Chi-Town Walls vs The Burbs

[LostOne]

So I'm curious about peoples opinions on this. My understanding is the burbs go right up to the wall of Chi-Town. With the burbs closer to the wall being more like modern cities with permanent structures like skyscrapers and such. It's the farther out stuff that is more wild west and shanty town stuff.

How sturdy are those walls? Conceivably I assume someone (Tolkeen Revenge squad) with patience could tunnel through the walls using powered armor and plasma weapons to cut or a super power of some kind.

How would the walls hold up to a nuke? Conceivably someone (Tolkeen Revenge suicide bomber) could walk up with a kiloton device in a backpack or a megaton warhead from a missile in a pickup truck and detonate it right there by the wall. I assume it would punch a hole in the wall and the radiation would be devestating. What sort of protections might they have against that? Geiger sensors all over including in the patrol vehicles?

[jaymz]

Well "right up to the walls" is relative....if you go by the collection of short stories in chitown burbs there is a zone between the walls and the "bubs" that is patrolled and monitored heavily. The walls are REALLY think and reinforced while the city within is itself self contained so the burbs are the ones that would really face he brunt of the blast and fallout. as for drilling through.....i would think the walls have sensors embedded throughout for such things as well as psychics attuned for magic detection also patrolling on a regular basis.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

So I'm curious about peoples opinions on this. My understanding is the burbs go right up to the wall of Chi-Town. With the burbs closer to the wall being more like modern cities with permanent structures like skyscrapers and such. It's the farther out stuff that is more wild west and shanty town stuff.

The impression and what little art we have says "really close to the walls" but not touching. Theres likely a several-hundred meter dead zone around the arcology.

How sturdy are those walls?

Extremely. They can take direct strikes from LRMs and shrug them off, basically. They are also absurdly thick - there are passages through them; the apartments on the upper levels that have access to the outside via balconies and windows are actually hung on the outside of the wall/built into the exterior portion of the wall, and connected to the inside via long tunnels that have full-up, fully-manned security outposts to get back inside. (This is from Black Market).

Conceivably I assume someone (Tolkeen Revenge squad) with patience could tunnel through the walls using powered armor and plasma weapons to cut or a super power of some kind.

If they have several days, perhaps, but certainly not without being noticed. The wall almost certainly has tremblor devices inside it - the vibrations would be noticed nearly immediately, and patrols sent to investigate. The walls are too thick to use Mystic Portal reliably (you have to be extremely high level) so they are at least 100ft thick, at least at the base. This doesn't mean they are solid though - they are almost assuredly layers of MDC concrete with spacing in between them. Tunneling into them with PA or tools would take forever. And make a world of racket and not be something you could get away with. You might be able to sneak in under the city though (it is implied in CWC that monsters sneak into the lower levels this way, which is what NTSET fights).

How would the walls hold up to a nuke?

Absurdly well. The burbs outside... not so much.

Conceivably someone (Tolkeen Revenge suicide bomber) could walk up with a kiloton device in a backpack or a megaton warhead from a missile

Except no one has any. Only the CS has them, and refuses to use them, even after the events of the Minion War depicted in Megaverse in Flames (IIRC, the CS even only has kiloton range weapons - salvaged Tomahawks). The "Nuclear" LRMs are some form of "clean" light tactical weapon - not even near the kiloton range and they leave no appreciable radiation.

in a pickup truck and detonate it right there by the wall. I assume it would punch a hole in the wall and the radiation would be devestating.

Even assuming they could somehow get their hands on a kiloton-range or even mega-ton range device, it wouldn't do much of anything to the arcology.

The walls are absurdly thick, built of MDC materials, and slanted upwards. Nuclear weapons are largely destructive because of the overpressure wave they create - which would ride right up the side of the arcology. It might crack and shatter the outer layer of MDC concrete or whatever the wall is made of, but it wouldn't penetrate the inner layers at all. Its not like a Nuclear weapon just vaporizes everything in a spherical blast radius or something, and would just atomize a spherical situation of the wall or something, several hundred feet thick. Thats not how explosions, even nuclear ones, work. The initial overpressure wave would smash against the outer wall, probably shatter the external layers of MDC 'crete, and then be directed up the artificial mountain. Where it would mostly dissipate harmlessly - though anything built on the "external" side of the wall (those exterior balconies, gardens, and apartments) are going to be obliterated by the heat and overpressure.

Realistically, though, not much is going to happen.

As an example, Cheyenne Mountain is engineered to take a direct, megaton-level strike to the front entrance, and shrug it off, and is significantly less strong than Chi-towns walls - basically just about ~30ft of granite that are moved into place behind the blast doors.

What sort of protections might they have against that? Geiger sensors all over including in the patrol vehicles?

