you also have non-energy choices (grenades) to also damage a GB, not that a lone (or even a few) infantrymen should be trying to face down a GB.

I would say that the "if it had an SDC setting it would be the only weapon you ever needed" is an overstatement - a lot of things can be immune to energy. If it had the ability to fire SDC bullets, i'd agree with you.

All in all, the thing is pure CJ-era munchkin - might even bet he personification of it, honestly.

[Zamion138]

Ja12 is the best rifle in rifts earth i can think of, nade luancher, scope, pulses, large drum and magazine. The thing has great range.
If i can start with i almost always do, its my go to rifle.
If it had an sdc setting it would be the only weapon you needed.
Personaly i dont care about verriable frequency, if i have only a laser rifle and a glitterboy shows up im surendering or running away. Hehehe

Actually, with the damage it inflicts, its just as good as a variable freq rifle - at half of its max damage (35) it can only do one point less than a max-roll on the variable frequency rifles (that mostly do 6d6 - max 36) and because of the way the damage is rolled, you're actually likely to do better average damage.

And you also have non-energy choices (grenades) to also damage a GB, not that a lone (or even a few) infantrymen should be trying to face down a GB.

I would say that the "if it had an SDC setting it would be the only weapon you ever needed" is an overstatement - a lot of things can be immune to energy. If it had the ability to fire SDC bullets, i'd agree with you.

All in all, the thing is pure CJ-era munchkin - might even bet he personification of it, honestly.

Ok tight it might be over kill to say its all youll ever need, if it sdc also, but it really is to good of a gun. As pc i love having it and loath anyone carrying it hahahaha

[Greyaxe]

SO is the consensus it is an NG produce along with the other JA weapons?

[Blue_Lion]

SO is the consensus it is an NG produce along with the other JA weapons?

If it does not list a manufature I usaly just assume that it comes from some black market factory that is unspecifed that may just make the one items that gets smuggled around by the black market. And of course the NG whould have its knock off.

[flatline]

The JA-12 is one of those weapons where somebody screwed up the math.

A long e-clip has 50% more nominal capacity than a standard e-clip, so if the JA-12 gets 10 shots from a standard e-clip, it should get 15 shots from a long-eclip (this would actually be fairly balanced with the damage since a typical 2d6 rifle gets 20 shots from a standard e-clip and does half the damage as a JA-12).

There are lots of other weapons that have the 10/30 e-clip/long e-clip failed math (mostly old CS weapons).

I'm also bothered by the energy canister in the weapon. How is it charged? Do we treat it like a long e-clip?

Since we're already using the word "munchkin" to describe it, I will go ahead and say that I consider it a munchkin weapon made for a munchkin class. This is the type of weapon that I ask the players at the beginning of the game if they want it easily available (implying that if it's easy for the players to get, then it's easy for the NPCs to get). Usually it ends up being a weapon that's hard to find and more expensive than the book price.

--flatline

[Comrade Corsarius]

SO is the consensus it is an NG produce along with the other JA weapons?

No. They are effectively Generic. The JA-series may be produced by NG, but also by other manufacturers. Pre-rifts, they were the product of a German company. Post-rifts, they are built by anyone with the technology.

[Greyaxe]

SO is the consensus it is an NG produce along with the other JA weapons?

No. They are effectively Generic. The JA-series may be produced by NG, but also by other manufacturers. Pre-rifts, they were the product of a German company. Post-rifts, they are built by anyone with the technology.

Ok with that statement in mind could a manufacturer like Triax or Waffentech manufacture JA series weapons? If so they would be readily available on the black market in the NGR.

[Athos]

SO is the consensus it is an NG produce along with the other JA weapons?

No. They are effectively Generic. The JA-series may be produced by NG, but also by other manufacturers. Pre-rifts, they were the product of a German company. Post-rifts, they are built by anyone with the technology.

If it is generic and everyone has the tech to make JA-12's then why do pulse rifles by Wilk's, Bandito, NG, etc. all pale in comparison to the JA-12? Why isn't the JA-12 the standard if it is commonly known how to make one? If you knew how to make a pulse laser that does 1d6x10+10, why would you voluntarily make an inferior weapon? That doesn't make sense.

[Blue_Lion]

SO is the consensus it is an NG produce along with the other JA weapons?

No. They are effectively Generic. The JA-series may be produced by NG, but also by other manufacturers. Pre-rifts, they were the product of a German company. Post-rifts, they are built by anyone with the technology.

If it is generic and everyone has the tech to make JA-12's then why do pulse rifles by Wilk's, Bandito, NG, etc. all pale in comparison to the JA-12? Why isn't the JA-12 the standard if it is commonly known how to make one? If you knew how to make a pulse laser that does 1d6x10+10, why would you voluntarily make an inferior weapon? That doesn't make sense.

Umm cost is why people make an inferior weapon making something substandard means it cost you lest to build. Like how less durble materals are used to make funcher now days when more sturdy funcher is avaible. But it does fall under the generic tech as it is not linked to any manufacture. It could be the product of small unnamed factory or every one depending on how the gm wants to run it.

[Greyaxe]

SO is the consensus it is an NG produce along with the other JA weapons?

No. They are effectively Generic. The JA-series may be produced by NG, but also by other manufacturers. Pre-rifts, they were the product of a German company. Post-rifts, they are built by anyone with the technology.

