Recycling/reclaiming spent silver bullets?

[Pepsi Jedi]

What about a spell that transformed a hand full of bullets (3D4) into silver rounds for 1 minute per level of the caster.

THAT I could totally see happening.

[Pepsi Jedi]

The arguments against a 'Create Silver' Spell tend to ignore a few facts, such as silver not being that pricey compared to many metals and that flooding the market will devalue it considerably. A cart of silver isn't going to go for the going price of silver, it's going to go for well under market value because it's going to hurt the market. For a similar example during the old Secret Wars II the Beyonder turned an entire office building into pure gold thanks to a stupid bit of mouthiness on the part of Luke Cage. The US Government confiscated it and dumped it all (outside of 20 gold typewriters paid to the Kingpin for securing the gold before the government got there) into the ocean so that it wouldn't cause the bottom to fall out of the gold Market. Superman in True Brit actually did devalue gold when he went into space and mined a large amount of gold and gave it away (and was promptly punished for it with taxes based on the original value of the gold not the devalued amount, because of course you aren't supposed to actually help the poor).

This seems to be a point that's almost always ignored, that flooding the market as is often tossed out trashes the value of the product in question. If a player was having their PC flood the market yes there would be consequences but so what? The GM is supposed to be having events in the game world react to what the PC do. Adjusting for a PC creating a lot of a rare material is no different than adjusting for the PC wiping out a gang or destroying a village.

It's not that it's ignored by me. It's that the type of people that would abuse this, would ignore it. Or, as I pointed out, would just get teleportation spells or mundane transport and do it in many many markets, different ones. Sure sooner or later you'll run out of markets to flood, but before you do it, the abusers would be billionaires and the game silly.

Remember, it's not the good decent players you worry about. It's the type on here (( and out there. *Motions to the world*)) That WOULD just park themselves on a lay line and make silver all day.. or park themselves some where and bend rules to make talismins all day long, or any other such thing that you use the mechanics of the spell to break the spirit and abuse the system.

You don't have to worry about the decent folk. It's the ones that will break the rules on purpose that keep such things out of the hands of good players.

[Hystrix]

It's not that it's ignored by me. It's that the type of people that would abuse this, would ignore it. Or, as I pointed out, would just get teleportation spells or mundane transport and do it in many many markets, different ones. Sure sooner or later you'll run out of markets to flood, but before you do it, the abusers would be billionaires and the game silly.

Remember, it's not the good decent players you worry about. It's the type on here (( and out there. *Motions to the world*)) That WOULD just park themselves on a lay line and make silver all day.. or park themselves some where and bend rules to make talismins all day long, or any other such thing that you use the mechanics of the spell to break the spirit and abuse the system.

You don't have to worry about the decent folk. It's the ones that will break the rules on purpose that keep such things out of the hands of good players.

Pepsi, as others have pointed out, there are consequences for such actions. Even if you can obtain such a spell, the problem isn't the player who abuses a system...it's the GM that allows it.

First of all, even if the player dosn't get jumped by bandits, vampires, or an argy mages guild, there is the fact that that much silver will FLOOD the market and make that much silver, worth... well almoast nothing. Sure he may sell several pounds of the stuff, but he's not going to become a billionare.

According to original RMB silver is 300 cr and ounce. This figure might be kind of outdated, as, IRL, silver is only valueed at about 27 US dollars an ounce. However, even at 300 cr it would take 104 TONS of silver to equal one billion credits. By that point, I think we can say the market is deluded. If we go with what silver is really worth it would take 1157 TONS of silver.

Even if the PC could lug all this stuff with him (it'd take at least the equivalent of 3 four-axle tractor trailers to lug even the lowest about), that much silver would crash the market, and attract unwanted attention even if the player can find a buy who will buy that much silver.


That being said, I agree in the sense that players can abuse the system. But GM's who allow it are the ones to blame.

Just sayin'.

[azazel1024]

Downsides I see to this are that it is going to take a long time to recover anything worthwhile. Think about a fire fight. Maybe you fire off 30 rounds. Unless all of those are hitting or hitting something immediately behind your target, you could have rounds landing anywhere from the immediate vicinity of your target, which might still take a good hour or so of scrounging to find them, to anywhere up to thousands of feet behind the target (basically lost). I don't even want to think how long it would take with a metal detector to find most of them.

Also silver is pretty soft, even on a regular target like a vampire, I'd expect there to be a pretty good chance of the bullet fragmenting, especially hitting bone and more so because you CANNOT jacket silver bullets for them to work on vampires, making them more likely to break-up.

