Tiree wrote:Nuclear Reactors for Energy Weapons is not likely a good idea. Mainly because it's a constant state of power, not a high burst that an energy rifle needs. Have that nuclear reactor recharge e-clips is more likely a scenario. E-Clips are more like a Capacitor that stores energy, and can release it in a short period of time. While a Nuclear Reactor is more like a Steam Engine... constantly pumping out a steady stream of power.
Some faulty reasoning there, the energy weapons in vehicles and power armor run off of a nuclear reactor with no mention of any energy capacitors required in order for them to function (outside of a few rare cases like the Mark IV space glitter boy's particle beam cannon). Just because E-clips are used to power portable weapons doesn't mean that that's what's required to run it after all, steady power is just fine as long as it meets the power demands required by the weapon at the time.
They don't mention it, mainly because it's not important to the game. Up to you on reasoning within the reality of the game mechanics. But I want to reiterate - Palladium, and every other Game System tends to not get too technical if they don't have to. They don't mention every subsystem if there is no reason.
The only person to go into that much detail was Marker, and half of his fluff was modified to be less techno-geeky.
Tiree wrote:Nuclear Reactors for Energy Weapons is not likely a good idea. Mainly because it's a constant state of power, not a high burst that an energy rifle needs. Have that nuclear reactor recharge e-clips is more likely a scenario. E-Clips are more like a Capacitor that stores energy, and can release it in a short period of time. While a Nuclear Reactor is more like a Steam Engine... constantly pumping out a steady stream of power.
Some faulty reasoning there, the energy weapons in vehicles and power armor run off of a nuclear reactor with no mention of any energy capacitors required in order for them to function (outside of a few rare cases like the Mark IV space glitter boy's particle beam cannon). Just because E-clips are used to power portable weapons doesn't mean that that's what's required to run it after all, steady power is just fine as long as it meets the power demands required by the weapon at the time.
They don't mention it, mainly because it's not important to the game. Up to you on reasoning within the reality of the game mechanics. But I want to reiterate - Palladium, and every other Game System tends to not get too technical if they don't have to. They don't mention every subsystem if there is no reason.
The only person to go into that much detail was Marker, and half of his fluff was modified to be less techno-geeky.
Except we do have examples of them mentioning it (such as the aforementioned space Glitter Boy), where the weapon systems do require special capacitors and have recharge time requirements. Since we're given exceptions it's safe to assume that these in-built systems don't require any such secondary power storage systems, in fact given we're told that their firing capacity is effectively unlimited AND only restricted per melee by the number of attacks of the pilot the idea that they'd be using some kind of battery instead of simply running straight off the power supply simply doesn't agree with that fact.
Capacitors are only shown being used for weapon systems that are so energy intensive that they require too much power for even an anti-matter power supply (for the Naruni super-heavy hover tank for example) to supply and requires storing up power. So the reason you don't see some mention of storage capacitors for power armor and vehicles to power their energy weapons is because they simply don't exist, they aren't necessary as the power supplies can supply all the on-demand power the weapons require to function.
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.
'Reality is very disappointing.' - Jonathan Switcher from Mannequin
It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
Tiree wrote:Nuclear Reactors for Energy Weapons is not likely a good idea. Mainly because it's a constant state of power, not a high burst that an energy rifle needs. Have that nuclear reactor recharge e-clips is more likely a scenario. E-Clips are more like a Capacitor that stores energy, and can release it in a short period of time. While a Nuclear Reactor is more like a Steam Engine... constantly pumping out a steady stream of power.
Some faulty reasoning there, the energy weapons in vehicles and power armor run off of a nuclear reactor with no mention of any energy capacitors required in order for them to function (outside of a few rare cases like the Mark IV space glitter boy's particle beam cannon). Just because E-clips are used to power portable weapons doesn't mean that that's what's required to run it after all, steady power is just fine as long as it meets the power demands required by the weapon at the time.
They don't mention it, mainly because it's not important to the game. Up to you on reasoning within the reality of the game mechanics. But I want to reiterate - Palladium, and every other Game System tends to not get too technical if they don't have to. They don't mention every subsystem if there is no reason.
The only person to go into that much detail was Marker, and half of his fluff was modified to be less techno-geeky.
Actually one thing amusing is NG does have some battery and solid oxide fuel cell options for many robot vehicles. There are also rules to recharge a robots battery using a connection to another robot with a nuke plant. The NG is interested in these sorts of things because the power plant is one of the more expensive parts of any robot vehicle. Triax and the CS are building strictly for their own military so there is no reason/will to cut corners to save some costs. For NG's customers many are mercs on a shoestring and many of them are willing to put up with some limitations in order to safe 5mil or more credits on the price of a combat vehicle.
One thing that pertains to the capacitor issue is some of the bots that cannot use the the battery, solid oxide options are things like the bigfoot which is a big heavy energy weapon platform and it states the reason why is the draw is to much for batteries/solid oxide and it requires the nuke plant to supply the power levels needed. This would tend to imply there is no/minimal capacitors in use because a battery/solid oxide could power up a capacitor it would just take longer.
Things like this and the solar power things are really aimed at the small adventure group/merc group/town/small city that may not have access to good resupply otherwise and is running on a shoestring and they don't need/can't afford the best they need just good enough and that is the market NG has made these things to help exploit.
Edit
One last thing in rifts black market there is already a solar power eclip recharger station its pretty pricey but using nothing but solar is capable of recharging standard eclips. There are also gasoline and nuke versions and in the description of operators one of the stated things they can do is jury rig an eclip charger off of a nuke plant of a vehicle.
Tiree wrote:Nuclear Reactors for Energy Weapons is not likely a good idea. Mainly because it's a constant state of power, not a high burst that an energy rifle needs. Have that nuclear reactor recharge e-clips is more likely a scenario. E-Clips are more like a Capacitor that stores energy, and can release it in a short period of time. While a Nuclear Reactor is more like a Steam Engine... constantly pumping out a steady stream of power.
So, use capacitors or some other buffering strategy... This is super-science we're dealing with, I'm sure that it's possible with a tiny application of Handwavium...