Dont really need it. Nuclear weapons aren't really a threat on Rifts Earth (even crazy-ass Dunscon wont use them; they are blamed for the Cataclysm (though that isn't the real reason, people dont know that, and the few societies that have records back that far, like the NGR, just know that "there was a nuclear exchange and then cataclysm", so they believe it) and they are also just not available.

No one makes them. Even the CS only made enough to fill out their capacity in their naval ships, and then stopped (and they only made a few, most of them are actually reconditioned pre-Cataclysm Tomahawks, and the new ones they built are just replicas of those) and they haven't made anything bigger (no ICBMs or anything).

It doesn't appear the world was still even keeping iCBMs around during the golden age, as there is literally NO mention of them being around in ANY Rifts supplement. Given the level of technology at the time, it made sense to retire them - when, after all, cities could be built out of MDC materials that would like resist the overpressure wave and be relatively hard to nuke out.... and factories and industrial areas were being moved to hidden underground locations to make taking them out impossible.

But, no one makes them, and no one will use them. Triax doesn't make any, the Republic of Japan doesn't, the New Navy may have some stocks left over but doesn't use them (and it isnt said that they do or were ever even armed with them), the CS has some, both salvaged and new built, but refuses to use them except as a total-last-resort pyrrhic measure (to the point of not even considering using them during the Minion War). NG and FQ dont make them and never have (and maybe cant - though honestly given the tech level required to actually make a nuke, all of them should be able to), etc.

Its just a non-issue.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

To make sure the correct info is there:

the CS has ~900 Tomahawks or equivalent (some are their torpedo). It is stated to be enough to "blanket" Atlantis in the case of an onslaught from Splynncryth, and that the CS has a fire-plan ready for just this situation. The only other targeting solution they have, and the only other situation in which they MIGHT use them is if the NGR was about to be literally destroyed by the Gargoyles; the CS has a plan to bombard the Gargoyle Empire in that instance (but its not a 100% they will do it).

Those are literally the only two scenarios in which Prosek will authorize use of the nukes (currently, as of CS Navy), and it is stated later in MiFlames that the Minion War WONT see Prosek authorize the use of their nuclear stockpile.

[jaymz]

Let's be honest in regards to the Tomahawks...it is ridiculous that THAT is what they have. They were current 30 years ago and we have 80 years to the cataclysm and much like the rest of CS Navy, it was pisspoorly thought out as to what they would find and use. Seriously they found F-14s as well? Wth? THAT is a book that showed me zero effort is put into what they are doing when trying to introduce things from before the rifts. They hit in 2098 not 1998. Not to mention I call BS on the New Navy or the NGR not having such weapons regardless of what is published canon (again pisspoor effort in researching the book to begin with)

[Shark_Force]

honestly, nuclear reactors small enough to fit into a human-sized power armour are fairly common in the setting. i'm sure plenty more of the major powers *could* have nukes if they wanted them.

edit: in regard to tomahawks being what they have... why not? if you already have a missile that can basically hit anywhere you need and level entire cities when fired in sufficient quantities, what improvements do you need to make, exactly? what need is there for a missile that shoots farther or has a larger blast radius? you might be interested in developing new bunker-busters, given the proliferation of armour, but those missiles can already do basically anything they might be remotely suited for already.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Let's be honest in regards to the Tomahawks...it is ridiculous that THAT is what they have. They were current 30 years ago

And the book was written over 20 years ago (22 to be exact). They were absolutely current when the book was written. And they still are, actually - the US has not replaced the Tomahawk in inventory and it remains the only nuclear-equipped missile we have in that category. And is likely to for another few decades. If we replace them at all and dont just phase them out completely.

and we have 80 years to the cataclysm and much like the rest of CS Navy, it was pisspoorly thought out as to what they would find and use. Seriously they found F-14s as well? Wth?

Since we were still using them when that book was written (released in 1997, written in 1996).... yeah. The Hornet had only been introduced about a decade earlier and was NOT slated to replace the F-14, but rather operate in tandem with it. The actual replacement for the Tomcat was Super Hornet, which didn't fly until 2001. (And despite being based on the same base airframe as the Hornet, is actually a different plane, and was classified as a variant of the F/A-18 to get around procurement bans at the time).

THAT is a book that showed me zero effort is put into what they are doing when trying to introduce things from before the rifts. They hit in 2098 not 1998. Not to mention I call BS on the New Navy or the NGR not having such weapons regardless of what is published canon (again pisspoor effort in researching the book to begin with)

I think you're being a little hard on the authors for not being able to see the future. If they had come up with interstitial fighters/etc, you'd be comlaining that they looked nothing like what we actually had in when the race to super-tech started (in the early 2020s, natch..) - like the Su-27, F-35, and F-22, which are current, right now, at what we know in the Rifts Universe is the start of the super-tec race that begins the golden age.

