Boom gun question

[wyrmraker]

you'd still have a problem, because the human inside the armour will still generate heat. very quickly, it will get uncomfortable.

If we assume the PA/Bot has systems in place to convert the head produced by the nuclear reactions into electricity, we could assume those systems also convert heat produced by the body into energy too. The 'must expel heat' thing only applies if we assume heat has to be expelled to be removed, rather than converted into usable electric energy.

Perhaps the suit converts the heat generated inside by the pilot to additional electrical energy

Yes, this.

there simply is no room in these suits for any kind of steam turbine system or anything that would cause much in the way of exhaust.

Perhaps they have means of converting the heat besides turbines which are beyond our understanding but were invented in the golden age.

yeah, as pointed out, climate control does not (and, based on our current understanding of science, cannot) destroy heat energy. it has to move it somewhere.

Yeah but there's the option of converting energy into an alternate form rather than destroying it or expelling it.

You can't generate electricity directly from a heat source.

You need a heat differential to create electricity from a heat source. As heat is transferred from the hot side to the cold side, the cold side must get rid of the heat or else it will cease to be cold and you will cease generating electricity. This heat that is radiated away is what makes you visible to anyone who can see in the lower spectrum.

--flatline

My only response to that is 'Yet'.

And debating physics in Rifts is a fool's errand, honestly. Most thing in Rifts do not follow the Laws of Physics as they are currently understood. Instead they tend to follow the Rule of Cool.

[flatline]

you'd still have a problem, because the human inside the armour will still generate heat. very quickly, it will get uncomfortable.

If we assume the PA/Bot has systems in place to convert the head produced by the nuclear reactions into electricity, we could assume those systems also convert heat produced by the body into energy too. The 'must expel heat' thing only applies if we assume heat has to be expelled to be removed, rather than converted into usable electric energy.

Perhaps the suit converts the heat generated inside by the pilot to additional electrical energy

Yes, this.

there simply is no room in these suits for any kind of steam turbine system or anything that would cause much in the way of exhaust.

Perhaps they have means of converting the heat besides turbines which are beyond our understanding but were invented in the golden age.

yeah, as pointed out, climate control does not (and, based on our current understanding of science, cannot) destroy heat energy. it has to move it somewhere.

Yeah but there's the option of converting energy into an alternate form rather than destroying it or expelling it.

You can't generate electricity directly from a heat source.

You need a heat differential to create electricity from a heat source. As heat is transferred from the hot side to the cold side, the cold side must get rid of the heat or else it will cease to be cold and you will cease generating electricity. This heat that is radiated away is what makes you visible to anyone who can see in the lower spectrum.

--flatline

My only response to that is 'Yet'.

And debating physics in Rifts is a fool's errand, honestly. Most thing in Rifts do not follow the Laws of Physics as they are currently understood. Instead they tend to follow the Rule of Cool.

That may be true of canon, but some of us have made far reaching changes to help to address this issue. Simply reducing the energy levels of the setting goes a long way toward reconciling the more egregious transgressions.

--flatline

[Shark_Force]

if that sort of thing does become possible, then i anticipate the ramifications of having that level of technology would be so completely absurd that we can't even begin to comprehend some of the things it would make possible. if someone had that level of technology, i suspect we wouldn't even be able to recognize most devices they produce. having that level of ability and then relying on other rifts technology would be like finding cavemen that have developed satellite communications, but otherwise continue to use clubs, live in unfurnished caves, wear untanned animal hides, etc.

in short, the notion that physics was so radically rewritten and the *only* implication was that thermal invisibility is possible simply boggles the mind.

[Tor]

Most thing in Rifts do not follow the Laws of Physics as they are currently understood. Instead they tend to follow the Rule of Cool.

Especially appropriate title considering the subject matter.

[Alrik Vas]

Any power armor would give off enough of a signal that the radiation would be detectable from a great distance. This doesn't mean the party scouting them would be able to identify what they are immediately. A squadron of power armor would produce an enormous IR signature, and anyone looking for them would notice it.