At best I'd rule you could recover 1d6+4% of the ammo fired per 10 minutes of searching up to an hour (IE a maximum of 60% of what you have fired, a minimum of about 30%). ALL of it is going to have to be resmelted which is going to cost 25% of the original ammo price from someone who could expertly smelt and form silver bullets that would work well (silver contracts upon solidifying so in reality, it is almost impossible to make REAL silver bullets that are going to be remotely accurate. Check out the mythbusters episode where they tested silver bullets).

PS as pointed out, silver shouldn't be worth so much in Rifts. In PB, it should have a high value. Silver isn't worth all that much in the grand scheme of things, because it just isn't that rare. Oh it is much less common than iron or copper, but it is still relatively common. Thousands of tons (tens of thousands?) of it are "dug up" and smelted down every year in the modern world. Even in Rifts with more limited means, likely hundreds of tons of the stuff is dug up every year. Considering most of the mundane uses that silver is put to, it would be "ruinous" if it were really 300cr per ounce.

[Nightmask]

Downsides I see to this are that it is going to take a long time to recover anything worthwhile. Think about a fire fight. Maybe you fire off 30 rounds. Unless all of those are hitting or hitting something immediately behind your target, you could have rounds landing anywhere from the immediate vicinity of your target, which might still take a good hour or so of scrounging to find them, to anywhere up to thousands of feet behind the target (basically lost). I don't even want to think how long it would take with a metal detector to find most of them.

Also silver is pretty soft, even on a regular target like a vampire, I'd expect there to be a pretty good chance of the bullet fragmenting, especially hitting bone and more so because you CANNOT jacket silver bullets for them to work on vampires, making them more likely to break-up.

At best I'd rule you could recover 1d6+4% of the ammo fired per 10 minutes of searching up to an hour (IE a maximum of 60% of what you have fired, a minimum of about 30%). ALL of it is going to have to be resmelted which is going to cost 25% of the original ammo price from someone who could expertly smelt and form silver bullets that would work well (silver contracts upon solidifying so in reality, it is almost impossible to make REAL silver bullets that are going to be remotely accurate. Check out the mythbusters episode where they tested silver bullets).

PS as pointed out, silver shouldn't be worth so much in Rifts. In PB, it should have a high value. Silver isn't worth all that much in the grand scheme of things, because it just isn't that rare. Oh it is much less common than iron or copper, but it is still relatively common. Thousands of tons (tens of thousands?) of it are "dug up" and smelted down every year in the modern world. Even in Rifts with more limited means, likely hundreds of tons of the stuff is dug up every year. Considering most of the mundane uses that silver is put to, it would be "ruinous" if it were really 300cr per ounce.

Plus as was learned by the Hunt brothers many decades ago even at their point in time there was so much silver around that when they tried cornering the market all they did was drive themselves into bankruptcy as they completely ignored or inexplicably forgot about all the silver that was already in the hands of the buying public and the age of Rifts is centuries later after even more silver has been mined and sold. Silver should be pretty cheap in Rifts and a Create Silver spell should be a trivial thing that wouldn't bring about any complaints from anyone but the Supernatural Creatures that have to worry about silver.

[flatline]

The arguments against a 'Create Silver' Spell tend to ignore a few facts, such as silver not being that pricey compared to many metals and that flooding the market will devalue it considerably. A cart of silver isn't going to go for the going price of silver, it's going to go for well under market value because it's going to hurt the market. For a similar example during the old Secret Wars II the Beyonder turned an entire office building into pure gold thanks to a stupid bit of mouthiness on the part of Luke Cage. The US Government confiscated it and dumped it all (outside of 20 gold typewriters paid to the Kingpin for securing the gold before the government got there) into the ocean so that it wouldn't cause the bottom to fall out of the gold Market. Superman in True Brit actually did devalue gold when he went into space and mined a large amount of gold and gave it away (and was promptly punished for it with taxes based on the original value of the gold not the devalued amount, because of course you aren't supposed to actually help the poor).

This seems to be a point that's almost always ignored, that flooding the market as is often tossed out trashes the value of the product in question. If a player was having their PC flood the market yes there would be consequences but so what? The GM is supposed to be having events in the game world react to what the PC do. Adjusting for a PC creating a lot of a rare material is no different than adjusting for the PC wiping out a gang or destroying a village.

It's not that it's ignored by me. It's that the type of people that would abuse this, would ignore it. Or, as I pointed out, would just get teleportation spells or mundane transport and do it in many many markets, different ones. Sure sooner or later you'll run out of markets to flood, but before you do it, the abusers would be billionaires and the game silly.

Remember, it's not the good decent players you worry about. It's the type on here (( and out there. *Motions to the world*)) That WOULD just park themselves on a lay line and make silver all day.. or park themselves some where and bend rules to make talismins all day long, or any other such thing that you use the mechanics of the spell to break the spirit and abuse the system.