If it is generic and everyone has the tech to make JA-12's then why do pulse rifles by Wilk's, Bandito, NG, etc. all pale in comparison to the JA-12? Why isn't the JA-12 the standard if it is commonly known how to make one? If you knew how to make a pulse laser that does 1d6x10+10, why would you voluntarily make an inferior weapon? That doesn't make sense.

Agreed. therefore given it is not generic, it requires advanced laser technology, only Wilks or Triax could build them. Wilks does have a laser in the Judgement day that is a pulse weapon doing 1d6x10 MD, so perhaps in North America the JA series are manufactured in secret by Wilks.

[Comrade Corsarius]

Agreed. therefore given it is not generic, it requires advanced laser technology, only Wilks or Triax could build them. Wilks does have a laser in the Judgement day that is a pulse weapon doing 1d6x10 MD, so perhaps in North America the JA series are manufactured in secret by Wilks.

It's manufactured by Carella Industries. You have to have your munchkin card verified before each purchase, though.

[Zamion138]

I would say if they made them relic rifles that were left over from the golden age sweet they are an heirloom that juicers would (and do ) kill for, but to say generic and any one can make one means chipwell could drop one in one of their bots.
On a side not if i remember the rifle is 125k or so. So it costs an arm and a leg but not enough to justifie its power.

To the earlier poster the tank works like the cs one does, ie you cant remove it and its ment as an emergency back up when your out of eclips, you leave it with the friendly eclip charging man to refill. See the description in rifts main book original for an Edrum.

[flatline]

To the earlier poster the tank works like the cs one does, ie you cant remove it and its ment as an emergency back up when your out of eclips, you leave it with the friendly eclip charging man to refill. See the description in rifts main book original for an Edrum.

Why have a big drum that's permanently attached to the rifle when you could simply add a second e-clip port. It'd take less space and you'd never need to leave your weapon with the charger.

It just seems like a bad design decision.

--flatline

[Sureshot]

I don't find the Ja-11 at all overpowered. Two settings 2D6 and 4D6. That is imo par for the course. The Illapa Rocket Rifle does 4D6 per shot. 1D4 x 10 per 3 round burtst and 2D4 x 10 per 10 round burst. With a 60 round magazine to boot. The abily to fire 6 2D4 X 10 shots with a range of 2400 ft (731.5 miles) at a cost of 26K credits (SA II p 57) . Then again considering that Carella not only wrote the proper damage values of all types of weapons he also increased the MDC in a proper fashion to compensate. Posters cry foul and say it's overpowered because until CJ Carella came along the guy with the Wilks 1D4 laser pistol wearing the 35 MDC plastiman armor stood a decent chance of surviving a direct hit from a robot and/or vehicle. Many of the books unfortunately are written with damage values that favor the survival of pcs at any cost. no matter how ridiculous it truly is imo.

[flatline]

On a side not if i remember the rifle is 125k or so. So it costs an arm and a leg but not enough to justifie its power.

GMG p145 says the JA-12 costs $50k on the black market.

Not cheap, but not particularly expensive either.

For comparison's sake, here are two laser pulse rifles that do similar damage (also from GMG):
Kittani K-4 Laser Pulse Rifle: $75k
Wilk's 457 Laser Pulse Rifle: $40k

--flatline

[Hotrod]

To the earlier poster the tank works like the cs one does, ie you cant remove it and its ment as an emergency back up when your out of eclips, you leave it with the friendly eclip charging man to refill. See the description in rifts main book original for an Edrum.

Why have a big drum that's permanently attached to the rifle when you could simply add a second e-clip port. It'd take less space and you'd never need to leave your weapon with the charger.

It just seems like a bad design decision.

--flatline

Bad design decisions and this "One Man Army" rifle seem to go hand-in-hand.

I suppose a particle beam rifle that does nearly as much damage might be a viable alternative. With single shots, you'd have more precision for called shots.

[Zamion138]

I don't find the Ja-11 at all overpowered. Two settings 2D6 and 4D6. That is imo par for the course. The Illapa Rocket Rifle does 4D6 per shot. 1D4 x 10 per 3 round burtst and 2D4 x 10 per 10 round burst. With a 60 round magazine to boot. The abily to fire 6 2D4 X 10 shots with a range of 2400 ft (731.5 miles) at a cost of 26K credits (SA II p 57) . Then again considering that Carella not only wrote the proper damage values of all types of weapons he also increased the MDC in a proper fashion to compensate. Posters cry foul and say it's overpowered because until CJ Carella came along the guy with the Wilks 1D4 laser pistol wearing the 35 MDC plastiman armor stood a decent chance of surviving a direct hit from a robot and/or vehicle. Many of the books unfortunately are written with damage values that favor the survival of pcs at any cost. no matter how ridiculous it truly is imo.

Were talking bout the ja12 not 11

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

I don't find the Ja-11 at all overpowered. Two settings 2D6 and 4D6. That is imo par for the course. The Illapa Rocket Rifle does 4D6 per shot. 1D4 x 10 per 3 round burtst and 2D4 x 10 per 10 round burst. With a 60 round magazine to boot. The abily to fire 6 2D4 X 10 shots with a range of 2400 ft (731.5 miles) at a cost of 26K credits (SA II p 57) . Then again considering that Carella not only wrote the proper damage values of all types of weapons he also increased the MDC in a proper fashion to compensate. Posters cry foul and say it's overpowered because until CJ Carella came along the guy with the Wilks 1D4 laser pistol wearing the 35 MDC plastiman armor stood a decent chance of surviving a direct hit from a robot and/or vehicle. Many of the books unfortunately are written with damage values that favor the survival of pcs at any cost. no matter how ridiculous it truly is imo.