Of course, there are ways to mask yourself to detection. Mostly through jamming or by oversaturating the area with heat, making it nearly impossible for you to be pinpointed.

Using plasma fires is a good way for physically invisible target (like many demons can do at will) to advance without being attacked by direct fire. Power armor could do the same, think of it like a smoke screen...but near-apocalyptic in scale.

[glitterboy2098]

the problem with using other sources of heat like fire or jammers to hide your location... it kinda shouts "START LOOKING HERE!" to anyone trying to find you.

[Alrik Vas]

Of course, but you weren't really able to hide unless they weren't paying attention to thermal optics in the first place. If you know your enemy and his capabilities, you can act accordingly when it's time to engage.

[Shark_Force]

also, while it isn't remotely clear how long it takes, and there aren't any solid rules on it, environmental armour doesn't provide indefinite protection against SDC heat.

at some point, the cooling system actually does get overwhelmed, and the person inside the suit will cook. so sitting in a gigantic fire for an extended period of time is not only a poor way of concealing your exact location, it is also going to eventually kill you unless you're immune to heat.

[Alrik Vas]

Okay...so, let me set the scene...because people are assuming a lot here.

You are in a position behind a hill. The enemy has discerned your location and they are on another hill. They have range advantage. In order to conceal yourself from direct fire, as you can't hide from thermals in your power armor, you decide to make a huge plasma fire with a missile or some shots from a plasma ejector, what have you. Using the heat as cover, you move up into your engagement range so you'll be on equal ground. or even better, you use the fire as a distraction so other elements with much smaller heat signatures can flank.

It's just a tactic, it's not "hey guys, let's hide in this fire, they'll never find us in there!" no, it doesn't work like that. Besides, anything hot enough to confuse a reactor's heat would deal damage to your PA anyhow. You're taking small damage so you don't take big damage as you advance.

I also had a group of brodkil do this vs my players. It was at night and they had thermal sensors and goggles (they were wth an NGR recon platoon as well, who all have the cool cyclops multi-optic helmets), thogh the demons could turn invisible, they know it won't help against thermal, so they caused a huge fire in the forest at the base of the hill the platoon was camped near. The enemy knew they were coming, but the brodkil had cover so they were able to close range and engage the humans in melee, where they had the advantage.

It was a crazy fight because of it.

[Shark_Force]

if your reactor were throwing off more heat than an SDC fire, such that regular SDC fires could not adequately hide it, then anyone standing near said reactor without proper protection would be taking damage.

as there is no text noting that if you stand near an active reactor without environmental armour you will die a horrible fiery death, i presume that is not the cast. so yeah, just plain old ordinary SDC fires will do the job just fine. or at least, they will once your armour is warm enough (or if there's enough intervening heat in between you and the sensor). the thing with thermal is that it spots differences in heat. it will spot a cool object just as easily as it will spot a warm object.

[Alrik Vas]

So there's no upper or lower limit to thermal detection?

[flatline]

So there's no upper or lower limit to thermal detection?

There is, but it's not a limit set by high or low temperatures. At least not the way that it seems like you're thinking.

Sensors have a sensitivity, which determines how small a thermal gradient can be and still be detectable. Sensors also have a resolution which determines how small of an area can be measured independent of the areas around it (the "pixel size", if you will).

Gradient detection is actually very powerful and difficult to trick. If your invisible demons are walking through a fire, they will be likely be visible to thermal detection because their bodies are blocking the IR from the flame behind them. They'll show up as a dark spot compared to the flame around them.

I've always wondered why there aren't invisibility spells for other spectrums. What makes visible light so special that we can be transparent to it, but not IR, UV, or anything else?

--flatline

[Alrik Vas]

It's a good question. It's magic, you'd figure they'd just blanket it as such with some finger wiggling.

Though, since brodkil are demons, i'd just rule their natural temperature is around a fire's so this type of fleecing works.. They don't have to be realistic.

[ShadowLogan]

I've always wondered why there aren't invisibility spells for other spectrums. What makes visible light so special that we can be transparent to it, but not IR, UV, or anything else?