You don't have to worry about the decent folk. It's the ones that will break the rules on purpose that keep such things out of the hands of good players.

Any spell that creates a permanent or long lasting effect has the potential for abuse, but in this case the potential is pretty minimal. Unless the players invent the spell themselves, the market will already be saturated by someone else by the time the players learn the spell. The only way I see to "abuse" the spell (you have a strange idea that using the spell as intended, just on a massive scale, is somehow abusive...) is to go to a dimension where there are no native spell casters and sell your magically created silver there.

--flatline

[Braden Campbell]

You guys let me know when you're done derailing my thread. I'll just be waiting over here...

[flatline]

Back to the original topic, it's pretty unlikely that your success in finding the remains of spent silver bullets would justify the effort required. I would expect that the silver bullets would fragment as soon as they hit anything of substance.

--flatline

[Greyaxe]

Back to the original topic, it's pretty unlikely that your success in finding the remains of spent silver bullets would justify the effort required. I would expect that the silver bullets would fragment as soon as they hit anything of substance.

--flatline

Not if 50% of your bullets are inside the vampire.

[azazel1024]

Back to the original topic, it's pretty unlikely that your success in finding the remains of spent silver bullets would justify the effort required. I would expect that the silver bullets would fragment as soon as they hit anything of substance.

--flatline

Not if 50% of your bullets are inside the vampire.

Unjacketed lead bullets tend to fragment as they pass through an animal/person. I doubt an only slightly harder metal like silver would behave any differently. Even the rounds in a vampire are likely to be broken up quite a bit and you are still going to have to dig them out. The vamp doesn't just mist and drop them to the ground or something.

You MIGHT have a primary fragment with several very small secondary fragments with each hit, especially if the round hits something hard and even against elements that "bind and hurt" vampires, vampires tend to be tougher than a regular human...so I'd assume even against things like silver and wood, their bones are probably harder as well.

Even on a cadaver vampire it might take you a minute or two of fishing around with foreceps to dig out the primary fragment and probably surgery to get the secondary pieces.

This is nothing to say of what would happen to a silver rifle bullet. There is a reason unjacketed rifle rounds aren't used and only part of it has to do with performance in barrel fouling. A high velocity unjacketed round will tend to tear apart hitting a person/animal and you'll basically, for the most part, just get a spray of small fragments inside the target. Oh it can damage the target quite a bit, but it is no where near ideal (ideally you want the round to stay intact, but deform as much as possible and carry through until it nearly exits to impart all kinetic energy as well as creating the largest wound channel possible. jacketed hollow point rounds are very good at this, jacketed rounds tend to overpenetrate and anything but pistol rounds that are unjacketed tend to fragment on impact and/or create very shallow, but wide wound channels).

[Pepsi Jedi]

It's not that it's ignored by me. It's that the type of people that would abuse this, would ignore it. Or, as I pointed out, would just get teleportation spells or mundane transport and do it in many many markets, different ones. Sure sooner or later you'll run out of markets to flood, but before you do it, the abusers would be billionaires and the game silly.

Remember, it's not the good decent players you worry about. It's the type on here (( and out there. *Motions to the world*)) That WOULD just park themselves on a lay line and make silver all day.. or park themselves some where and bend rules to make talismins all day long, or any other such thing that you use the mechanics of the spell to break the spirit and abuse the system.

You don't have to worry about the decent folk. It's the ones that will break the rules on purpose that keep such things out of the hands of good players.

Pepsi, as others have pointed out, there are consequences for such actions. Even if you can obtain such a spell, the problem isn't the player who abuses a system...it's the GM that allows it.

First of all, even if the player dosn't get jumped by bandits, vampires, or an argy mages guild, there is the fact that that much silver will FLOOD the market and make that much silver, worth... well almoast nothing. Sure he may sell several pounds of the stuff, but he's not going to become a billionare.

According to original RMB silver is 300 cr and ounce. This figure might be kind of outdated, as, IRL, silver is only valueed at about 27 US dollars an ounce. However, even at 300 cr it would take 104 TONS of silver to equal one billion credits. By that point, I think we can say the market is deluded. If we go with what silver is really worth it would take 1157 TONS of silver.

Even if the PC could lug all this stuff with him (it'd take at least the equivalent of 3 four-axle tractor trailers to lug even the lowest about), that much silver would crash the market, and attract unwanted attention even if the player can find a buy who will buy that much silver.


That being said, I agree in the sense that players can abuse the system. But GM's who allow it are the ones to blame.

Just sayin'.

Maybe you're not readin' to the end, but you seem to be missing a large part of the pointt.

The magedoesn't drop 100 tons in one place. He starts off at one town. He sells the silver untill he gluts the market there. Then having made thousands if not 100s of thousands he simply... leaves.