Tiree wrote:Nuclear Reactors for Energy Weapons is not likely a good idea. Mainly because it's a constant state of power, not a high burst that an energy rifle needs. Have that nuclear reactor recharge e-clips is more likely a scenario. E-Clips are more like a Capacitor that stores energy, and can release it in a short period of time. While a Nuclear Reactor is more like a Steam Engine... constantly pumping out a steady stream of power.
So, use capacitors or some other buffering strategy... This is super-science we're dealing with, I'm sure that it's possible with a tiny application of Handwavium...
sure, and we can make the capacitors modular for easy replacement. and lets carry a few extra, since recharge rates will sometimes be lower than the rate your using energy to shoot. and since we are carrying several, lets put them in a tough outer shell and have them slot into the weapon for easy swapping...
oh wait..
that's what E-clips are. super-science capacitors that store energy between the 'nuclear reactor makes it' stage and the 'gun uses it to shoot' stage. the difference? with e-clips your guns can be much lighter and smaller, because you don't need to fit a nuclear reactor into them.
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Tiree wrote:Nuclear Reactors for Energy Weapons is not likely a good idea. Mainly because it's a constant state of power, not a high burst that an energy rifle needs. Have that nuclear reactor recharge e-clips is more likely a scenario. E-Clips are more like a Capacitor that stores energy, and can release it in a short period of time. While a Nuclear Reactor is more like a Steam Engine... constantly pumping out a steady stream of power.
So, use capacitors or some other buffering strategy... This is super-science we're dealing with, I'm sure that it's possible with a tiny application of Handwavium...
sure, and we can make the capacitors modular for easy replacement. and lets carry a few extra, since recharge rates will sometimes be lower than the rate your using energy to shoot. and since we are carrying several, lets put them in a tough outer shell and have them slot into the weapon for easy swapping...
oh wait..
that's what E-clips are. super-science capacitors that store energy between the 'nuclear reactor makes it' stage and the 'gun uses it to shoot' stage. the difference? with e-clips your guns can be much lighter and smaller, because you don't need to fit a nuclear reactor into them.
And thank you for missing my point entirely... This is a game, where we don't have to strictly follow the science and technology we know of today. Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Space 1999, Farscape, Firefly, Dr Who, hell, ALL of sci-fi uses some kind of pseudo-science to 'explain' how things happen when they don't necessarily agree with science as we know it today.
You want to allow a character or the CS to include Special Operations versions of certain energy weapons that are powered off of micro nuclear reactors, You don't want to allow the idea in your game, fine by me. You want to make your operator install a few extra capacitors/Theotimoline Regulators/Ionic Vortex Inhibitors/Electromagnetic Pulse Buffers/Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot Evers,
Personally, I think I'll go with the Theotimoline Regulator as an homage to The Great Author, Isaac Asimov.
Besides, who says that the nuclear reactors of Rifts Earth aren't capable of the rapid change in demand of power? Where is it written? If it is written that way, how exactly does that make sense given that the Skelebots are powered from them and so is their CV-213, all my suggestion is doing is removing the Skelebot from the loop and powering the weapon directly. Since you aren't powering the robot itself continuously, doing so might mean you get as much as 5 years from that tiny reactor! (I wouldn't let my players get away with it, but maybe you're nicer than I am)
Oh, wait... It's magitechnically possible for the reactor to power the weapon if it's being used by a robot, but somehow, it becomes impossible once you remove the robot from the equation, without any way of changing that. Yeah, sure... here's my dollar.
Although it is probably pretty pointless to bring this up but most nuke plants even on ships currently work by heating water to power pretty standard steam generators. It is pretty clear that the design of a reactor that fits in even a 20 foot tall combat vehicle is a very different power generation method than what we see in things today.
There ARE examples of weapons on robot vehicles and power armor so draining they require capacitors function so we know that tech has and can be used if needed but given its rarity one would have to assume the power generation capabilities of standard vehicular nuke plants is sufficient to power most energy weaponry without the need for capacitors.
Sureshot wrote:Like the book. I really do. A few things not so much. As usual the wonky damage values continue yet again. The NG-7 Hunter does the same amount of damage as the Bigfoot yet requires only one gun. The guns on the Bigfoot imo should be doing 2D6x10 at the very least. How does a robot with more weaponry do the same amount of damage as one with a single weapon. Matthew or most likely Kevin attempt at vindication of the Behemoth. If that ugly vehicle existed imo no adventuring group would be caught dead in a machine that looks like a cross between a pregnant chicken and a box. So reading up that that their is "enough demand" to keep the design around gave me a good laugh. The Muiltibot was too strange and weird a design to be popular. Yet the Behemoth somehow is more popular. Only on Rifts Earth I suppose. In the few times I ran Rifts with my old gaming group I could not give it away. Hell they would never salvage it and blow it to pieces. And were talking about guys who if they came across the yellow brick road and it was gold would have their characters dig up and sell every brick. Made worse by plot armor as to how even evil creatures would not attack a unarmed version. Who would have thought that the most evil creatures in Rifts suddenly develop a conscience when it comes to the Behemoth. The Super-Explorer looks cooler yet not that much. A cross between a camal and a cow. I can see my group going for the EX-9. Still both too slow a vehicle. How come no one on rifts Earth has not developed a all terrien version of a tracked vehicle. Vehicles moving by leg power alone are too slow imo. So strange that no one not the CS or Triax. Or hell even the Splugorth can't develop it. Like the new weapons yet at the same time dislike that the older ones were rehashed in the book. I understand why they did it. Yet as a consumer I don't like buying any rpg product with rehash in it.
That being said the product is one I recommend it to anyone interested in getting more Rifts Books on North America. It gets a 8/10 from me.
Um, any game I play, I make sure I play a character who gets to pick up something like the Explorer. Well, it doesn't have to be the Explorer... The Triax XM-250 Hover Hospital is a better platform for most adventuring parties, even if the mounted lasers are a bit on the weak side, they do get good range against most other weapon systems on Rifts Earth. Not a Fixer, you're an Operator? Swap out the medical equipment for mechanical repair tool kits and the like. Cyber-Doc? Swap some of the medical gear out for cybernetic and robotics tool kits. You can basically do the same thing with the EX-5 except you loose speed and hover capability, well, and the built in weapons. I will also point out, the last time we saw the EX-5 Behemoth Explorer printed, it was produced by Titan Robotics (aka: Archie).