Likely because visible light is the common viewing part of the spectrum for creatures in the Palladium megaverse. Off hand I really can't think of any sentient species that can see outside the normal visible spectrum (I'm not counting night-vision, since that could merely be a form of natural light amplification).

Invisibly: Superior covers alternate sensor methods (including UV, IR, etc).

[Warshield73]

To go back to the original post the cost of GB Flechette is 200 credits, RUE page 259.

As for regular railguns, I have always run the ammo as being standard, as they are just pieces of ferrous metal, with damage and range differences being due to launch velocity and rate of fire.

I too have never seen a Glitter Boy use all of it's rail-gun ammo. But, I can say the same for a UAR-1 Enforcer, an Ultimax, and definitely a Hunter Mobile Gun. With as fast as most combat goes in Rifts I have only rarely seen people even swap an e-clip during a fire fight. They always do it after just to get ready.

As far as the IR tracking goes anything that can see them and also has a nuclear or other similarly powered vehicle can be seen by the GB, and the GB has range. I agree with an earlier statement, a properly supported GB can be murder on the battlefield. Especially if you are fighting in small areas, like the ruins of a city, where nothing in the GBs size can match it and anything that can match it can't fit.

I had a PC play a GB for over 10 years. He not only never ran out of ammo, he never took more the 200 MDC damage. Granted the group also had a UAR-1 enforcer and hatchling dragon to draw fire but he really used terrain and range to his advantage. He use to refer to sky cycles and SAMAS as skeet.

[Zer0 Kay]

To go back to the original post the cost of GB Flechette is 200 credits, RUE page 259.

As for regular railguns, I have always run the ammo as being standard, as they are just pieces of ferrous metal, with damage and range differences being due to launch velocity and rate of fire.

I too have never seen a Glitter Boy use all of it's rail-gun ammo. But, I can say the same for a UAR-1 Enforcer, an Ultimax, and definitely a Hunter Mobile Gun. With as fast as most combat goes in Rifts I have only rarely seen people even swap an e-clip during a fire fight. They always do it after just to get ready.

As far as the IR tracking goes anything that can see them and also has a nuclear or other similarly powered vehicle can be seen by the GB, and the GB has range. I agree with an earlier statement, a properly supported GB can be murder on the battlefield. Especially if you are fighting in small areas, like the ruins of a city, where nothing in the GBs size can match it and anything that can match it can't fit.

I had a PC play a GB for over 10 years. He not only never ran out of ammo, he never took more the 200 MDC damage. Granted the group also had a UAR-1 enforcer and hatchling dragon to draw fire but he really used terrain and range to his advantage. He use to refer to sky cycles and SAMAS as skeet.

Railguns don't need ferrous metal, they need conductive metal. Normally the rounds are a conductive armature and the projectile, like a shell and bullet. Coilguns on the other hand will only work with ferrous projectiles. Mechanically a rail gun should be able to impart more power while a coilgun should be able to produce a higher higher of fire. I'd go so far as to say the powerful slow firing railguns like the boomgun are railguns while the smaller less damaging burstfire type railguns are really coilguns.

[Warshield73]

To go back to the original post the cost of GB Flechette is 200 credits, RUE page 259.

As for regular railguns, I have always run the ammo as being standard, as they are just pieces of ferrous metal, with damage and range differences being due to launch velocity and rate of fire.

I too have never seen a Glitter Boy use all of it's rail-gun ammo. But, I can say the same for a UAR-1 Enforcer, an Ultimax, and definitely a Hunter Mobile Gun. With as fast as most combat goes in Rifts I have only rarely seen people even swap an e-clip during a fire fight. They always do it after just to get ready.

As far as the IR tracking goes anything that can see them and also has a nuclear or other similarly powered vehicle can be seen by the GB, and the GB has range. I agree with an earlier statement, a properly supported GB can be murder on the battlefield. Especially if you are fighting in small areas, like the ruins of a city, where nothing in the GBs size can match it and anything that can match it can't fit.