This is rifts. Not the modern global economy where you can trade it on the NASDAQ. After he leaves community 1, he goes to community 2. He does it again.. then community 3, and does it again. In rifts 90% of the world is unclaimed wilderness. Travel is actually pretty rare for the common folk. Once you start making your money in this fashion you can pay for protection (Mercs or the rest of your group)) and transport. if the 'next town over' is suffering from your silver glut you go 2 towns over. Bigger cities would take longer to bottom out the markets. It's not like one day and all of rifts earth is going to be full up on the silver your making.

yeah you can sick bandits or what ever on the player, but that falls into punishing the player for a spell used as described in the game. It'd be like sicking 30 bandtis on a glitter boy pilot the first time he gets out of his armor to drop a deuce, to just steal the armor to sell for the huge value.


A smarter mage wouldn't 100% market glut, he'd sell silver in one place till the market value STARTED to decline, then he'd stop. Not a full glut. It'd take longer to make your millions but you still could.

Even if you didn't do THAT, the last item still remains true. Even if you don't sit on a layline making tons of silver, every time you reach a town, Mr Mage is going to make 1000s worth of silver as you walk/ride in and use it. Your char's will have basicly unending money where ever they go. Sure small towns won't have much for you but towns the size that adventure groups frequent (( Ones with MD weapon stores, robot vechile repair ect)) Won't be glutted with your visit. So even if you don't use it to just sit around and destroy the silver market, every time you 'need' money. A few PPE gives you thousands and thousands of dollars worth of precious metal.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Downsides I see to this are that it is going to take a long time to recover anything worthwhile. Think about a fire fight. Maybe you fire off 30 rounds. Unless all of those are hitting or hitting something immediately behind your target, you could have rounds landing anywhere from the immediate vicinity of your target, which might still take a good hour or so of scrounging to find them, to anywhere up to thousands of feet behind the target (basically lost). I don't even want to think how long it would take with a metal detector to find most of them.

Also silver is pretty soft, even on a regular target like a vampire, I'd expect there to be a pretty good chance of the bullet fragmenting, especially hitting bone and more so because you CANNOT jacket silver bullets for them to work on vampires, making them more likely to break-up.

At best I'd rule you could recover 1d6+4% of the ammo fired per 10 minutes of searching up to an hour (IE a maximum of 60% of what you have fired, a minimum of about 30%). ALL of it is going to have to be resmelted which is going to cost 25% of the original ammo price from someone who could expertly smelt and form silver bullets that would work well (silver contracts upon solidifying so in reality, it is almost impossible to make REAL silver bullets that are going to be remotely accurate. Check out the mythbusters episode where they tested silver bullets).

PS as pointed out, silver shouldn't be worth so much in Rifts. In PB, it should have a high value. Silver isn't worth all that much in the grand scheme of things, because it just isn't that rare. Oh it is much less common than iron or copper, but it is still relatively common. Thousands of tons (tens of thousands?) of it are "dug up" and smelted down every year in the modern world. Even in Rifts with more limited means, likely hundreds of tons of the stuff is dug up every year. Considering most of the mundane uses that silver is put to, it would be "ruinous" if it were really 300cr per ounce.

I think you're forgetting a few things.

1) There's not many huge mining operations out there. Rifts earth is still 90% unclaimed wilderness. Most places are still trying to survive. Places like the CS no doubt have some mining ventures but most of their society is built around producing and outfitting their military.Most of the mines will be to produce md materials in the war machine. Not silver
2) Transport of said precious metal is many thousands of times harder in rifts earth. Going through that monster filled wilderness is alot harder.
3) Rifts earth isn't our earth. If people have silver, they're not going to be just making rings out of it and such (( Well some will)) but I'd wadger in a world where a rather common supernatural menace can take a shot from a laser sniper rifle to the face and laugh, and indeed a laser from a MDC tank and laugh, but a silver bullet 'hurts' it, silver will largely be used for weapons and vamp/supernatural protection vs pretty babbles.


I'm pretty sure that's why it's so expensive. MINUTE mining operations world wide. No way for MOST places to transport it if they did mine it, and the fact that rifts earth would largely be using that silver to combat vamps. That's going to drive your market price up.

[Hystrix]

It's not that it's ignored by me. It's that the type of people that would abuse this, would ignore it. Or, as I pointed out, would just get teleportation spells or mundane transport and do it in many many markets, different ones. Sure sooner or later you'll run out of markets to flood, but before you do it, the abusers would be billionaires and the game silly.

Remember, it's not the good decent players you worry about. It's the type on here (( and out there. *Motions to the world*)) That WOULD just park themselves on a lay line and make silver all day.. or park themselves some where and bend rules to make talismins all day long, or any other such thing that you use the mechanics of the spell to break the spirit and abuse the system.