Carella did not increase MDC to match. Body Armor went up all of... ~30 MDC. Damage doubled or more.

THe game is plenty lethal without CJs munchkinism, with it, its nearly unplayable. Edit: i want to be clear, CJs books are some of my favorites; he was/is a great content writer. Mercenaries, with its obvious Hammers Slammers vibe, is one of my favorite books. Juicer Uprising IS my favorite book, but the stats on his items dont always match the creativity of his writing for quality.

[Nekira Sudacne]

I'm not sure you can say they don't match or that carella wasn't aware of what he was doing. I think Carella simply is of the opinion that combat should be fast and highly lethal. Decided in 1-3 hits, as opposed to the more comic-style slugfest favored by Kevin and most other writers. It's not a mistake so much as a clashing style.

Nor could you really call it munchkanisem when you consider that generally in his books the players don't have any better armor than the badguys while the badguys have the same weapons you do. Players can die just as fast as they can kill others. He just runs a pretty deadly game all around.

[Zamion138]

I'm not sure you can say they don't match or that carella wasn't aware of what he was doing. I think Carella simply is of the opinion that combat should be fast and highly lethal. Decided in 1-3 hits, as opposed to the more comic-style slugfest favored by Kevin and most other writers. It's not a mistake so much as a clashing style.

Nor could you really call it munchkanisem when you consider that generally in his books the players don't have any better armor than the badguys while the badguys have the same weapons you do. Players can die just as fast as they can kill others. He just runs a pretty deadly game all around.

I gotta agree, if your running a game using his books with baddies from the other books...yes your going to be harder to kill but if. Ever one is droping 60 mdc a shot its fair. If you run an all south america game only people with an import char would be at a disadvantage.

Taking a south american rocket rifle to north america youd clean up if you can find ammo. But its a much more common weapon down there.

[Hotrod]

Consider the first edition of Rifts.

A titan power armor can launch 4 missiles in a single volley for 4D6x10 in an un-dodge-able attack. They get three of these attacks, and then they can fly away. Fast.

A Glitter Boy is... a Glitter Boy.

I'd say that Carella wasn't without precedent.

[Zamion138]

Did we ever get real clarification on not being able to dodge a volley of four more or less unguided missiles? Cause I thought that rocket launcher in Black Market was a goof. I admit that getting out of the AOE would be difficult in some cases, but PA, Crazies, Juicers, and some others could pull it off, assuming Mini Missiles don't track...or didn't before.

Auto dodge doesnt work to the best of my knowledge.....you can shoot one of the rockets or icomming missiles and hope to destory them on incomming but auto dodge is still a dodge and you cant dodge a 4 pack or more of any size missiles.

Tracking or not.

[wyrmraker]

Did we ever get real clarification on not being able to dodge a volley of four more or less unguided missiles? Cause I thought that rocket launcher in Black Market was a goof. I admit that getting out of the AOE would be difficult in some cases, but PA, Crazies, Juicers, and some others could pull it off, assuming Mini Missiles don't track...or didn't before.

Auto dodge doesnt work to the best of my knowledge.....you can shoot one of the rockets or icomming missiles and hope to destory them on incomming but auto dodge is still a dodge and you cant dodge a 4 pack or more of any size missiles.

Tracking or not.

Which is absolutely ridiculous. A short range AP missile travel at 650 MPH. To hit the full 5 mile range, that is a travel time of 25-30 seconds. This is all by canon.
Different missiles have different speeds and ranges, but you get the idea.

[Zamion138]

Did we ever get real clarification on not being able to dodge a volley of four more or less unguided missiles? Cause I thought that rocket launcher in Black Market was a goof. I admit that getting out of the AOE would be difficult in some cases, but PA, Crazies, Juicers, and some others could pull it off, assuming Mini Missiles don't track...or didn't before.

Auto dodge doesnt work to the best of my knowledge.....you can shoot one of the rockets or icomming missiles and hope to destory them on incomming but auto dodge is still a dodge and you cant dodge a 4 pack or more of any size missiles.

Tracking or not.

Which is absolutely ridiculous. A short range AP missile travel at 650 MPH. To hit the full 5 mile range, that is a travel time of 25-30 seconds. This is all by canon.
Different missiles have different speeds and ranges, but you get the idea.

How would you know that the missiles are coming at a 5 mile range?

Radar, smoke plume, sound, visual, engine heat, ect.
In a hectic war zone with out radar....no you probaly wont see it or hear or notice it with out hightened sense a great detect ambush roll or a sweet perception rolll.

[wyrmraker]

On the other hand, how would you dodge them or shoot them down if you didn't know they were coming in the first place? I am just saying that there is actually more time to dodge than is normally realized.

[Zamion138]

Maybe the sound of an rpg or law going off is real distinct, a trained fighter would know what a missile or rocket luancher would sound like and look for it,
In the dark the exhaust and sound would be prominent, if its taking 30 seconds or so to get to you, its a dumb weapon(non tracking) then id say you could run 100 feet to the side kinda easy but not per cannon...not arguing that.