I had a PC play a GB for over 10 years. He not only never ran out of ammo, he never took more the 200 MDC damage. Granted the group also had a UAR-1 enforcer and hatchling dragon to draw fire but he really used terrain and range to his advantage. He use to refer to sky cycles and SAMAS as skeet.

Railguns don't need ferrous metal, they need conductive metal. Normally the rounds are a conductive armature and the projectile, like a shell and bullet. Coilguns on the other hand will only work with ferrous projectiles. Mechanically a rail gun should be able to impart more power while a coilgun should be able to produce a higher higher of fire. I'd go so far as to say the powerful slow firing railguns like the boomgun are railguns while the smaller less damaging burstfire type railguns are really coilguns.

I agree with you. But the game has never made that distinction and to be fair I doubt that distinction was really widely known in the pre-internet 1980's when this book published. As described in the books, my answer holds and that is why I treat them as universal. Like e-clips.

[Zer0 Kay]

The internet was out when rifts came out.

[Alrik Vas]

There was indeed an internet when Rifts was printed. However, I doubt it existed in any form KS could access with reasonable gains of information when he developed the game.

[Zer0 Kay]

There was indeed an internet when Rifts was printed. However, I doubt it existed in any form KS could access with reasonable gains of information when he developed the game.

You know and though the internet may have been around in 1990 when the book was published I'm sure it wasn't when Kevin was actually writing it. So point conceded. So they should have updated with rue.

[Warshield73]

:shock: The internet was out when rifts came out.

Ah, so that's how it is. OK

Yes I know Al Gore had already invented it but your average person could not retrieve information on it. If you want to get really picky the U.S. had only 8 internet users per 1000 people, with less than 100 websites and doubt any of them had anything on coil guns v rail guns.

[Warshield73]

There was indeed an internet when Rifts was printed. However, I doubt it existed in any form KS could access with reasonable gains of information when he developed the game.

You know and though the internet may have been around in 1990 when the book was published I'm sure it wasn't when Kevin was actually writing it. So point conceded. So they should have updated with rue.

I actually agree and disagree with this. I really wanted to see some of the new tech expanded on and updated, but on the other hand there are so many books with the already existing definition of rail guns I just don't think it is worth it to try and change it starting with RUE.

Good change to make to Rifts 2.0 though.

[Zer0 Kay]

:shock: The internet was out when rifts came out.

Ah, so that's how it is. OK

Yes I know Al Gore had already invented it but your average person could not retrieve information on it. If you want to get really picky the U.S. had only 8 internet users per 1000 people, with less than 100 websites and doubt any of them had anything on coil guns v rail guns.

What? I swear I was accessing stuff in 90 with AOL. Are you saying that BBS didnt use the internet?

[Zer0 Kay]

There was indeed an internet when Rifts was printed. However, I doubt it existed in any form KS could access with reasonable gains of information when he developed the game.

You know and though the internet may have been around in 1990 when the book was published I'm sure it wasn't when Kevin was actually writing it. So point conceded. So they should have updated with rue.

I actually agree and disagree with this. I really wanted to see some of the new tech expanded on and updated, but on the other hand there are so many books with the already existing definition of rail guns I just don't think it is worth it to try and change it starting with RUE.

Good change to make to Rifts 2.0 though.

Wouldn't be that hard. Iirc there aren't that many books with railguns.

[Nightmask]

:shock: The internet was out when rifts came out.

Ah, so that's how it is. OK

Yes I know Al Gore had already invented it but your average person could not retrieve information on it. If you want to get really picky the U.S. had only 8 internet users per 1000 people, with less than 100 websites and doubt any of them had anything on coil guns v rail guns.

What? I swear I was accessing stuff in 90 with AOL. Are you saying that BBS didnt use the internet?

BBS tended to interact by simply dialing each other up (for those set up for it) and downloading what new stuff was added in the interim rather than the kind of interconnectivity we're more familiar with today.

[Zer0 Kay]

:shock: The internet was out when rifts came out.