You don't have to worry about the decent folk. It's the ones that will break the rules on purpose that keep such things out of the hands of good players.

Pepsi, as others have pointed out, there are consequences for such actions. Even if you can obtain such a spell, the problem isn't the player who abuses a system...it's the GM that allows it.

First of all, even if the player dosn't get jumped by bandits, vampires, or an argy mages guild, there is the fact that that much silver will FLOOD the market and make that much silver, worth... well almoast nothing. Sure he may sell several pounds of the stuff, but he's not going to become a billionare.

According to original RMB silver is 300 cr and ounce. This figure might be kind of outdated, as, IRL, silver is only valueed at about 27 US dollars an ounce. However, even at 300 cr it would take 104 TONS of silver to equal one billion credits. By that point, I think we can say the market is deluded. If we go with what silver is really worth it would take 1157 TONS of silver.

Even if the PC could lug all this stuff with him (it'd take at least the equivalent of 3 four-axle tractor trailers to lug even the lowest about), that much silver would crash the market, and attract unwanted attention even if the player can find a buy who will buy that much silver.


That being said, I agree in the sense that players can abuse the system. But GM's who allow it are the ones to blame.

Just sayin'.

Maybe you're not readin' to the end, but you seem to be missing a large part of the pointt.

The magedoesn't drop 100 tons in one place. He starts off at one town. He sells the silver untill he gluts the market there. Then having made thousands if not 100s of thousands he simply... leaves.

This is rifts. Not the modern global economy where you can trade it on the NASDAQ. After he leaves community 1, he goes to community 2. He does it again.. then community 3, and does it again. In rifts 90% of the world is unclaimed wilderness. Travel is actually pretty rare for the common folk. Once you start making your money in this fashion you can pay for protection (Mercs or the rest of your group)) and transport. if the 'next town over' is suffering from your silver glut you go 2 towns over. Bigger cities would take longer to bottom out the markets. It's not like one day and all of rifts earth is going to be full up on the silver your making.

yeah you can sick bandits or what ever on the player, but that falls into punishing the player for a spell used as described in the game. It'd be like sicking 30 bandtis on a glitter boy pilot the first time he gets out of his armor to drop a deuce, to just steal the armor to sell for the huge value.


A smarter mage wouldn't 100% market glut, he'd sell silver in one place till the market value STARTED to decline, then he'd stop. Not a full glut. It'd take longer to make your millions but you still could.

Even if you didn't do THAT, the last item still remains true. Even if you don't sit on a layline making tons of silver, every time you reach a town, Mr Mage is going to make 1000s worth of silver as you walk/ride in and use it. Your char's will have basicly unending money where ever they go. Sure small towns won't have much for you but towns the size that adventure groups frequent (( Ones with MD weapon stores, robot vechile repair ect)) Won't be glutted with your visit. So even if you don't use it to just sit around and destroy the silver market, every time you 'need' money. A few PPE gives you thousands and thousands of dollars worth of precious metal.

Making hundreds of thousands in one town, eh? So to make 1 billion credits he's travelling to what? 10,000 different towns? That sounds like years of work even if he did just make the stuff in a spell. And what happens when he starts going into towns who have traded silver he's traded tem with other towns. Rifts Earth may have a diffent economy, but if EVERYONE and there brother starts to have silvers weapons in mass, the value will go down. Unless, of course he's hopping dimensions to make trades. Even then, that's more work. You make it sound like he's snapping his fingers and 'poof' he's got money. Your way sounds really complicated and most players are gonna get bored with travelling from town to town and doing nothing but sell silver. IRL, that'd be a good plan. In an RPG setting...not so much.

Also sending bandits or mages or vamps after the player isn't punishment. It's establishing a natural consequense for the PCs actions. No GM should shy away from that.

[Pepsi Jedi]

It's not that it's ignored by me. It's that the type of people that would abuse this, would ignore it. Or, as I pointed out, would just get teleportation spells or mundane transport and do it in many many markets, different ones. Sure sooner or later you'll run out of markets to flood, but before you do it, the abusers would be billionaires and the game silly.

Remember, it's not the good decent players you worry about. It's the type on here (( and out there. *Motions to the world*)) That WOULD just park themselves on a lay line and make silver all day.. or park themselves some where and bend rules to make talismins all day long, or any other such thing that you use the mechanics of the spell to break the spirit and abuse the system.

You don't have to worry about the decent folk. It's the ones that will break the rules on purpose that keep such things out of the hands of good players.

Pepsi, as others have pointed out, there are consequences for such actions. Even if you can obtain such a spell, the problem isn't the player who abuses a system...it's the GM that allows it.