If you were to allow long range dodge id do it something like this.......
1. Attacker rolls strike and initiative
2. Defender rolls perception (gm chosen target)
3.defender rolls intiative if detected.
4.defender rolls dodge.
5. Calculate movement vs aoe.
6.defender rolls roll with if dodge was a fail.

Attacker could be acting through all this mind you, id say 3 to 4 time while defender is detecting dodging and what not.

[wyrmraker]

Precisely accurate. However, bear in mind if someone is in powered armor, and can run at 60 mph. Given sensors and such, evading unguided missile fire should be ridiculously easy, unless fired at nearly fairly close range (roughly 1000' or under; 650 mph is 900 feet per second).

[Nekira Sudacne]

Did we ever get real clarification on not being able to dodge a volley of four more or less unguided missiles? Cause I thought that rocket launcher in Black Market was a goof. I admit that getting out of the AOE would be difficult in some cases, but PA, Crazies, Juicers, and some others could pull it off, assuming Mini Missiles don't track...or didn't before.

Auto dodge doesnt work to the best of my knowledge.....you can shoot one of the rockets or icomming missiles and hope to destory them on incomming but auto dodge is still a dodge and you cant dodge a 4 pack or more of any size missiles.

Tracking or not.

He didn't say juicers or crazies could dodge because of Auto-Dodge, he posited that they could escape the AoE and thus suffer half damage.

Still dosn't allow them to dodge in the first place, though.

[Zamion138]

Did we ever get real clarification on not being able to dodge a volley of four more or less unguided missiles? Cause I thought that rocket launcher in Black Market was a goof. I admit that getting out of the AOE would be difficult in some cases, but PA, Crazies, Juicers, and some others could pull it off, assuming Mini Missiles don't track...or didn't before.

Auto dodge doesnt work to the best of my knowledge.....you can shoot one of the rockets or icomming missiles and hope to destory them on incomming but auto dodge is still a dodge and you cant dodge a 4 pack or more of any size missiles.

Tracking or not.

He didn't say juicers or crazies could dodge because of Auto-Dodge, he posited that they could escape the AoE and thus suffer half damage.

Still dosn't allow them to dodge in the first place, though.

Point taken,

[wyrmraker]

I must admit that I always hated the rule where you can't evade a volley of four or more missiles. It just seems ridiculous, especially considering that this happens all the time in warfare. Man-portable missiles are used almost exclusively against fortifications, since anyone in a Humvee can dodge direct rocket fire from a helicopter. The only real exceptions are guided missiles, such as heat-seeking (which would have a much higher bonus than +5 to hit, IMO), or TOW missiles, which are guided by a wired control unit.
My house rule for that has always been -1 penalty to dodge for every missile in a volley after 3. It makes more sense, and decreases PC griping about volleys being broken.

[Faceless Dude]

The rule that you can't dodge more than 4 missiles in a volley is an arcane one that dates back to Robotech, like many of their other high tech combat rules. Back the it made more sense. There were no mini missiles yet and SRMs and higher were all guided.

As it stands, it doesn't bother me, the rule persisting. It's threat is minimized with a little planning.


Regarding the original thread and the JA-12, the rules don't bother me nearly so much as the art. Every time I look at it or imagine a bullpup weapon system with enough barrel length to support a grenade launcher I think about watching the Mobile Infantry troops from the Starship Troopers movie lug around those ungainly Morita rifles and I go looking for something else.

[Sureshot]

Were talking bout the ja12 not 11

My mistake. Still imo not that broken.

[Sureshot]

Carella did not increase MDC to match. Body Armor went up all of... ~30 MDC. Damage doubled or more.

THe game is plenty lethal without CJs munchkinism, with it, its nearly unplayable. Edit: i want to be clear, CJs books are some of my favorites; he was/is a great content writer. Mercenaries, with its obvious Hammers Slammers vibe, is one of my favorite books. Juicer Uprising IS my favorite book, but the stats on his items dont always match the creativity of his writing for quality.

Maybe because after playing Battletech seeing a cannon on a tank or giant robot sometimes do less damage than a hand weapon just breaks my suspension of disbeleif. Before Carella came along the damage values for vehciles and robots were slanted toward make sure the players survive. I'm not saying that pre-Carella it was not deadly yet a charater at least in medium body armor stood a good chance of surviving a couple of hits. Carella I think wanted to make the letality of the game equal everything across the board. No longer could the guy in medium armor take even one hit he had to hide. For me Carella damage values should have been the ones from the start. That's me though. I like to run Rifts as a more deadlier game. Where weapons do the damage they are supposed to.

Still consider the above rifle I posted with decent range and damage. Unless the character using rolls pretty low damage most suits of body armor espcially the light and even some medium ones just can't take that kind of punishment. The Ja-12 has better range against the Illapa rocket rifle. Damage imo is still better. I'm surprised no one brought up the Wilks 457 Laser Pulse rifle (New West P 206) has almost the same amount of damage just less range. Yet I still don't think it's broken.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Carella did not increase MDC to match. Body Armor went up all of... ~30 MDC. Damage doubled or more.