Its not hard to imagine, writing this book in 1996, that the author was like (especially considering the exact timeline of when the tech-race started and the golden-age ramped up wasn't released until Triax 2, over 20 years later!) "okay, so we kept using the Tomcat for a while, and then it was mothballed sometime in the early 2020s/2030s and replaced with something new" - remember, Golden Age WS dug up surplus depots/decomissioned areas, not state-of-the-art Golden Age bases (most of which had already been picked completely clean during the Dark Ages).

Same with the Helos - we're not slated to retire an of our close-attack Helos for another 10+ years, and that is IF the procurement process actually leads to a new, viable aircraft that is actually better! The A-10 (airplane), for instance, was supposed to be replaced ALREADY, but that plan got put off several times because no contractor could come up with a better plane! To the point that the Air Force has now just said that plans to replace the A-10 are on hold indefinitely, with no plans to retire it any time soon and they are working on a SLEP to recondition the entire fleet! And this came after the Air Force decided to just use the F-35 as close air support (a role at which it is awful, but thats neither here nor there) using laser-guided bombs, and when they tried to push ahead with that, the Army said they would be happy to take the ENTIRE A-10 fleet off the Air Force's hands and keep it in the air. All of a sudden, Air Force Generals couldn't keep the thing fast enough.

Same with the B-52. That thing was supposed to be gone decades ago.. but we literally cant build a better strategic bomber. (And because of treaties, we're not allowed to build new ones). Its now slated to be in service until AT LEAST 2047 - probably LONGER!

So its not hard to imagine that it was hard for a Palladium writer (Pat Nowak for this one) to come up with "stuff that came after what we currently have but before the true golden age" - and even what purpose there would have been in creating those, just to convert THOSE created things into "upgraded to MDC" versions - because we KNOW what they were ACTUALLY flying during the Golden Age (New Navy and Iron Heart armaments both have/had fighters made from Golden-Age plans)

Its also not hard for me to imagine that during the Golden Age, certain weapon types were just ignored. Nukes take a SERIOUS hit to their usefulness when EBA protects against radiation and MDC buildings are literally 100x less likely to get blown down by a nuke. The main purpose of nukes was to take out population and production centers and, of course, MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).

When your nukes now wont be guaranteed to take out population centers (yes, there will be casualties - anyone outside, for instance - and yes, there will still be destruction, but not NEARLY on the scale of what a nuke does to an SDC city, and MDC buildings can be sealed and protected so the people inside wont even die of radiation sickness.) and everyone is moving their production facilities underground and into secret bases (like the New Navy's bases, Archie's complex, what became the Lone Star Complex, Groom Lake/Area-51, etc) so they couldn't be nuked/destroyed... that continuing development of nukes is... kinda pointless. You cant even use Nukes as area-denial to keep an enemy from your doorstep - he can just send in power-armored and EBA-ed up troops and pass through that area anyway. So its not hard to imagine that most countries just stopped developing them. They had become extremely less useful.

To the point of the Tomahawks being mothballed, which is how GAWS found them.

As for the New Navy not having them - i dont see why they would. They were mothballed by the time the Navy had progressed that far. Do they possess the TECH to make them? Sure. But like a lot of powers on Rifts Earth, they wont let that genie out of the bottle.

Same with Triax. They almost assuredly have the knowhow and ability to make them. They just... dont. Of all the societies on Rifts Earth, they are one of the few with totally unbroken records back to the Cataclysm. As far as they know, nukes are what caused the Cataclysm. So they wont use them.

Doesn't seem that far-fetched, really.

[jaymz]

BS. Plain and simple BS. Even 20 years ago plenty of us said it was ridiculous cs navy had what would 100 plus year old planes at the time of the rifts in mothballs storage last alone the tomahawks just at many if said it was stupid that gaw was refitting m48 tanks. You want give laziness a pass that's your choice. I don't.

As for new navy....if ANYONE would have them during a new cold war at the coming of the rifts it is the most advanced ship on the planet of the time.

It doesn't take much thought to realize hmm todays stuff would likely be replaced in 100 years (from the books publish date thus it was being written at least a year or two earlier). Abd we had glimpses o what might be to come via yf-22/23 trials in the early 90s and video games and such as well. So this thought of "oh how would they know" is as I said BS. It's why fans like myself and others have tried come up with stuff for the intermediate time frames because what we had was and is just silly. (I've actually adjusted my material as time has moved on to fit better with reality but still new stuff will be and is coming) Even I've tried to at least justify a few things lasting a few more decades but jeez come on.

But I digress.

As for chitown, an excellent source of what it might be like is the rifter articles on new chillicothe. It's not official but the authors rifter material for th CS is top notch in general and usually make sense.

[Drakenred®™©]

You would be surprised at what the military holds on to.