First of all, even if the player dosn't get jumped by bandits, vampires, or an argy mages guild, there is the fact that that much silver will FLOOD the market and make that much silver, worth... well almoast nothing. Sure he may sell several pounds of the stuff, but he's not going to become a billionare.

According to original RMB silver is 300 cr and ounce. This figure might be kind of outdated, as, IRL, silver is only valueed at about 27 US dollars an ounce. However, even at 300 cr it would take 104 TONS of silver to equal one billion credits. By that point, I think we can say the market is deluded. If we go with what silver is really worth it would take 1157 TONS of silver.

Even if the PC could lug all this stuff with him (it'd take at least the equivalent of 3 four-axle tractor trailers to lug even the lowest about), that much silver would crash the market, and attract unwanted attention even if the player can find a buy who will buy that much silver.


That being said, I agree in the sense that players can abuse the system. But GM's who allow it are the ones to blame.

Just sayin'.

Maybe you're not readin' to the end, but you seem to be missing a large part of the pointt.

The magedoesn't drop 100 tons in one place. He starts off at one town. He sells the silver untill he gluts the market there. Then having made thousands if not 100s of thousands he simply... leaves.

This is rifts. Not the modern global economy where you can trade it on the NASDAQ. After he leaves community 1, he goes to community 2. He does it again.. then community 3, and does it again. In rifts 90% of the world is unclaimed wilderness. Travel is actually pretty rare for the common folk. Once you start making your money in this fashion you can pay for protection (Mercs or the rest of your group)) and transport. if the 'next town over' is suffering from your silver glut you go 2 towns over. Bigger cities would take longer to bottom out the markets. It's not like one day and all of rifts earth is going to be full up on the silver your making.

yeah you can sick bandits or what ever on the player, but that falls into punishing the player for a spell used as described in the game. It'd be like sicking 30 bandtis on a glitter boy pilot the first time he gets out of his armor to drop a deuce, to just steal the armor to sell for the huge value.


A smarter mage wouldn't 100% market glut, he'd sell silver in one place till the market value STARTED to decline, then he'd stop. Not a full glut. It'd take longer to make your millions but you still could.

Even if you didn't do THAT, the last item still remains true. Even if you don't sit on a layline making tons of silver, every time you reach a town, Mr Mage is going to make 1000s worth of silver as you walk/ride in and use it. Your char's will have basicly unending money where ever they go. Sure small towns won't have much for you but towns the size that adventure groups frequent (( Ones with MD weapon stores, robot vechile repair ect)) Won't be glutted with your visit. So even if you don't use it to just sit around and destroy the silver market, every time you 'need' money. A few PPE gives you thousands and thousands of dollars worth of precious metal.

Making hundreds of thousands in one town, eh? So to make 1 billion credits he's travelling to what? 10,000 different towns? That sounds like years of work even if he did just make the stuff in a spell. And what happens when he starts going into towns who have traded silver he's traded tem with other towns. Rifts Earth may have a diffent economy, but if EVERYONE and there brother starts to have silvers weapons in mass, the value will go down. Unless, of course he's hopping dimensions to make trades. Even then, that's more work. You make it sound like he's snapping his fingers and 'poof' he's got money. Your way sounds really complicated and most players are gonna get bored with travelling from town to town and doing nothing but sell silver. IRL, that'd be a good plan. In an RPG setting...not so much.

Also sending bandits or mages or vamps after the player isn't punishment. It's establishing a natural consequense for the PCs actions. No GM should shy away from that.

By that logic, shouldn't the adventure group be ambushed pretty much every time they go to sleep? lol MD Weapons and Armor, especially power armor and such cost many times precious metals per weight.

What's the going price for a glitter boy these days? (( Never actually bought one.)) Wouldn't it be enormously profitable for a group of bandits to stalk a glitter boy pilot and just wait for him tto get out of the armor. Shoot him in the face as he's pooping behind a tree and stealing the glitter boy?


Yeah it can happen. Don't get me wrong it could, but folks wouldn't like that kinda game. lol

And yeah, it sounds boring to play to me too. But again I'm not talking about the good players.I'm talking about the ones that would just use it to abuse it. ""Well I'm going to spend5 months doing this to build up my money base, then when I'm done we can do the adventure" types.

Again guys. I know it's not cool, but the possibility of enormous abuse is a guiding factor in the 'Why' alot of things don't pop up in RPGs.

[Greyaxe]

Downsides I see to this are that it is going to take a long time to recover anything worthwhile. Think about a fire fight. Maybe you fire off 30 rounds. Unless all of those are hitting or hitting something immediately behind your target, you could have rounds landing anywhere from the immediate vicinity of your target, which might still take a good hour or so of scrounging to find them, to anywhere up to thousands of feet behind the target (basically lost). I don't even want to think how long it would take with a metal detector to find most of them.