Why? Because there is no MDC camping gear or portable shelters to sleep in at night when away from towns, and I'd like my character to actually survive his first encounter with the wilderness, and you have to sleep some time, and you can't do that in body armor. You might be able to sleep in the cockpit of your giant robot, if it's big enough, but given the drawings, I'd have to say most aren't really all that comfortable, meaning you're likely to not get much rest, so you're always tired. No Thanks. I don't care that it's not "Pretty," I'm usually playing a psi-tech, or Operator, or Neo-Human/mind melter anyway, so I'll smooth out the lines with some MD-Bondo and give it a nice paint job, and improve the vehicle's PB by 5 points. "No, we aren't paint it Red. No, Black isn't acceptable either. It's going to be green and brown and other natural colors so that it blends in with terrain better." I prefer the Hover Hospital, but I'll take the EX5 if I can get one. As other's have said, it's a mobile base of operations, and it can carry a couple hover bikes and power armors for actual combat, and it has enough MDC and can be fitted with enough weapons to allow those combat assets time to deploy. Non-combat characters do like them, for the reasons that were given in the text and other places in this thread.
Anyway, I do hope that there will be more vehicles in NG2 when it comes out that support the theory that everyone's gotta sleep sometime, even if it's just a Rifts take on the "Motorhome." A few more options are always welcome!
What I don't get is why the artists seem to love putting guns in the robot's crotches. I mean, they really don't need to be so phallic, do they?
Actually there IS MDC camping gear and such... Northern Gun makes it. lol. You can find it spread over a few books but the back of Dino Swamp 1 or 2 has it in there. Small man portable camping gear. You mention that you can't sleep in armor. And I fully agree. It's one of the things that has been debated here with people claiming you could sleep in full armor for weeks, and others saying that's silly. Anyway, I fully agree with you, in the same section that goes over the tents and stuff, Northern Gun produces light mdc BDU's. I.E. Clothing/Uniforms. You can buy off the rack or you can order custom uniforms with pockets where you want them and with the cammo pattern (Or lack of pattern) To your choice. Including custom cammos. you want green and purple digital cammo for an excursion into a dimension where the plants are green and purple. NG has you covered. They even have MDC Boots where you can customize the tread and even put your unit/group symbol into the tred. lol
Not trying to be nitpicky but the inclusion of such items was by far my favorite section of the book that they appeared in. I --------FULLY------------ agree that people are not going to 'live' in their MDC armor, but a nice pair of light MDC BDUs? I could totally see them living in that and armoring up when they get to where they're going or expect to engage hostiles 'soon'.
Lt. Nyota Uhura: I'm impressed. For a moment there, I thought you were just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals.
kaid wrote:Although it is probably pretty pointless to bring this up but most nuke plants even on ships currently work by heating water to power pretty standard steam generators. It is pretty clear that the design of a reactor that fits in even a 20 foot tall combat vehicle is a very different power generation method than what we see in things today.
I don't know about pointless, but I suppose it's more of a good reminder that the vast majority of electricity we use today is generated from steam generators. Nuclear, Coal, Gas, geothermal, 89% of electricity generated in the USA, they are all basically different ways of heating water into steam and then using that to turn a turbine. If you aren't specifically getting your power from wind, hydroelectric, or solar cells, you're getting your power from a steam turbine. The reason is efficiency. Steam Turbines are very efficient, especially when used in a combined cycle generating system.
Who is to say that in the 400-ish years between now and 101PA, that steam turbines are still the most efficient? Maybe they've gone to Piezoelectric or Thermoelectric? Just because it's not efficient/practical now, doesn't mean it isn't efficient or practical in the fictitious future of Rifts Earth.
kaid wrote:There ARE examples of weapons on robot vehicles and power armor so draining they require capacitors function so we know that tech has and can be used if needed but given its rarity one would have to assume the power generation capabilities of standard vehicular nuke plants is sufficient to power most energy weaponry without the need for capacitors.
I would tend to agree. It's pointed out when it's appropriate, saying that "This weapon uses so much power, that special buffering strategies had to be used to make it possible." Palladium Books authors have, in the past, only point such things out when such is different from the norm.
Pepsi Jedi wrote:Actually there IS MDC camping gear and such... Northern Gun makes it. lol. You can find it spread over a few books but the back of Dino Swamp 1 or 2 has it in there. Small man portable camping gear. You mention that you can't sleep in armor. And I fully agree. It's one of the things that has been debated here with people claiming you could sleep in full armor for weeks, and others saying that's silly. Anyway, I fully agree with you, in the same section that goes over the tents and stuff, Northern Gun produces light mdc BDU's. I.E. Clothing/Uniforms. You can buy off the rack or you can order custom uniforms with pockets where you want them and with the cammo pattern (Or lack of pattern) To your choice. Including custom cammos. you want green and purple digital cammo for an excursion into a dimension where the plants are green and purple. NG has you covered. They even have MDC Boots where you can customize the tread and even put your unit/group symbol into the tred. lol
Not trying to be nitpicky but the inclusion of such items was by far my favorite section of the book that they appeared in. I --------FULLY------------ agree that people are not going to 'live' in their MDC armor, but a nice pair of light MDC BDUs? I could totally see them living in that and armoring up when they get to where they're going or expect to engage hostiles 'soon'.
Didn't know that stuff was in there. I flipped through them when I bought them, but was generally underwhelmed. I don't often play a TW, and there are lots better enemies for my players to face when I'm on the other side of the GM Screen...
Adventures in Dino Swamp has the NG camping equipment, but it's missing a very important stat line: SDC/MDC rating, and nothing in the description says anything about the shelters themselves being made of MDC materials. It would be logical, given the section on BDUs on the next page, but this is a game, and logic does not always follow...
I might assume that they are rated for a couple hundred pounds of weight before collapsing, and maybe 50 MDC? but thats a guess... Then again, given the extremely light weight and how inexpensive they are, maybe not...