THe game is plenty lethal without CJs munchkinism, with it, its nearly unplayable. Edit: i want to be clear, CJs books are some of my favorites; he was/is a great content writer. Mercenaries, with its obvious Hammers Slammers vibe, is one of my favorite books. Juicer Uprising IS my favorite book, but the stats on his items dont always match the creativity of his writing for quality.

Maybe because after playing Battletech seeing a cannon on a tank or giant robot sometimes do less damage than a hand weapon just breaks my suspension of disbeleif. Before Carella came along the damage values for vehciles and robots were slanted toward make sure the players survive. I'm not saying that pre-Carella it was not deadly yet a charater at least in medium body armor stood a good chance of surviving a couple of hits. Carella I think wanted to make the letality of the game equal everything across the board. No longer could the guy in medium armor take even one hit he had to hide. For me Carella damage values should have been the ones from the start. That's me though. I like to run Rifts as a more deadlier game. Where weapons do the damage they are supposed to.

Still consider the above rifle I posted with decent range and damage. Unless the character using rolls pretty low damage most suits of body armor espcially the light and even some medium ones just can't take that kind of punishment. The Ja-12 has better range against the Illapa rocket rifle. Damage imo is still better. I'm surprised no one brought up the Wilks 457 Laser Pulse rifle (New West P 206) has almost the same amount of damage just less range. Yet I still don't think it's broken.

its the +10 MDC per shot, huge payload, integrated cannister, integrated laser sight, and integrated grenade launcher, and, most importantly, the *range* that push it way over the top.

The 457 isn't that bad *because* the range is so much shorter; the range on the JA-12 lets you outrange almost everything short of heavy power armor or robot weapons, and even keep pace with those, AND do the same or better damage in a lot of cases. Then you couple that with grenades at longer range than normal, capable of grenade BURSTS, and the large capacity of the gun..

Still, if i'd been the one designing the game, i'd have kept the 457 to 1d4x10 for a pulse, better than the L-20 and CS items, but not brutally so. The infantry scale is already fatal enough. Remember that pre-CWC, the heaviest armor was CS heavy armor at 80MDC, and wearing that could get you arrested or killed; the next best was 70MDC (Explorer in SB1 or Gladiator in RMB). So, even in the "old days" pre-CJ, two shots from a 457 could take you out. Hell, even the NG particle beam in the RMB(and now RUE) that does 1d4x10 was pretty killer here - if you werent wearing the heaviest of armors it could easily kill you in two shots (remember, no superhero rule here) and even in heavy armor three was going to do you in.

I cant see how anyone would want the game more fatal than that.

[keir451]

Carella did not increase MDC to match. Body Armor went up all of... ~30 MDC. Damage doubled or more.

THe game is plenty lethal without CJs munchkinism, with it, its nearly unplayable. Edit: i want to be clear, CJs books are some of my favorites; he was/is a great content writer. Mercenaries, with its obvious Hammers Slammers vibe, is one of my favorite books. Juicer Uprising IS my favorite book, but the stats on his items dont always match the creativity of his writing for quality.

Maybe because after playing Battletech seeing a cannon on a tank or giant robot sometimes do less damage than a hand weapon just breaks my suspension of disbeleif. Before Carella came along the damage values for vehciles and robots were slanted toward make sure the players survive. I'm not saying that pre-Carella it was not deadly yet a charater at least in medium body armor stood a good chance of surviving a couple of hits. Carella I think wanted to make the letality of the game equal everything across the board. No longer could the guy in medium armor take even one hit he had to hide. For me Carella damage values should have been the ones from the start. That's me though. I like to run Rifts as a more deadlier game. Where weapons do the damage they are supposed to.

Still consider the above rifle I posted with decent range and damage. Unless the character using rolls pretty low damage most suits of body armor espcially the light and even some medium ones just can't take that kind of punishment. The Ja-12 has better range against the Illapa rocket rifle. Damage imo is still better. I'm surprised no one brought up the Wilks 457 Laser Pulse rifle (New West P 206) has almost the same amount of damage just less range. Yet I still don't think it's broken.

its the +10 MDC per shot, huge payload, integrated cannister, integrated laser sight, and integrated grenade launcher, and, most importantly, the *range* that push it way over the top.

The 457 isn't that bad *because* the range is so much shorter; the range on the JA-12 lets you outrange almost everything short of heavy power armor or robot weapons, and even keep pace with those, AND do the same or better damage in a lot of cases. Then you couple that with grenades at longer range than normal, capable of grenade BURSTS, and the large capacity of the gun..

Still, if i'd been the one designing the game, i'd have kept the 457 to 1d4x10 for a pulse, better than the L-20 and CS items, but not brutally so. The infantry scale is already fatal enough. Remember that pre-CWC, the heaviest armor was CS heavy armor at 80MDC, and wearing that could get you arrested or killed; the next best was 70MDC (Explorer in SB1 or Gladiator in RMB). So, even in the "old days" pre-CJ, two shots from a 457 could take you out. Hell, even the NG particle beam in the RMB(and now RUE) that does 1d4x10 was pretty killer here - if you werent wearing the heaviest of armors it could easily kill you in two shots (remember, no superhero rule here) and even in heavy armor three was going to do you in.

I cant see how anyone would want the game more fatal than that.