Also silver is pretty soft, even on a regular target like a vampire, I'd expect there to be a pretty good chance of the bullet fragmenting, especially hitting bone and more so because you CANNOT jacket silver bullets for them to work on vampires, making them more likely to break-up.

At best I'd rule you could recover 1d6+4% of the ammo fired per 10 minutes of searching up to an hour (IE a maximum of 60% of what you have fired, a minimum of about 30%). ALL of it is going to have to be resmelted which is going to cost 25% of the original ammo price from someone who could expertly smelt and form silver bullets that would work well (silver contracts upon solidifying so in reality, it is almost impossible to make REAL silver bullets that are going to be remotely accurate. Check out the mythbusters episode where they tested silver bullets).

PS as pointed out, silver shouldn't be worth so much in Rifts. In PB, it should have a high value. Silver isn't worth all that much in the grand scheme of things, because it just isn't that rare. Oh it is much less common than iron or copper, but it is still relatively common. Thousands of tons (tens of thousands?) of it are "dug up" and smelted down every year in the modern world. Even in Rifts with more limited means, likely hundreds of tons of the stuff is dug up every year. Considering most of the mundane uses that silver is put to, it would be "ruinous" if it were really 300cr per ounce.

I think you're forgetting a few things.

1) There's not many huge mining operations out there. Rifts earth is still 90% unclaimed wilderness. Most places are still trying to survive. Places like the CS no doubt have some mining ventures but most of their society is built around producing and outfitting their military.Most of the mines will be to produce md materials in the war machine. Not silver
2) Transport of said precious metal is many thousands of times harder in rifts earth. Going through that monster filled wilderness is alot harder.
3) Rifts earth isn't our earth. If people have silver, they're not going to be just making rings out of it and such (( Well some will)) but I'd wadger in a world where a rather common supernatural menace can take a shot from a laser sniper rifle to the face and laugh, and indeed a laser from a MDC tank and laugh, but a silver bullet 'hurts' it, silver will largely be used for weapons and vamp/supernatural protection vs pretty babbles.


I'm pretty sure that's why it's so expensive. MINUTE mining operations world wide. No way for MOST places to transport it if they did mine it, and the fact that rifts earth would largely be using that silver to combat vamps. That's going to drive your market price up.

Vampires control the silver mining in Mexico as well. What silver you get is not only expensive it is likely illegal in most town, (towns controlled by vampires) and as such the silver I have is likely all I am going to get with the exception of spotty bits here and there. It behooves me to reclaim as much silver as possible. Sifting through the ashes of a vampire is no different than sifting through a river looking for gold. I really figure (the new book has a lot to do with this discussion so go buy it) I can claim 50% minimum of all the bullets that hit a vampire according to the new rules, and then a few more that pass harmlessly through the other side of the vampire. Say 60% searching for hours if necessary. I have 400 silver bullets, in a single combat I used 48. If i get back 60% that's 26 bullets down 22, 5% of my total. If this is a constant diminishing return I will have no silver bullets in as few as 20 combats. Assuming the number of vampires is low, (I fought 2 1/2). A combat where spraying vampires becomes necessary, think pack of wild vampires; I could use 200 bullets in a single combat. It is very necessary in the new books to retrieve silver wherever you can. Kevin. If you are listening put rules for this in the Vampire sourcebook. Thanks.

[Pepsi Jedi]

With out even touching the 'silver' part of the bullets. I would SERIOUSLY suggest for folks to go out to the woods or something and fire off 20 shots at a target. Then see how many bullets you can find. Just 20.

If you can find 10, I'd be utterly amazed. I know it's a bit of real world in a game, but seriously, you're not going to find 60% of your bullets. they're roughly the size of the end of your pinky finger or smaller, and travel 100s to 1000s of yards down range and stuff. It's enormously hard to find fired bullets. People have been watching too much CSI where the bullet is conveniently in some soft dry wall right where the tech looks and plucks out with some tweezers.

[Greyaxe]

. People have been watching too much CSI where the bullet is conveniently in some soft dry wall right where the tech looks and plucks out with some tweezers.

LOL
But it is CSI that we are playing. the smoking gun is always available and the good guy wins, alot... sometimes... occasionally.. Unless its ******* vampires

[Killer Cyborg]

Making hundreds of thousands in one town, eh? So to make 1 billion credits he's travelling to what? 10,000 different towns? That sounds like years of work even if he did just make the stuff in a spell. And what happens when he starts going into towns who have traded silver he's traded tem with other towns. Rifts Earth may have a diffent economy, but if EVERYONE and there brother starts to have silvers weapons in mass, the value will go down. Unless, of course he's hopping dimensions to make trades. Even then, that's more work. You make it sound like he's snapping his fingers and 'poof' he's got money. Your way sounds really complicated and most players are gonna get bored with travelling from town to town and doing nothing but sell silver. IRL, that'd be a good plan. In an RPG setting...not so much.