I believe Merc Ops also has some NG MDC tents. They are pretty light MDC I think like 20 or so but Merc ops is a good book for Misc equipment which is pretty handy. I am annoyed I waited so long to get that book as overall it is quite useful.
kaid wrote:I believe Merc Ops also has some NG MDC tents. They are pretty light MDC I think like 20 or so but Merc ops is a good book for Misc equipment which is pretty handy. I am annoyed I waited so long to get that book as overall it is quite useful.
I completely missed that, Thank You! *goes to read that section in detail*
Just got the book. What a Godsend. The only problem I have with it is no new body armor visuals. They give stats for the NG 122-EXO but but I wanted to see about 3 new looking body armor suits. (stat copy-paste is fine) I think it just gives players a better feel for what their character looks like. I hope they give us that in NG2.
OVERALL I give it a solid 8. 10 for player groups who want to focus on exploration. The new behemoth is a must have for long expeditions.
Great artwork. Wonderful Lore. Realistic O.C.C. options for players who want to be/work for NG. Did I mention the gear! TONS AND TONS OF TOYS!
I'm curious. You give it an 8 of 10. Which is good. Why not higher, if the only complaint you had was lack of visuals on the body armor, that seems like a rather minute complaint to knock 20% off the top of a rating?
Lt. Nyota Uhura: I'm impressed. For a moment there, I thought you were just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals.
Well..........I really wanted another central character write up. One with story potential oozing out of them. The book provides a lot of npc's but their personality doesn't just fly off the pages like a Doctor Kenneth Reid, Emperor Prosek or my favorite of all time Doctor Desmond Bradford.
I wish they would of had some sort of a mission review log from Andrea Callister (Chief of the LPO) in the book. Even though she is Unprincipled, I think she could be a wonderful antagonist for many a player group especially if they are somehow mistaken for a pirate gang she has been hunting.
So that is one point. The other is no attention to new body armor. Do you need anymore justification on my opinion? 8 out of 10. All in all a good buy.
Morik wrote:The other is no attention to new body armor.
I hear a bunch of new body armor and power armor is coming in NG 2
Zarathustra was extremely accurate. He was talking about you, man. Whoops! Looks like I was wrong about where Mos Eisley's located. Victorious on Final Jeopardy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pilrszSXGiI
Me either! I was pretty excited about how NG-1 opened my mind to the idea of full-on lances of combat robots on the 109 PA battlefield, I can't wait to see what the new body armor and power armor does for (or would "to" be more appropriate? ) my players.
Zarathustra was extremely accurate. He was talking about you, man. Whoops! Looks like I was wrong about where Mos Eisley's located. Victorious on Final Jeopardy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pilrszSXGiI
Me either! I was pretty excited about how NG-1 opened my mind to the idea of full-on lances of combat robots on the 109 PA battlefield, I can't wait to see what the new body armor and power armor does for (or would "to" be more appropriate? ) my players.
I am not sure how many new sets of armor will be in NG2 probably a compilation of the sets from new west/merc ops/mercenaries. Really the merc ops armors are all pretty damn good not sure if we would see any major improvements to those. One of the nice things about NG1 and NG2 is getting all the NG stuff wrapped up into a couple locations so its easier to find all the stuff.
DhAkael wrote:I'm kinda interested to see what the "BLUE" hawk powersuit has going for it above the Red-Hawk
Yup the blue hawk is mentioned a lot in the prototype I am assuming its either an upgrade(most likely) or a specialized side grade to the red hawk.
From the prototype it sounded though that NG was pretty nervous about freaking the CS out making a flying power armor that is to close to SAMAS in power so it may wind up being more of just a side grade weapon option variant rather than risk CS smiting them.
Whelp finally got my NG1 hardcover woots now the prototype book gets to slink into its plastic sheath home for safe keeping. Grr now I have to wait 4 hours so I can go home and read the darn thing see what has been changed/added since the prototype.
I guess I am going to have to weigh in on the down side for this book. For me I own ever Rifts book that has been published but this one was marginal. I love the history, etc sections but the stats for the mechs left me cold. I am fed up with 30 foot robots that do no more damage with their giant cannons than a laser pulse rifle. I like much of the artwork but as I read each design the first thought in my mind was how the stats were so mediocre. I sincerely believe Palladium could dramatically improve its products by having someone who knows the books help their writers get the tech consistent. I am a professional armament engineer and I assure you the DoD does not buy cannons that only penetrate as well as a rifle. When something that blatant pops up the system gets upgraded or cancelled. I would have preferred fewer base designs with variant weapon load outs for different missions. I am not buying NG2 until I hear a whole lot more about what is in it. Only a few of the NG1 designs will be available in my campaign because that's all I have time to do new stats for.
Overall I find the damages at least consistent with the other vehicles in the game system. The biggest problem over the years is the hand held weapons crept up in damage WAY to much and it muddied the waters a lot. Back when your main rifle did maybe 4d6 MDC the weapon damages of the vehicles made reasonable sense in the game system.
For me I am okay with the damages in general but there are a few things that do make me wince a bit. Okay we have the big foot a mech design I like the looks of a lot and seems neat primary heavy energy weapon platform. The funny thing is the plasma guns it uses do 1d6x10 damage each which is pretty good at a 2000 foot range which is also pretty reasonable. The wincing comes in if you look at some of the other designs I think its the volcano has a single heavy plasma cannon that has 500 foot longer range AND does more damage from a single shot. Seriously if you have the capability to make that weapon why in gods name are you not using two of those as the cannons on the bigfoot. Frankly if I run a camaign I am just going to consider the bigfoot as listed the block one version and the block 2 version would be using twin mounted volcano cannons. Block three would be the kinetic weapon varient of mounting two of the Hunter mobile gun cannons. Dual mounts of those hunter mobile gun cannons on a platform like the bigfoot makes all kinds of sense and would do damage enough to make anybody happy.
I don't know if it happened in this case, but often the writers turn in works. Then before they're published Kevin changes stats. I don't have the original text or anything to say this 'for sure' happened with NG1, but it's happened with many other books.
NG is supposed to be a bit behind the CS and Traix. Chances are that the stats were slammed with a nerf bat before publishing.