That said time does March on, with things pike the PA-48 Enforcer being developed,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-48_Enforcer

And combat aircraft being sent the the scrap yard

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_ ... ratotanker

Also see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havi ... C-2_Beaver the Us Army still owns 2 that they use, also US Air Force and air national guard.

And even ships get sent to the breakers.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian ... ip_Kommuna


Ok to be fair that last one is Russian.

And don’t even get me started on how long they think the Buff will last in service.

Oh and there was the super ‘cat, bombcat and super bombcat proposals.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

BS. Plain and simple BS. Even 20 years ago plenty of us said it was ridiculous cs navy had what would 100 plus year old planes at the time of the rifts in mothballs storage last alone the tomahawks just at many if said it was stupid that gaw was refitting m48 tanks. You want give laziness a pass that's your choice. I don't.

All of those things are in mothballs right now (well not the Tomahawks, those are still in active inventory and deployed) And will be for at least another 40 years. We still have WW2 planes in mothballs. Hundreds of them.

As for new navy....if ANYONE would have them during a new cold war at the coming of the rifts it is the most advanced ship on the planet of the time.

You're missing or deliberately avoiding (because you have no viable counter-argument) the part where why would they bother when nukes are relatively useless?

It doesn't take much thought to realize hmm todays stuff would likely be replaced in 100 years (from the books publish date thus it was being written at least a year or two earlier).

It WAS replaced before the Golden Age, potentially WELL before (we aren't told when).

GAW didn't uncover "modern Golden Age tech" - they uncovered obsolete mothballed units. Same with the naval ships they found - those were all laid up in storage bunkers, and no longer in use. Those M48 tanks? We still have all those in mothballs. Right now, to this day. The military doesn't throw stuff away. Same with the Abrams. We keep the decomissioned ones in the desert.

Abd we had glimpses o what might be to come via yf-22/23 trials in the early 90s and video games and such as well.

Sure. And do you know how many prototype planes make it to production? (and in the90s, the YF-22/23 competition was still mostly classified). The plane that would become the F/A-18 (a plane we still fly, and only plan to replace about ~200 of - the Marines only planned to replace one squadron with F-35Bs, and the Navy only plans to replace 4 squadrons with F-35Cs) was built in the 1960s. And we're still flying it. And will still be flying it through 2030, at the very least. And potentially longer, since the F-35C sucks and doesn't perform as well as the F/A-18 in the roles that the F/A-18 is used for. So if the problems with the F-35C cant be fixed... the Navy has backup plans to just keep using the F/A-18.

The Super Hornet will be over 50 years old by the time it is (currently) slated to be retired. And i say "currently slated" because that assumes the outcome of the competition to replace it results in a plane that actually works. Which is NOT at all guaranteed - the last two competitions were failures and the one that produced the F-35 could be considered a failure since it is literally not better than any of the planes it is replacing in their roles and its only "benefit" or strength is that it can perform many roles - just not as good as specialized craft. When it isnt poisoning its pilots or finding itself unable to fly in the rain.

So this thought of "oh how would they know" is as I said BS. It's why fans like myself and others have tried come up with stuff for the intermediate time frames because what we had was and is just silly. (I've actually adjusted my material as time has moved on to fit better with reality but still new stuff will be and is coming) Even I've tried to at least justify a few things lasting a few more decades but jeez come on.

You seem to be u nder this continual incorrect assumption that what GAW unearthed was "being used at the time of the Cataclysm"... it is stated rather unequivocally that it wasn't. Its obsolete, mothballed technology.

We KNOW what the US military was using during the Golden Age - for a jet, it was the S-14 Sea Hawk (for the Navy/Marines); for the Air Force it was whatever they called the Grey Falcon or some variant of it (from Iron Heart) - if they used a Jet at all, as we are given the serious impression that they had largely abandoned jets in favor of fast moving Power Armor like the USA-SAMAS (though never an outright statement).

For tanks, Golden Age thinking was that by and large tanks weren't needed, but there had been at least some work done on producing tanks as cheaper defensive units (ressurrected by Iron Heart from the Pre-Rifts plans they used) - a role at which they excel - and the Navy used the Merovingian as troop support (though they had to go looking to France to get a tank they could actually use, showing that the US had largely decided against tanks).

We're NOT told that the Tomcats (we still have all those laid up out in the desert, right now to this day) were current-line fighters - in fact, we're told the opposite. The Tomahawks were also in Mothballs (so again, not current line issue).

We're simply not told what came between the retirement of the Tomcat in the world of Rifts (which undoubtably follows a different timeline than the real world) and the introduction of fighters like the Sea Hawk.... IF there was even anything in between. Until MDC armor became light enough for planes to carry it (in the 2050s) there would have been no reason to bother upgrading your fleet outside of improved computers/avionics - most modern jets already have the ability to launch munitions to the horizon. Armed with MDC-explosive warheads, a Tomcat could simply shoot down an enemy plane (which was its role - fleet defense) the moment it pops up on Radar.