Some (like me) want a higher level of "realism" to help keep us on our toes and to fit with our concept of the game world. Too often I've run into the player who thinks that he's "invulnerable" due to either his PA unit or some other thing and starts to be a nuisance to the rest of the players. So I up the "realism" to shake him up a bit and bring him back to the game that everyone else is trying to enjoy.
All that aside, the JA-12 IS a good weapon, but I liked the versatiltiy of the JA-11 better. I liked the option of being able to fire an SDC round instead of having to rely soley on MD fire.

[flatline]

Carella did not increase MDC to match. Body Armor went up all of... ~30 MDC. Damage doubled or more.

THe game is plenty lethal without CJs munchkinism, with it, its nearly unplayable. Edit: i want to be clear, CJs books are some of my favorites; he was/is a great content writer. Mercenaries, with its obvious Hammers Slammers vibe, is one of my favorite books. Juicer Uprising IS my favorite book, but the stats on his items dont always match the creativity of his writing for quality.

Maybe because after playing Battletech seeing a cannon on a tank or giant robot sometimes do less damage than a hand weapon just breaks my suspension of disbeleif. Before Carella came along the damage values for vehciles and robots were slanted toward make sure the players survive. I'm not saying that pre-Carella it was not deadly yet a charater at least in medium body armor stood a good chance of surviving a couple of hits. Carella I think wanted to make the letality of the game equal everything across the board. No longer could the guy in medium armor take even one hit he had to hide. For me Carella damage values should have been the ones from the start. That's me though. I like to run Rifts as a more deadlier game. Where weapons do the damage they are supposed to.

Still consider the above rifle I posted with decent range and damage. Unless the character using rolls pretty low damage most suits of body armor espcially the light and even some medium ones just can't take that kind of punishment. The Ja-12 has better range against the Illapa rocket rifle. Damage imo is still better. I'm surprised no one brought up the Wilks 457 Laser Pulse rifle (New West P 206) has almost the same amount of damage just less range. Yet I still don't think it's broken.

its the +10 MDC per shot, huge payload, integrated cannister, integrated laser sight, and integrated grenade launcher, and, most importantly, the *range* that push it way over the top.

The 457 isn't that bad *because* the range is so much shorter; the range on the JA-12 lets you outrange almost everything short of heavy power armor or robot weapons, and even keep pace with those, AND do the same or better damage in a lot of cases. Then you couple that with grenades at longer range than normal, capable of grenade BURSTS, and the large capacity of the gun..

Still, if i'd been the one designing the game, i'd have kept the 457 to 1d4x10 for a pulse, better than the L-20 and CS items, but not brutally so. The infantry scale is already fatal enough. Remember that pre-CWC, the heaviest armor was CS heavy armor at 80MDC, and wearing that could get you arrested or killed; the next best was 70MDC (Explorer in SB1 or Gladiator in RMB). So, even in the "old days" pre-CJ, two shots from a 457 could take you out. Hell, even the NG particle beam in the RMB(and now RUE) that does 1d4x10 was pretty killer here - if you werent wearing the heaviest of armors it could easily kill you in two shots (remember, no superhero rule here) and even in heavy armor three was going to do you in.

I cant see how anyone would want the game more fatal than that.

Some (like me) want a higher level of "realism" to help keep us on our toes and to fit with our concept of the game world. Too often I've run into the player who thinks that he's "invulnerable" due to either his PA unit or some other thing and starts to be a nuisance to the rest of the players. So I up the "realism" to shake him up a bit and bring him back to the game that everyone else is trying to enjoy.
All that aside, the JA-12 IS a good weapon, but I liked the versatiltiy of the JA-11 better. I liked the option of being able to fire an SDC round instead of having to rely soley on MD fire.

We always played such that laser weapons always had an SDC setting that was appropriate for target practice that used a fraction of the energy a regular shot did. This way, you could spend a couple hours familiarizing yourself with the weapon without incurring any significant charging costs. A nice side effect was that you could go hunting or make non-lethal warning shots with any laser weapon.

--flatline

[Zamion138]

Carella did not increase MDC to match. Body Armor went up all of... ~30 MDC. Damage doubled or more.

THe game is plenty lethal without CJs munchkinism, with it, its nearly unplayable. Edit: i want to be clear, CJs books are some of my favorites; he was/is a great content writer. Mercenaries, with its obvious Hammers Slammers vibe, is one of my favorite books. Juicer Uprising IS my favorite book, but the stats on his items dont always match the creativity of his writing for quality.

Maybe because after playing Battletech seeing a cannon on a tank or giant robot sometimes do less damage than a hand weapon just breaks my suspension of disbeleif. Before Carella came along the damage values for vehciles and robots were slanted toward make sure the players survive. I'm not saying that pre-Carella it was not deadly yet a charater at least in medium body armor stood a good chance of surviving a couple of hits. Carella I think wanted to make the letality of the game equal everything across the board. No longer could the guy in medium armor take even one hit he had to hide. For me Carella damage values should have been the ones from the start. That's me though. I like to run Rifts as a more deadlier game. Where weapons do the damage they are supposed to.