People aren't wrong when they notice vehicles with 10 to 20 foot barrels on their cannons should do more damage than a guy with an infantry rifle. This isn't a "Northern Gun, book" problem. It's endemic to the entire line. You see it everywhere. So I don't fault Northern Gun for being like every other rifts book out there with robot vehicles or combat mech etc.
Calling NG marginal, because the stats are consistent with the other 50 books in the line is kinda unfair to the book.
Lt. Nyota Uhura: I'm impressed. For a moment there, I thought you were just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals.
I am guessing that some after submission editing is probably where you get the weirdness between the volcanos cannon and the big foots(bigfeets?) plasma guns. Given the NG1 book itself gives stat revisions depending on the generation of the robot vehicle easy enough to do something like just swap the stats on the big foot cannons for the volcano's one. It is not that much more damaging or that much longer range it just looks like a moderate upgrade from the plasma cannons the big foot uses.
And really now that I have the full book the CS main advantage in robot vehicles is pretty slim. Mostly its a bit more armor on some of their main front line robot and faster speeds in general.
The NG weapons are pretty well comparable to anything the CS damage wise. The only thing they really lack is large range artillery cannon like the IAR1.
One interesting thing is most previous mechs designs from other factions tend to focus on one main weapon for a robot vehicle and then some sub weapons. Most of the new NG designs tend to have two or more main cannons in some cases many more so they have a great deal more redundancy and weapon options than most other manufacturers provide.
I thought balance wise they overall did a pretty good job almost all the mechs are clearly better than the first generation CS designs armor and capability wise but still are a bit below the top of the line models CS and Triax has to offer.
One mech I find interesting and weird is the upgraded multibot. When the speeder is mated with its robot armature it is the premier long range artillery mech of the NG line. It packs a bunch of medium and short range missiles as well as a large number of mini missiles. When the speeder part detatches it is now a pretty heavily armed fast combat hover apc. It is actually something the modern CS military is lacking which is a missile heavy mech design. The old URA1 was a good versitile design with mini short and medium range missiles but most of the modern CS mechs don't pack much more than mini missiles. I think the skull smasher is the only new design that packs any of the longer range missiles.
kaid wrote:I thought balance wise they overall did a pretty good job almost all the mechs are clearly better than the first generation CS designs armor and capability wise but still are a bit below the top of the line models CS and Triax has to offer.
Which is exactly what they were going for.
Lt. Nyota Uhura: I'm impressed. For a moment there, I thought you were just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals.
kaid wrote:I thought balance wise they overall did a pretty good job almost all the mechs are clearly better than the first generation CS designs armor and capability wise but still are a bit below the top of the line models CS and Triax has to offer.
Which is exactly what they were going for.
I am really curious now about NG2 the biggest differences in the older designs power wise was always more highly slanted in the power armor department. That is where lighter stronger alloys in theory should shine the most and I will be curious what the final numbers on things like the bluehawk wind up being. It will be interesting because the CS seem a LOT more touchy on things infringing on their SAMAS than they ever were with their spider skull walker or URA-1.
I strongly doubt we will see any flying NG unit that comes close to the super samas. Probably at best they may aim for matching quality with the triax older predator model or old style samas as there are the twin issues of what can they do tech wise and what DARE they do tech wise comes into play.
The other question is do they bother competing in that market much when their Samson line while not flight capable is damn near as fast with its run speed as the older samas were flying. Maybe upgrading the samsons systems to something like a heavily armored terrain hopper. Not true flight capable but faster and more agile without tripping off the KILL YOU DIE DIE DIE instinct of the CS.
Several things stand out to me about Northern Gun:
The Good: Where do I begin?
+The cover. It's great to have a quality wraparound piece. Palladium's books are books I like to keep, and it's nice having more art and less ad-space on the outside that gets dated in a few years. +The descriptions of Northern Gun as a company/government. The location details are rich in both local character and physical features. There's an impressive amount of research that went into this book, down to the correct names and locations of real-life iron ore deposits. I also liked the passages that focus on commerce by sea and land. +The OCCs are appropriate to the setting: techno-centered classes with plenty of abilities and at least one strong area of specialization. +New types of tech that make lots of sense, and add some nice depth: Hover Trains, Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, and Solar-powered weapons are great ideas. +The robots are well-conceived and balanced. Chuck Walton has captured the "Heavy Metal" look of Northern Gun in a way that looks and feels real. I'm particularly fond of the new behemoths, the medical robots, and of course, the GunWolf (Rawr!). +The section on bounties is good, though the rates seem on the low side considering how much it costs to keep equipped in Rifts. Life as a merc must be pretty rough. (50 credits for a Xiticix head? 100 credits for a Gargoyle? I hope you can kill them without burning up ammo or taking any damage!) +The art in general is excellent.
The bad: I'm having to nit-pick here. -The particle beam long-guns seem too similar in performance (damage in particular) to warrant a medium, a heavy, and an impractically-big version. -The scaling seems off to me, though this is true of virtually every Rifts book out there. A 26-foot beachmaster robot is about 4 times the height of an armored 6-ft man (extra inches for boots/helmet). Since it's a proportionally-sized robot, it's also 4 times the width and 4 times the length. With armor plates of the same relative dimensions (and the same metallurgical make-up), this robot should have 4x4x4 = 64 times the damage capacity of an armored man (not counting any internal MDC components, just the shell). The beachmaster has 540 MDC, which is only 5-8 times that of an armored man. It should be about 10x higher. -The only flavor text is Erin Tarn's (again, true of virtually every Rifts book out there) (like the scaling issue, it's a pet peeve; I prefer fresh perspectives and vignettes centered on anyone else's perspective. The quirky: There are some new oddities to this one... ? There are more good-alignment NPC's than in any sourcebook I can think of, probably more than any two or three other Rifts books I've seen. Most of the OCC's are dominated by good alignments. Apparently the most moral society in the world is also its most-famous arms dealer. ? I get that this book was crowd-funded, but holy cow! The name inserts are everywhere! It's neat, but it occasionally breaks my willing suspension of disbelief in a few spots where it feels forced. Every robot, and most weapons, have two names plugged in as their designers. I challenge anyone on these boards to name the lead designers of their cars or their guns (if they own any). The name inserts work well for NPCs that might have a valid reason for existing in-game, but even here, they're a little odd, because the full name is always included, as opposed to other Palladium titles, where minor characters who aren't statted out rarely get the full name treatment (and many others only have it listed as a "true" or "full" name in small text amid a full set of stats)
The "Come on and publish NG2 already!": !There's scant information about the Mantistique Imperium. They show where Mantistique is, but include nothing else. !The only vehicles and body armor are for the police OCC. !There's no power armor. !There aren't any built-in adventures or mini-campaigns. This isn't a serious flaw, but I'd like to see some in NG2.