Ah, so that's how it is. OK

Yes I know Al Gore had already invented it but your average person could not retrieve information on it. If you want to get really picky the U.S. had only 8 internet users per 1000 people, with less than 100 websites and doubt any of them had anything on coil guns v rail guns.

What? I swear I was accessing stuff in 90 with AOL. Are you saying that BBS didnt use the internet?

BBS tended to interact by simply dialing each other up (for those set up for it) and downloading what new stuff was added in the interim rather than the kind of interconnectivity we're more familiar with today.

And yet that is how the original AOL worked. Available on Macs in 1989.

[Zer0 Kay]

1974 TCP
1976 Email first available in
1977 Number of hosts break 100 in
1979 USENET and MUDs available
1982 TCP/IP
1983 Internet activity board established
1988 backbone upgraded to T1
1989 Internet engineering and research task forces created under IAB
1990 300,000 hosts and ARPANET ceases to exist
1991 user friendly interface developed

I already acquiesced that Kevin wouldn't have been able to do much research because even though the internet (not just ARPANET) existed before 1990 it would have been years before that Kevin was wrighting Rifts.

Good enough or did I step on someone else sensibilities?

And with that I have thought of a random item, thanks

[Tor]

since brodkil are demons, i'd just rule their natural temperature is around a fire's

SUB-demons, actually. More akin to Gargoyles.

Also, I'm not sure all demons would be firey in nature. I know there are Ice Wraiths in Dyval. Off hand the coldest-seeming demon I can recall are those Aqua-things.

[Killer Cyborg]

:shock: The internet was out when rifts came out.

Ah, so that's how it is. OK

Yes I know Al Gore had already invented it but your average person could not retrieve information on it. If you want to get really picky the U.S. had only 8 internet users per 1000 people, with less than 100 websites and doubt any of them had anything on coil guns v rail guns.

What? I swear I was accessing stuff in 90 with AOL. Are you saying that BBS didnt use the internet?

BBS tended to interact by simply dialing each other up (for those set up for it) and downloading what new stuff was added in the interim rather than the kind of interconnectivity we're more familiar with today.

And yet that is how the original AOL worked. Available on Macs in 1989.

IIRC, it was still just FTP at that point, though, which wasn't very useful, and which wasn't very used.
The World Wide Web didn't even start until 1990ish, and didn't become easily usable until Mosiac came out in 1993 (thanks in a large part to Al Gore).
So, yeah... there was internet in 1990, when Rifts came out, but it wasn't really a big thing yet, just the start of a thing.

[Zer0 Kay]

Ah, so that's how it is. OK

Yes I know Al Gore had already invented it but your average person could not retrieve information on it. If you want to get really picky the U.S. had only 8 internet users per 1000 people, with less than 100 websites and doubt any of them had anything on coil guns v rail guns.

What? I swear I was accessing stuff in 90 with AOL. Are you saying that BBS didnt use the internet?

BBS tended to interact by simply dialing each other up (for those set up for it) and downloading what new stuff was added in the interim rather than the kind of interconnectivity we're more familiar with today.

And yet that is how the original AOL worked. Available on Macs in 1989.

IIRC, it was still just FTP at that point, though, which wasn't very useful, and which wasn't very used.
The World Wide Web didn't even start until 1990ish, and didn't become easily usable until Mosiac came out in 1993 (thanks in a large part to Al Gore).
So, yeah... there was internet in 1990, when Rifts came out, but it wasn't really a big thing yet, just the start of a thing.

Now there we go and there is the big distinction. Everybody equates both the user interface and the world wide web as the internet but as you can see in the timeline the internet existed long before either appeared in 1991. Point being the internet was around while Kevin was writing the book, had resources when he published but was not easily accessible until the year after he released the book.

[Alrik Vas]

since brodkil are demons, i'd just rule their natural temperature is around a fire's

SUB-demons, actually. More akin to Gargoyles.

Also, I'm not sure all demons would be firey in nature. I know there are Ice Wraiths in Dyval. Off hand the coldest-seeming demon I can recall are those Aqua-things.

Fair enough. I just like to be more adaptable, sometimes that means making crap up. Though I understand the written reality of the books.