And what would be the point of Palladium going through the effort of statting out interstitial planes/tanks from the post-2020s era to the begining of the Golden Age in the 2050s? It would have been a lot of effort for... what gain, exactly?

And thats even assuming that during that time period (pre-MDC armor but not pre-MDC weapons, as we are told in the new timeline info in Triax 2 that while Triax was off developing lightweight MDC alloys, the rest of the world had not been sitting still, with high tech computers, bionics, cybernetics, nano-medicine, genetic engineering, and weapons like lasers and rail-guns being developed during this time.

A modern rail gun can already pretty much instantly interdict ANY fighter (the Naval Railgun, currently testing at only 40% power, can shoot to the horizon, and the round travels that distance in sub 2 seconds) - by the time the fighter realizes the rail gun has fired, its hit and down. The only downfall of the current real-world NRG is the power buildup required - it fires pretty slow, on the speed of a few minutes per round - but that isnt an issue in even the Pre-official-Golden Age Rifts Earth, where clean nuclear power generation is no problem - making any non-MDC armored fighter useless. As soon as it pops up on Radar, its shot down.

Why bother developing a "better" fighter if it still wont survive contact?

Also, you have to remember that the period leading UP to the Golden Age (pre the late 2050s), the world was at Peace and everyone was getting along. The New Cold War didn't start until after the "official" start of the Golden Age post Triax's release of lightweight MDC material in the mid-late 2050s. So the period from the 2020s-2050s, there was no cold war. The world was at peace, no one wanted to bomb everyone, and everyone was effectively working together to make the Golden Age happen.

Its also likely during this time that Nuclear arsenals were massively shrunk, and then after the introduction of MDC building material, basically eliminated, as the main tactical purpose of Nukes (psychological warfare by obliterating large swaths of the population to get the defending country to surrender, and Mutually Assured Destruction) was now moot.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

And don’t even get me started on how long they think the Buff will last in service.

Oh and there was the super ‘cat, bombcat and super bombcat proposals.

Which were only turned down because they were more expensive than the F/A-18 and the (at the time, proposed) F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet, which, with their newly upgraded sensor suites and avionics, could perform the exact same "you popped up on Radar, i shoot you with a missile" feat that was previously a Tomcat only thing.

And those still might have gone into production, but the US forbid the company for making them for other countries.

Same with the upgraded Silent Eagle proposal, though those HAVE been authorized for sale to allies (S. Korean and Japan are both likely to buy it, following dissapointing results on the F-35, which they had previously decided to buy).

That will mean that the F-15 or one of its variants (unlike the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet, which is actually mostly a new plane with only the rear of the base fuselage being the same) will have been in front-line service for going on 80 years by the time the basic service life of the F-15SE (or as they are now calling it "Advanced Eagle") is up - and that is if no customer decides to engage a SLEP to keep them in air longer.

[Shark_Force]

regarding nuclear weapons... they have the distinction of being a weapon that had a window of only a few years where use of them had any real potential to result in victory (and current historians are unearthing evidence suggesting that they weren't even a significant factor in winning WWII, although they at least were *perceived* as having that ability at the time).

apart from that narrow window, use of nuclear weapons has pretty much been a scenario where there is no winning outcome. you can guarantee that everyone (and i do mean everyone) loses catastrophically, but that doesn't exactly do you a lot of good, does it?

[The Beast]

BS. Plain and simple BS. Even 20 years ago plenty of us said it was ridiculous cs navy had what would 100 plus year old planes at the time of the rifts in mothballs storage last alone the tomahawks just at many if said it was stupid that gaw was refitting m48 tanks. You want give laziness a pass that's your choice. I don't.

All of those things are in mothballs right now (well not the Tomahawks, those are still in active inventory and deployed) And will be for at least another 40 years. We still have WW2 planes in mothballs. Hundreds of them.

I don't know about the WW2 planes, but the F14 was down to only 11 being left in the boneyard back in '09. The rest were shredded. AFAIK, the USAF continued doing so until the last of them were destroyed.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100807045643/http://www.dm.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-091109-033.pdf

[Drakenred®™©]

Basically Rifts Earth is a parallel earth, not ours.

On that earth a Divergence happened either post or during Vietnam. Probably during, so thereThe F14 apparently remained in production and were probably exported far more than what happened in our timeline. The gulf war apparently happened differently,

[Axelmania]

Original post brings up a legitimate point, but you wouldn't even need power armor... a gnomish freedom fighter with a 1D4MD vibro-knife (they usually do 1D6 but this will be extra tiny) could with 4 APM do at least 16 MD per minute to a wall, over 600 MD in an hour. Eventually he's going to get through that wall so there definitely needs to be some kind of sensor system in place to detect what he's doing before too much mischief happens.