While it's still one of my favorite rifts books I have to agree with Hotrod about the scaling issue. I do feel some designs could've both stronger in MDC and weapons damage. Overall though a great book. I hope ng2 will not be too delayed.
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Yeah there is a scaling issue, but it's found all through rifts and experienced game masters, sadly expect it and usually house rule it.
As for the P-beam guns, most people that read it agree that the 'big one' got the nerf bat for being 'too strong' or 'as strong or stronger than CS or NGR stuff. It just makes no sense when you read the stats. I'll throw an extra die on there to have some reason to use the bloody thing.
Lt. Nyota Uhura: I'm impressed. For a moment there, I thought you were just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals.
Pepsi Jedi wrote:Yeah there is a scaling issue, but it's found all through rifts and experienced game masters, sadly expect it and usually house rule it.
As for the P-beam guns, most people that read it agree that the 'big one' got the nerf bat for being 'too strong' or 'as strong or stronger than CS or NGR stuff. It just makes no sense when you read the stats. I'll throw an extra die on there to have some reason to use the bloody thing.
Yup pretty much this. One thing to note though is the more recent books at least have made the scaling 5-8 times more than a foot trooper. Look at the old URA-1 it had I think 350 MDC main body so the big iron at least is a bit more reasonable durability wise. I think they did about as much as they could scaling wise without just flat invalidating a lot of older books. They have a couple designs in the 700+ MDC range and the blocker which is only at 570 actually winds up being one of the most durable mechs with its huge shield. One of the biggest banes of anythings existence in Rifts is alpha strikes of missiles specifically mini missiles. The blockers shield is excellent protection from these it takes half damage from missile strikes AND negates the blast radius. Having a 300 MDC shield which works like 450 MDC vs missiles and is totally disposable makes it a really tough customer.
One random note about scaling vehicle scaling throughout the entire production run of rifts has actually maintained a great deal of consistency. Where the scaling started feeling off is when the infantry weapons/armor crept up over time in some of the early books and once that genie was out of the bottle they did not appear to want to retroactively nerf them.
When rifts originally was released most people were running around sporting armors that had 50ish MDC and rare people had the 70-80 MDC heavy suites. Even in the CS military the medium armor which was I think 50 or 60 MDC was the common type of armor with the heavy armor reserved for front line shock troopers. So back in that environment having robots that had 350 MDC and weapons that did 1d6x10 was pretty reasonable. Body armor back then could absorb a few normal infantry weapon hits or maybe one vehicle grade strike before they turned into red mist. But with the introduction of the wilks pulse rifle in I think the first source book you now had infantry easily found weapons that did vehicle range damage on pulse fire mode. So the infantry armor crept up to allow people to actually survive a couple hits.
This upward creep of infantry weapons and armor is the real issue in the system if there is a scaling problem at all not really so much with the robots/power armor.
Just started to skim through my PDF version last night. I did find something off. Several OCCs get secondary skills at first level, then none for any other level. Intentional?
I think it's intentional. These OCCs are company-driven, with an impressive, though highly-standardized set of OCC skills. Considering their heavy load of skills and abilities otherwise, I think that's a reasonable approach. NG employees are not allowed to pick up new hobbies (unless they're OCC-related). Besides, I generally use secondary skill selections for stat-boosters and skills that don't depend heavily on % values to work, which is a short list anyway.
Some of the OCC special abilities are pretty potent indeed. LPO's get no strength or accuracing penalties when using NG weapons, Bush Pilots can pilot any vehicle, Police officers (investigators) can have a psychic OCC of choice for powers and get some nice policing skills to boot, and the Robot Control OCC is a combat-focused Operator/Psi-tech.
On the upside, these characters start out ready to rock. On the downside, they won't gain as much, ability-wise, as many other characters do, but this is a common observation for many Rifts OCCs.
Hotrod wrote:I think it's intentional. These OCCs are company-driven, with an impressive, though highly-standardized set of OCC skills. Considering their heavy load of skills and abilities otherwise, I think that's a reasonable approach. NG employees are not allowed to pick up new hobbies (unless they're OCC-related). Besides, I generally use secondary skill selections for stat-boosters and skills that don't depend heavily on % values to work, which is a short list anyway.
Some of the OCC special abilities are pretty potent indeed. LPO's get no strength or accuracing penalties when using NG weapons, Bush Pilots can pilot any vehicle, Police officers (investigators) can have a psychic OCC of choice for powers and get some nice policing skills to boot, and the Robot Control OCC is a combat-focused Operator/Psi-tech.
On the upside, these characters start out ready to rock. On the downside, they won't gain as much, ability-wise, as many other characters do, but this is a common observation for many Rifts OCCs.
I would agree it is probably intentional and given how skill heavy most of those OCC are and what stuff they have access to its not really very necessary. Overall the NG OCC's are all pretty darn good. Heck even the sales guy is pretty bad ass given that they have at least basic training in everything NG has to offer and can pick up robot/power armor/tank piloting/combat skills immediately.
I am a real fan of the robot control OCC. They have some really slick options for psionics if you roll/choose. I really like the one that is heavy on telekenisis with telemechanics. normal TK/super TK/ bio manipulation and a few other powers. One of the big challenges in field repairs/ammo swapping is getting heavy awkward loads into position on giant ass robots. Super TK would be really damn nice for combat ammo swapping on a mech. That and bio manipulation gives some incredible combat potentency even against biological targets.
The LPO is a great special forces/secret agent type OCC they can start with HtH commando highly trained in the entire NG line from power armor/robot vehicles and all the weapons. Great for stealth missions and can bring the thunder with heavy mechs/power armor if needed.
kaid wrote:One random note about scaling vehicle scaling throughout the entire production run of rifts has actually maintained a great deal of consistency. Where the scaling started feeling off is when the infantry weapons/armor crept up over time in some of the early books and once that genie was out of the bottle they did not appear to want to retroactively nerf them.