Still consider the above rifle I posted with decent range and damage. Unless the character using rolls pretty low damage most suits of body armor espcially the light and even some medium ones just can't take that kind of punishment. The Ja-12 has better range against the Illapa rocket rifle. Damage imo is still better. I'm surprised no one brought up the Wilks 457 Laser Pulse rifle (New West P 206) has almost the same amount of damage just less range. Yet I still don't think it's broken.

its the +10 MDC per shot, huge payload, integrated cannister, integrated laser sight, and integrated grenade launcher, and, most importantly, the *range* that push it way over the top.

The 457 isn't that bad *because* the range is so much shorter; the range on the JA-12 lets you outrange almost everything short of heavy power armor or robot weapons, and even keep pace with those, AND do the same or better damage in a lot of cases. Then you couple that with grenades at longer range than normal, capable of grenade BURSTS, and the large capacity of the gun..

Still, if i'd been the one designing the game, i'd have kept the 457 to 1d4x10 for a pulse, better than the L-20 and CS items, but not brutally so. The infantry scale is already fatal enough. Remember that pre-CWC, the heaviest armor was CS heavy armor at 80MDC, and wearing that could get you arrested or killed; the next best was 70MDC (Explorer in SB1 or Gladiator in RMB). So, even in the "old days" pre-CJ, two shots from a 457 could take you out. Hell, even the NG particle beam in the RMB(and now RUE) that does 1d4x10 was pretty killer here - if you werent wearing the heaviest of armors it could easily kill you in two shots (remember, no superhero rule here) and even in heavy armor three was going to do you in.

I cant see how anyone would want the game more fatal than that.

Some (like me) want a higher level of "realism" to help keep us on our toes and to fit with our concept of the game world. Too often I've run into the player who thinks that he's "invulnerable" due to either his PA unit or some other thing and starts to be a nuisance to the rest of the players. So I up the "realism" to shake him up a bit and bring him back to the game that everyone else is trying to enjoy.
All that aside, the JA-12 IS a good weapon, but I liked the versatiltiy of the JA-11 better. I liked the option of being able to fire an SDC round instead of having to rely soley on MD fire.

We always played such that laser weapons always had an SDC setting that was appropriate for target practice that used a fraction of the energy a regular shot did. This way, you could spend a couple hours familiarizing yourself with the weapon without incurring any significant charging costs. A nice side effect was that you could go hunting or make non-lethal warning shots with any laser weapon.

--flatline

I never even thought about target practice and the cost of eclips!
To be profeicent with a carry pistol or a duty rifle you need to put a couple 100 shots in a month at least and the idea of paying eclip prices for that ar staggering. Even with a 45 acp pistol its ridiculous, the per shot cost of an eclip in most rifles make practice something only seasoned vets could have or large armys and goverments with alot of eclip chargers. When i go to the range and im not just messing around i use probaly 5 to 6 magazines of rifle ammo, thats about 6 bucks a box of 20, at 30 rounds a mag thats 150 shots or8 boxes so 8x6 is 48 bucks with out taxes.
If i was using an eclip 150 shots would be so darn exspensive its crazy.
Thats assuming im not practicing with the burst mode, and if you dont practice something your not going to be good at it. So i could do 50 trishot bursts for the same amount. Damn yeah there has to a training mode on these guns. Or a kit like a .22 conversion package they make for most guns these days.

The only saving grace is that laser weapons have no kick so you dont have to learn to deal with that for follow up shots, no kick means no flinch and alot less squinting wrong. ........still alot of money to be in top form.

[Comrade Corsarius]

Recently I've revisited rifts as a 'budget' character, to which only the most common or generic stuff is available (and always, it has to be cheap). I found that the JA-9 turns out to be excellent value for money. It only does 2d6 per shot, but ROF is 'standard', meaning it can fire bursts. It's got a variable function against those pesky reflective armours, and it has a HUGE range.

The JA-11, as opposed to the -9, has the same laser with the same range, but only with a single shot mode and no variable function. It has an ion weapon doing 3d6MD with ROF of 'standard' but at a much reduced range.

In the end, the -9 won out because I found it to be more versatile. I like shooting the bad guys while they're a long way away if possible (doing a mere 2d6 would barely blister paint on most body armours these days anyway). Even if they do get in close, 2d6 while shooting bursts is actually still pretty damn good.

[flatline]

Recently I've revisited rifts as a 'budget' character, to which only the most common or generic stuff is available (and always, it has to be cheap). I found that the JA-9 turns out to be excellent value for money. It only does 2d6 per shot, but ROF is 'standard', meaning it can fire bursts. It's got a variable function against those pesky reflective armours, and it has a HUGE range.

The JA-11, as opposed to the -9, has the same laser with the same range, but only with a single shot mode and no variable function. It has an ion weapon doing 3d6MD with ROF of 'standard' but at a much reduced range.

In the end, the -9 won out because I found it to be more versatile. I like shooting the bad guys while they're a long way away if possible (doing a mere 2d6 would barely blister paint on most body armours these days anyway). Even if they do get in close, 2d6 while shooting bursts is actually still pretty damn good.

Apparently RUE changed the burst rules. Your JA-9 is now a single shot only weapon.

--flatline

[Sureshot]

I cant see how anyone would want the game more fatal than that.

It's not so much that rifts is not fatal .It that no explanation was ever given as to why hand weapons do more damage than weapons on vehicles and giant robots. For me it's assuming that not only were the vehicle and gaint robots weapons nerfed to ensure player survivability. Hand weapons were also boosted to ensure that. With the right combination f Hand weapons too many things are easily taken out imo because unlike hand weapons there weapons do too little damage .Thank god for missles otherwise the game would drag to a crawl. Which even than would not bother me o much yet they advertised Rifts as a very dangerous and deadly world yet nerfed damage values to increase the chances of pc surviving. It's almost like a contradiction in terms.