Without that, the best you can hope for is clairvoyance, but that's only going to be if he actually brings down a critical system, not if he just goes around slashing the wall below the earth (covering up the damage) every few steps, building up massage damage through weeks of minor-tier vandalisms.

I imagine to deal with problems like that they manage to hook up Phase Fields to protect lots of buildings (1/10 damage means 1-9 MD to 10-90 SDC and can't make a scratch!) but CS probably doesn't have that means of easily ignoring this problem.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

BS. Plain and simple BS. Even 20 years ago plenty of us said it was ridiculous cs navy had what would 100 plus year old planes at the time of the rifts in mothballs storage last alone the tomahawks just at many if said it was stupid that gaw was refitting m48 tanks. You want give laziness a pass that's your choice. I don't.

All of those things are in mothballs right now (well not the Tomahawks, those are still in active inventory and deployed) And will be for at least another 40 years. We still have WW2 planes in mothballs. Hundreds of them.

I don't know about the WW2 planes, but the F14 was down to only 11 being left in the boneyard back in '09. The rest were shredded. AFAIK, the USAF continued doing so until the last of them were destroyed.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100807045643/http://www.dm.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-091109-033.pdf

They were a Navy plane, so i doubt the USAF was the one doing the shredding.

But i can see the potential reasoning - the Tomcat had a lot of tech in it that is STILL classified. There may have been no secure way to store the things without them being exposed to theft. I know some countries we sold it to and later blacklisted were offering tens of millions for plans for the upgrades to the avionics and computer systems.

Or it may have just been to hard to store and keep in "fixable" order - the damn things were super-finickey. Their extremely high maintenance and SLEP costs were the primary reason the Navy adopted the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet instead of doing yet another round of upgrades to the Tomcats.

[Warshield73]

I never really liked the whole idea of GAW refurbishing leftovers. It sounded too ridiculous that things from the 20th century would still be fixable in the 24th.

In my game GAW is made up of cities that have a 1990's-ish tech base that found schematics for 20th century vehicles and built them with mostly SDC and just a few MDC improvements, sort of like Chipwell. In the end this just made more sense and allowed me to have them build more types of vehicles as our real world tech progressed.

[The Beast]

They were a Navy plane, so i doubt the USAF was the one doing the shredding.

I went with USAF because that's who owns the base, and from what I could find the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group now owns the planes.

[jaymz]

I never really liked the whole idea of GAW refurbishing leftovers. It sounded too ridiculous that things from the 20th century would still be fixable in the 24th.

In my game GAW is made up of cities that have a 1990's-ish tech base that found schematics for 20th century vehicles and built them with mostly SDC and just a few MDC improvements, sort of like Chipwell. In the end this just made more sense and allowed me to have them build more types of vehicles as our real world tech progressed.

See finding schematics and constructions docs then trying to build from scratch makes more sense than "oh hey we found these 140 year old tanks that have been just sittin ghere for an extra 250+ years as well so we thought hey why not refurbish them"

[BuzzardB]

I find the Burbs/Chi Town area pretty confusing overall. The art certainly doesn't mesh with the write up of it either. The inner cover of the RUE shows this crazy sky scraper ridden cyberpunk metropolis, but the description of "Old Town" or the inner-most ring of the Burbs only averages 4 story buildings and that 10% of the area is still tents and huts and stuff.

[Axelmania]

Wouldn't that mean it's a big jump between the 4-story buildings in the innermost burbs and the 40 story buildings in the outermost city?

My guess is CS probably has policies on outside-wall building height for security purposes. You wouldn't want mages getting line-of-sight easily within city from burbs.

[Daniel Stoker]

It's not like of their spells have the range regardless.


Daniel Stoker

[Warshield73]

I never really liked the whole idea of GAW refurbishing leftovers. It sounded too ridiculous that things from the 20th century would still be fixable in the 24th.

In my game GAW is made up of cities that have a 1990's-ish tech base that found schematics for 20th century vehicles and built them with mostly SDC and just a few MDC improvements, sort of like Chipwell. In the end this just made more sense and allowed me to have them build more types of vehicles as our real world tech progressed.

See finding schematics and constructions docs then trying to build from scratch makes more sense than "oh hey we found these 140 year old tanks that have been just sittin ghere for an extra 250+ years as well so we thought hey why not refurbish them"

When we first started playing Rifts with just RMB I created towns and cities using charts and ideas from the 1st Ed Robotech books, which included a tech level of sorts. So I already had towns that made jeeps or Humvees and even a few helicopters. After years of doing that it just made sense for me to make GAW along the same lines. Also, I wanted them to make more stuff for sale, including a few things that showed up in Merc Ops, so just easier.