When rifts originally was released most people were running around sporting armors that had 50ish MDC and rare people had the 70-80 MDC heavy suites. Even in the CS military the medium armor which was I think 50 or 60 MDC was the common type of armor with the heavy armor reserved for front line shock troopers. So back in that environment having robots that had 350 MDC and weapons that did 1d6x10 was pretty reasonable. Body armor back then could absorb a few normal infantry weapon hits or maybe one vehicle grade strike before they turned into red mist. But with the introduction of the wilks pulse rifle in I think the first source book you now had infantry easily found weapons that did vehicle range damage on pulse fire mode. So the infantry armor crept up to allow people to actually survive a couple hits.
This upward creep of infantry weapons and armor is the real issue in the system if there is a scaling problem at all not really so much with the robots/power armor.
You make a good point, though there are some exceptions. RMB's Flying Titans and SAMAS are only a little larger than a plain old infantry fighter, but can take and dish out a lot more damage. The Glitterboy scales a little higher still, and it can slug it out with robots far above its size.
You're right that infantry weapons seem to have scaled up. This is especially true when you consider the respective price tags of infantry weapons and giant robots. Even weak robots are far more expensive to buy, maintain, and load than a platoon of foot-soldiers. Imagine what 30 troops in plastic-man armor, properly spread-out, with decent weapons, could do against any robot in the game.
It seems that Kevin made a design choice from the start to give parties of dismounted characters a reasonable chance against the big robots of Rifts, which is why their weapons and armor are so underwhelming for their size. If a UAR-1 had 3500 MDC and its guns did 2D6x10 or more per burst, most straight-up fights would be a losing proposition. Even as they are, enemy robots are still a serious threat, which is probably why infantry weapons have crept up some.
Hotrod wrote:You're right that infantry weapons seem to have scaled up.
Some infantry weapons have scaled up, but removing the ability of most to burst fire actually brought the weapon damages on old-style (non-pulse) weapons WAY down.
The body armour jump of 35 being light, 50-60 being medium/normal and 70-80 being heavy, to 9=80-100 being normal pretty much changed the game. Mostly the problem that came up was even afterwards when new robots were scaled up, even if their MDC was effectively doubled (as the MDC of body armour was) it wasn't enough.
kaid wrote:One random note about scaling vehicle scaling throughout the entire production run of rifts has actually maintained a great deal of consistency. Where the scaling started feeling off is when the infantry weapons/armor crept up over time in some of the early books and once that genie was out of the bottle they did not appear to want to retroactively nerf them.
When rifts originally was released most people were running around sporting armors that had 50ish MDC and rare people had the 70-80 MDC heavy suites. Even in the CS military the medium armor which was I think 50 or 60 MDC was the common type of armor with the heavy armor reserved for front line shock troopers. So back in that environment having robots that had 350 MDC and weapons that did 1d6x10 was pretty reasonable. Body armor back then could absorb a few normal infantry weapon hits or maybe one vehicle grade strike before they turned into red mist. But with the introduction of the wilks pulse rifle in I think the first source book you now had infantry easily found weapons that did vehicle range damage on pulse fire mode. So the infantry armor crept up to allow people to actually survive a couple hits.
This upward creep of infantry weapons and armor is the real issue in the system if there is a scaling problem at all not really so much with the robots/power armor.
You make a good point, though there are some exceptions. RMB's Flying Titans and SAMAS are only a little larger than a plain old infantry fighter, but can take and dish out a lot more damage. The Glitterboy scales a little higher still, and it can slug it out with robots far above its size.
You're right that infantry weapons seem to have scaled up. This is especially true when you consider the respective price tags of infantry weapons and giant robots. Even weak robots are far more expensive to buy, maintain, and load than a platoon of foot-soldiers. Imagine what 30 troops in plastic-man armor, properly spread-out, with decent weapons, could do against any robot in the game.
It seems that Kevin made a design choice from the start to give parties of dismounted characters a reasonable chance against the big robots of Rifts, which is why their weapons and armor are so underwhelming for their size. If a UAR-1 had 3500 MDC and its guns did 2D6x10 or more per burst, most straight-up fights would be a losing proposition. Even as they are, enemy robots are still a serious threat, which is probably why infantry weapons have crept up some.
That is my impression as well the basic balancing is for effectiveness and survivability of foot troopers/player characters. If you look at the robots damage wise they have not really inflated over the years at all. You wind up with 1d6x10 which was common on the sampson and the ura-1 still being the go to vehicle cannon damage range. The power outliers have remained pretty consistent with only the glitterboy being the big odd duck. It has more MDC than the vast majority of even huge robot vehicles some of the new CS and NG models only finally come to close parity MDC wise to a glitterboy and the GB's main gun is the top end balancing point. When your starting balance point is around 1d4x10 for vehicle weapons and your top end that is rarely matched is 3d6x10 it has kept damage ratings of vehicles effectively flat.
Personal weapons though really popped up pretty fast they went from most doing 3d6 or 4d6 with the heavy plasma weapons doing 6d6 to pistols that do 5d6 damage and pulse weapons commonly doing 1d4 or 1d6x10.
Overall I don't mind it to much they caught the inflation that started up bad around SA1 and SA2 and stomped it pretty hard and after that have kept mudflation pretty well in check overall. It does lead to some eyebrow raising but if one is going to play rifts some of it has to just be accepted as the price of keeping sanity and game balance on a game that has been running for 20+ years with basically the same core rules. The fact I can pick up one of my first rift books plunk it down into modern campaign and have it still pretty well balanced and not in need of drastic conversions/tweaking is bloody amazing.
kaid wrote:One random note about scaling vehicle scaling throughout the entire production run of rifts has actually maintained a great deal of consistency. Where the scaling started feeling off is when the infantry weapons/armor crept up over time in some of the early books and once that genie was out of the bottle they did not appear to want to retroactively nerf them.