[Comrade Corsarius]

Recently I've revisited rifts as a 'budget' character, to which only the most common or generic stuff is available (and always, it has to be cheap). I found that the JA-9 turns out to be excellent value for money. It only does 2d6 per shot, but ROF is 'standard', meaning it can fire bursts. It's got a variable function against those pesky reflective armours, and it has a HUGE range.

The JA-11, as opposed to the -9, has the same laser with the same range, but only with a single shot mode and no variable function. It has an ion weapon doing 3d6MD with ROF of 'standard' but at a much reduced range.

In the end, the -9 won out because I found it to be more versatile. I like shooting the bad guys while they're a long way away if possible (doing a mere 2d6 would barely blister paint on most body armours these days anyway). Even if they do get in close, 2d6 while shooting bursts is actually still pretty damn good.

Apparently RUE changed the burst rules. Your JA-9 is now a single shot only weapon.

--flatline

Glad I don't own that book, then

[Balabanto]

I love the JA-12. Yes. The weapon is powerful. Yes, the weapon does a lot of damage. Yes. The weapon is nice.

But.

Invulnerabiity. Impervious to Energy. Whoops. Not that exciting anymore.

I love this gun because it is out of scope with many of the other rifles in the game and I had to sit down and think about who made it, what it was designed to do, and why. And now that I have my in-game reasons, I am content with the result.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

I cant see how anyone would want the game more fatal than that.

It's not so much that rifts is not fatal .It that no explanation was ever given as to why hand weapons do more damage than weapons on vehicles and giant robots. For me it's assuming that not only were the vehicle and gaint robots weapons nerfed to ensure player survivability.

Like which weapons? Rail-guns that can two-shot players even in post-power-creep body armor? (Enforcer Railgun and its NG equivalent) Rail-guns or main weapons that instantly kill players (this was before the superhero rule) in a single shot (Boom Gun, NG-V7 Hunter Mobile Gun); or heavy missile armaments? Not to mention that every single instance of weapon systems like that has 2-8x the range of anything a PC can carry other than a mini-missile launcher.

So while i will agree that from a game balance perspective, some weapons have seen their damage lowered a little to help players survive, i wouldn't say they are low by 2-3x... maybe 50% on the WORST offenders.

Hand weapons were also boosted to ensure that.

Only later; in the early-game, the few hand-held weapons that did "heavy" damage (1d4x10 - 1d6x10) were short-ranged compared to anything mounted on a vehicle and had bad ammo efficiency. Later, however, yes, the power-creep-splosion proliferated heavy damage man portable weapons, many of which also suddenly got great range and ammo efficiency. Youll notice that they dont really appear in Kevin's work, though - mostly those of others authors. Even the stuff in CWC, while it brought the average damage up (mostly to match/compete with the sudden explosion of super-awesome tech from other authors) kept the original prohibitions against man-portable weapons being awesome damage dealers AND having great range, etc. Most of the CS rifles still have a range under 1600ft, for instance. I attribute this to the way books got/get written at Palladium (reading the horror stories from Coffin and the like, i can now picture quite clearly how this crap happens - particularly how the rules became such a jumbled, unplayable mess) - essentially, there is no "writers bible" available to freelancers/employees, so stuff winds up all over the place and the editing process ("Kevin edits by hand") doesn't catch it reliably.

With the right combination f Hand weapons too many things are easily taken out imo because unlike hand weapons there weapons do too little damage .Thank god for missles otherwise the game would drag to a crawl. Which even than would not bother me o much yet they advertised Rifts as a very dangerous and deadly world yet nerfed damage values to increase the chances of pc surviving. It's almost like a contradiction in terms.

I just cant jive the "otherwise the game would slow to a crawl" with the statistics as presented in just about any book. Armed appropriately with decent weapons, most PCs are probably capable of killing 2-3 similarly armored baddies in a single, 15 second round. Robot vehicles are capable of killing players and enemies in one to two actions. That seems quick to me.

I can see it dragging if you were running a Robot/Vehicle-scale Rifts game (I.E. something more like Robotech-a-la-Rifts where all your players are pilots in a mechanized company/platoon/whatever).... because i will agree that most Robots are terribly slow at killing each other.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

I love the JA-12. Yes. The weapon is powerful. Yes, the weapon does a lot of damage. Yes. The weapon is nice.

But.

Invulnerabiity. Impervious to Energy. Whoops. Not that exciting anymore.

Because the same statement can apply to ANY handheld weapon, it's not really a viable argument.

I love this gun because it is out of scope with many of the other rifles in the game and I had to sit down and think about who made it, what it was designed to do, and why. And now that I have my in-game reasons, I am content with the result.

So, basically you're content with the result of a weapon that does 20-65% more damage than every other rifle out there, including plasma casters, has the range of a power-armor or vehicle-scale weapon, and comes with a grenade launcher, great ammo durability, and a pimpin scope....

'just cause?

There's literally no reason that every single infantry guy wouldnt use this weapon. That's a sure sign of imbalance if there ever was one.