I find the Burbs/Chi Town area pretty confusing overall. The art certainly doesn't mesh with the write up of it either. The inner cover of the RUE shows this crazy sky scraper ridden cyberpunk metropolis, but the description of "Old Town" or the inner-most ring of the Burbs only averages 4 story buildings and that 10% of the area is still tents and huts and stuff.

I have always found the Burbs to confusing, not just the artwork, and I almost never use it in my games. I ran one Rifts group on and off for more than 15 years and they only went to the Burbs maybe once.

[BuzzardB]

I find the Burbs/Chi Town area pretty confusing overall. The art certainly doesn't mesh with the write up of it either. The inner cover of the RUE shows this crazy sky scraper ridden cyberpunk metropolis, but the description of "Old Town" or the inner-most ring of the Burbs only averages 4 story buildings and that 10% of the area is still tents and huts and stuff.

I actually have no idea what it looks like inside Chi Town, every picture I see of it is just the outside of the archaeology surrounded by city, and as far as I am aware the surrounding city IS the Burbs.
The art depicts the inner most Burbs as full of skyscrapers while the written description makes pretty much all of it seem like shanty town at worst and some light commercial at best. I am personally more inspired by the idea of the huge sprawling cyberpunk city than how its actually described. Maybe I need a break and should try out that new Cyberpunk Red game to get it out of my system lol.

[Axelmania]

It's not like of their spells have the range regardless.


Daniel Stoker

Depends on the spell, I'm not sure the horizantal distance between the high buildingest near chi-town's walls on the outside vs the skyscraperso n the side. Or is the horizantal enough?

Of course, it's much easier to conceive of ranged magical threats if you assume they're making full use of TTGD rules for spell modification.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

I find the Burbs/Chi Town area pretty confusing overall. The art certainly doesn't mesh with the write up of it either. The inner cover of the RUE shows this crazy sky scraper ridden cyberpunk metropolis, but the description of "Old Town" or the inner-most ring of the Burbs only averages 4 story buildings and that 10% of the area is still tents and huts and stuff.

I actually have no idea what it looks like inside Chi Town, every picture I see of it is just the outside of the archaeology surrounded by city, and as far as I am aware the surrounding city IS the Burbs.
The art depicts the inner most Burbs as full of skyscrapers while the written description makes pretty much all of it seem like shanty town at worst and some light commercial at best. I am personally more inspired by the idea of the huge sprawling cyberpunk city than how its actually described. Maybe I need a break and should try out that new Cyberpunk Red game to get it out of my system lol.

You are correct in your assertion/belief that Chi-town itself is ALL contained in the wall. Its an arcology (sealed/self-contained) city. Inside, the levels are basically (to start) big empty spaces. Buildings are then built inside, and some buildings ascend through multiple levels. Some even stick out the top (though the top is still sealed - as is mentioned in Black Market). So, basically, each level is a small town in and of itself. Some levels are likely divided into sub-levels (we dont really know how high each level is).

Anything you see outside the wall is the ‘Burbs. The oldest Burbs (the “Old Town” Burbs) are basically well-built civilized cities. Theyre still technically “illegal”, but they hire their own cops to keep out the riff-raff and dont assosciate with D-Bees (openly, at least). Anywhere other than in the Burbs, the “Old Towns” would be highly advanced, nice places to live.

As you get furtther away, the Burbs get worse.

[Warshield73]

We don't know how tall each level is but do we have official stats on how many levels, above and below ground level, or how big (height, width, length) the city is?

[DD The Shmey]

Colonel Tetsuya,
I like your comments on the GAW and Coalition Navy's use of tomcats. I couldn't have phrased it better myself. I always imagined that the GAW stumbled on some kind of Curator Museum similar The Tank Museum in Bovington.

I assumed that any aircraft or vehicle that was modern at the time of the cataclysm would have been reactivated and used in the defense of cities during the first 10-20 years. The life expectancy of any military vehicle in active service in a post apocalyptic world would be short, especially after manufacturing infrastructure, and availability of resources was destroyed and depleted.

... a gnomish freedom fighter with a 1D4MD vibro-knife ... could do over 600 MD in an hour. Eventually he's going to get through that wall ...

Axelmania, that's a funny image.
After thinking about it, you have a good point about how easy it is to do damage to MDC structures. After realizing this, as a game master I would definitely rule that the CS made a few hundred feet clearance between Chi-Town structure and the burbs, with a perimeter wall with ditches, fences, no-mans land and checkpoints like you find in places on the modern US-Mexico border. It seems reasonable that they would set up such barriers even if only to assist in policing traffic.

[Drakenred®™©]

While it’s a little small for a CS Mega city, I tend to use some of the maps in Palladium Fantasy as a reference point to explain it. Basically they are a walled city, on the inside of the walls, one district at least is the primary military base and is basically a walled city inside the city, more than likely the rest of the city is composed of separate sections that are built as the city expands, a no Mans land that surrounds the city may be used as farmland or may be used as a scrapyard, and the Burbs being one or more areas just outside the no-mans land that surrounds the outer wall.