When rifts originally was released most people were running around sporting armors that had 50ish MDC and rare people had the 70-80 MDC heavy suites. Even in the CS military the medium armor which was I think 50 or 60 MDC was the common type of armor with the heavy armor reserved for front line shock troopers. So back in that environment having robots that had 350 MDC and weapons that did 1d6x10 was pretty reasonable. Body armor back then could absorb a few normal infantry weapon hits or maybe one vehicle grade strike before they turned into red mist. But with the introduction of the wilks pulse rifle in I think the first source book you now had infantry easily found weapons that did vehicle range damage on pulse fire mode. So the infantry armor crept up to allow people to actually survive a couple hits.
This upward creep of infantry weapons and armor is the real issue in the system if there is a scaling problem at all not really so much with the robots/power armor.
You make a good point, though there are some exceptions. RMB's Flying Titans and SAMAS are only a little larger than a plain old infantry fighter, but can take and dish out a lot more damage. The Glitterboy scales a little higher still, and it can slug it out with robots far above its size.
You're right that infantry weapons seem to have scaled up. This is especially true when you consider the respective price tags of infantry weapons and giant robots. Even weak robots are far more expensive to buy, maintain, and load than a platoon of foot-soldiers. Imagine what 30 troops in plastic-man armor, properly spread-out, with decent weapons, could do against any robot in the game.
It seems that Kevin made a design choice from the start to give parties of dismounted characters a reasonable chance against the big robots of Rifts, which is why their weapons and armor are so underwhelming for their size. If a UAR-1 had 3500 MDC and its guns did 2D6x10 or more per burst, most straight-up fights would be a losing proposition. Even as they are, enemy robots are still a serious threat, which is probably why infantry weapons have crept up some.
That is my impression as well the basic balancing is for effectiveness and survivability of foot troopers/player characters. If you look at the robots damage wise they have not really inflated over the years at all. You wind up with 1d6x10 which was common on the sampson and the ura-1 still being the go to vehicle cannon damage range. The power outliers have remained pretty consistent with only the glitterboy being the big odd duck. It has more MDC than the vast majority of even huge robot vehicles some of the new CS and NG models only finally come to close parity MDC wise to a glitterboy and the GB's main gun is the top end balancing point. When your starting balance point is around 1d4x10 for vehicle weapons and your top end that is rarely matched is 3d6x10 it has kept damage ratings of vehicles effectively flat.
Personal weapons though really popped up pretty fast they went from most doing 3d6 or 4d6 with the heavy plasma weapons doing 6d6 to pistols that do 5d6 damage and pulse weapons commonly doing 1d4 or 1d6x10.
Overall I don't mind it to much they caught the inflation that started up bad around SA1 and SA2 and stomped it pretty hard and after that have kept mudflation pretty well in check overall. It does lead to some eyebrow raising but if one is going to play rifts some of it has to just be accepted as the price of keeping sanity and game balance on a game that has been running for 20+ years with basically the same core rules. The fact I can pick up one of my first rift books plunk it down into modern campaign and have it still pretty well balanced and not in need of drastic conversions/tweaking is bloody amazing.
SA1 and SA2 have been.... what's the polite way to put it..... Generally disavowed by Kevin/Palladium. Not total "It never happened" but there's notations in the GM Guide about how that stuff was crazy powerful and something about the author being indulged or something? (I don't have the GM guide open to remember the right exact words)
I think the GM guide tells you to reduce all the weapons by a fourth or so and the MDC by 25% or more? It's been a few years since I looked but it's in there if anyone else cares to.
Lt. Nyota Uhura: I'm impressed. For a moment there, I thought you were just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals.
Crazy South America, with their Anti-Tank Lasers weapons doing 3D6x10+20/clip, when the JA-11 in the RMB does 3D6x10/clip. Clearly SA is WAY overpowered... They have Infantry armour with 60 MD average! And a super-heavy infantry armour with 100mdc!
It sure is a good thing that it was pointed out how crazy out-of-whack the numbers in that book were, and that the game wasn't allowed to spiral out of control to those numbers...
Eashamahel wrote:Crazy South America, with their Anti-Tank Lasers weapons doing 3D6x10+20/clip, when the JA-11 in the RMB does 3D6x10/clip. Clearly SA is WAY overpowered... They have Infantry armour with 60 MD average! And a super-heavy infantry armour with 100mdc!
It sure is a good thing that it was pointed out how crazy out-of-whack the numbers in that book were, and that the game wasn't allowed to spiral out of control to those numbers...
There are two ways a system can go one is things just keep getting incrementally more powerful as new stuff is added and that is basically what the writer of SA1 and SA2 thought the direction was going to be. The other path is to try to keep this kind of stat inflation in check which is the way eventually palladium chose to go. And over the years adding a ton of content has managed other than a few weird blips and bloops here and there to do it successfully. You do wind up with a few issues such as the big vehicles are not quite as durable or hard hitting as one may logically expect but overall they have been able to manage their power levels pretty well.
Triax and the NGR has both weapons and armour (infantry) that is more damaging than what the CS has, until War Campaign came out and bumped the CS up even farther. Japan is the same way.
South America is hardly out of control in comparison to these other, early books. For some reason, it is just singled out (SERIOUSLY singled out).
Seems like an easy fix, though I wonder how much trouble a computerized targeting system firing a laser would actually have hitting a human sized target, even at max range. No delay, no 'firing arc', just 'target lock'->'hit' at the speed of light.
Evil_Brak wrote:One fix I've been tossing about is that Heavy Vehicles such as Robot Vehicles tanks and large transports take 1/2 damage from infantry weapons and any vehicle weapons who's purpose isn't Anti-Armor. While Doubling the range of most Heavy Vehicle weapons and doubling the damage they do to infantry targets but giving them a steep penalty to hit.
I would like anyone's input on this idea.
One of the things I normally do that helps out some is for infantry trying to shoot at moving targets you need to use all the hitting moving target penalties. So if you are trying to shoot a samas and you are a foot trooper it is pretty hard to do so. Vehicles with weapon systems and radar I rule cancel out these penalties otherwise dog fighting between flying power armor is basically nobody hitting anything but air.
This tends to make the power armor/robots more accurate and harder to hit targets which ups their usefulness and survivability but not to unbalancing.
Yeah, sure... here's my dollar.
) my players.