[Axelmania]

... a gnomish freedom fighter with a 1D4MD vibro-knife ... could do over 600 MD in an hour. Eventually he's going to get through that wall ...

Axelmania, that's a funny image.
After thinking about it, you have a good point about how easy it is to do damage to MDC structures. After realizing this, as a game master I would definitely rule that the CS made a few hundred feet clearance between Chi-Town structure and the burbs, with a perimeter wall with ditches, fences, no-mans land and checkpoints like you find in places on the modern US-Mexico border. It seems reasonable that they would set up such barriers even if only to assist in policing traffic.

Another problem to deal with is: how deep underground do the walls go (ie to prevent them falling over) or are they so thick that they can actually just sit atop the ground without risking toppling over? Or just attached to each other so that even if they are thin, the corners attachments prevent them from toppling over from wind.

A big risk, besides dealing with the problem of the tunneling gnome with a vibro-knife chipping away at the bottom of your wall, is also Earth Elementals, who can probably travel through the earth beneath your ditches/fences much faster than said gnome.

CS seems like it has plenty of aerial defenses, but I'm not sure how they'd deal with subterranean defenses. No matter what the direction, I think Psi-Net must play a HUGE role in dealing with invading entities who can't be harmed by normal weapons (ie poltergeists sent by summoners)

They might also be able to deal with subterranean invaders, but I think a big problem is that Psi-Ghosts seem like they can only sink to their nose into the earth, so how would they target (say with a psi-sword) an elemental who goes deeper than that?

The only way around it I can see is to let Psi-Ghosts go deeper (but they can't breathe, so they need to carry an oxygen supply that weighs less than 20lbs) or else Chi-Town might have a network of tunnels around it allowing them to operate and intercept the paths of incoming elementals before they reach vulnerable areas.

[LostOne]

I'd wager the CS has some kind of tunneling skelebots or other weaponized drone that'll respond to seismic activity near the wall. Doesn't even need to be big. Basically a mix of swarm of tunneling fusion blocks and tunneling MDC claymores, if one doesn't do it, several will. The thumps of the detonations would be easy to detect but if needed they could also send a radio alarm signal. Deploy more from the surface or from an underground access point in the wall. However, I wonder how much seismic activity an earth elemental could elminate, they might be able to prowl right up to the wall without really disturbing the earth they're moving through? Or water, just flowing through the earth like how rain trickles down into the ground after falling. You probably can't defend against everything that's why you'll have defense squads inside to attack anything trying to breach the walls once the breach happens

[Axelmania]

I don't know how well skelebots would fare against elementals, but they would be helpful support squads for psi-ghosts-with-psi-swords perhaps clearing breathing tunnels/pockets for them to top up their oxygen supplies.

[LostOne]

I don't know how well skelebots would fare against elementals, but they would be helpful support squads for psi-ghosts-with-psi-swords perhaps clearing breathing tunnels/pockets for them to top up their oxygen supplies.

I suspect they'd have more of the tunneling drones, basically land-torpedos. Not as fast, with plasma and fragmentation (for anything that is resistant to the plasma) warheads. If you hit something with a plasma land-torpedo and it keeps moving, send more: a mix of plasma and frag. They'd probably have cheap sonar imaging to send limited images back before they detonate so the wall defense commander can make the call of what to send more of. "Well that looks like a really big earth elemental, send 20 plasma drones and let me know what happens."

Another thing I just imagined: Glitterboys have pylons with laser drills to instantly deploy them, even if standing on stone or concrete. Imagine pylons like that, but 50 feet long (longer?), horizontal and random angles along the wall, underground. You know that these dozen cover the area around sensor 127, so if that sensor goes off, all dozen activate extending and retracting and extending again a few seconds later, etc. Not sure how feasible that is, but the Coalition could do it and afford it and if they're actually concerned about attacks on the wall this is something they might consider.

[Axelmania]

Kinda wondering if they ever defined how much MD those laser drills inflicted, ground's SDC but it can add up into the hundreds over time.

DC113 mentions "impervious to normal weapons" for Minor Earth Elemental... I wonder if that's intended to mean SDC weapons, but this isn't listed under the natural abilities of the Mud Mound on the next page, who are also MDC (although they do have a different 'impervious to kinetic and stabbing attacks')

DC108 lists "Impervious To: Normal weapons, Horror Factor, disease" as an overall ability for the "Elemental Forces" RCC they all fall under so I think the dupication of this under some natural abilities seems somewhat superfluous. I actually wish they wouldn't double-state stuff like that because it's clutter (makes entries longer than they need to) and it draws attention away from the rules-for-all at the beginning of the section.