Also sending bandits or mages or vamps after the player isn't punishment. It's establishing a natural consequense for the PCs actions. No GM should shy away from that.

Moreover, GMs should strive for it, as it it realistic.
And it's leaving a lot out.
It would be the norm for most kingdoms/territories, for a tax/fee/bribe to be take out just to transport goods through the area, or just to use the roads, or just to use the airspace.
There's be politics, and economics, and bureaucracy all over the place, taking a bite out every step of the way, and that's leaving out the kingdoms/territories that decide to simply confiscate the entire shipment (and/or the mage making the silver, if they find out about that little detail).

[Hystrix]

You guys let me know when you're done derailing my thread. I'll just be waiting over here...

I was thinking the same thing-Seems like they are content to derail-

Maybe you should start a new thread?

Oh, the irony.

Anyway. Totally agree with KC on the characters abusing the economy thing. I'll say it again. Players get away with such things when the GM isn't doing his/her job.

However, I definatly agree with Pepsi that recoving bullets would be a silly errand to say the least. You might recover 10%. At the most. After an hour or more a searching a highly dangerous battlefield. Maybe. I'm being generous.

[azazel1024]

Locally Silver could be very expensive in some places, in general it shouldn't be. Of, sure in a lot of cases there are specific silver mines, but silver is also often found in copper deposits, which are going to be pretty "frequent" for mining. Silver is also used a HUGE number of things. I wasn't even remotely refering to "pretty things" like silverware or jewlery. It is used in medicine, electronics, heat exchangers and a whole ton of other uses. Any even modestly modern economy is going to be attempting to mine silver for its applications outside of baubbles along with the point you made, silver hurts a lot of supernatural baddies.

No, there is no world economy, but the CS is likely to be mining a fair amount of it for technological uses, let alone they also go up against vampires and some supernatural creatures that are hurt by silver occasionally, so they are going to need a least a modest amount for things like silver plated weapons, bullets and/or rail gun rounds.

Most other modest sized economies are also going to try to acquire silver either by mining it themselves or trading for it.

So yeah, I can totally see it being more valuable than it is today...but well over 10x more valuable? I doubt it.

[Greyaxe]

Locally Silver could be very expensive in some places, in general it shouldn't be. Of, sure in a lot of cases there are specific silver mines, but silver is also often found in copper deposits, which are going to be pretty "frequent" for mining. Silver is also used a HUGE number of things. I wasn't even remotely refering to "pretty things" like silverware or jewlery. It is used in medicine, electronics, heat exchangers and a whole ton of other uses. Any even modestly modern economy is going to be attempting to mine silver for its applications outside of baubbles along with the point you made, silver hurts a lot of supernatural baddies.

No, there is no world economy, but the CS is likely to be mining a fair amount of it for technological uses, let alone they also go up against vampires and some supernatural creatures that are hurt by silver occasionally, so they are going to need a least a modest amount for things like silver plated weapons, bullets and/or rail gun rounds.

Most other modest sized economies are also going to try to acquire silver either by mining it themselves or trading for it.

So yeah, I can totally see it being more valuable than it is today...but well over 10x more valuable? I doubt it.

My GM already pointed out yo could make a fortune in silver mining it in Northern America and selling it in Mexico because Vampires control silver mining or the lack thereof.

[kaid]

Back to the original topic, it's pretty unlikely that your success in finding the remains of spent silver bullets would justify the effort required. I would expect that the silver bullets would fragment as soon as they hit anything of substance.

--flatline

Back to the original topic I would say it would depend. If they are normal SDC bullets fired from a normal SDC gun that hit its target would probably be recoverable. Silver is soft so it is unlikely to get much if any blow through if it actually hits a target.

Rail guns using silver or silver coated bullets I would say probably not. They are shooting with such force that the silver would pretty much turn into powder or teensy slivers if it hits a target. Lots of damage but recovering the silver would be so difficult as to not be worth the effort.

Edit cause I have a short attention span.

Misses I would say no to recovering any misses as somebody above mentioned even a hand gun bullet can travel hundreds of feet and make a really tiny hole in something.

[azazel1024]

I pointed out several times already, that silver, like lead fragments upon impact if it is unjacketed, especially in high velocity fire arms like rifles. So unless you are using high calibre, low velocity rounds, likely any pieces you'd be digging out of a vampire are going to be pretty tiny.

Oh, sure, if you have a spare couple of minutes, why not dig out a couple of slugs from a vampire, but you are only going to get the "main" piece most likely and generally only from pistol rounds or shotgun rounds. Rifle rounds are likely to fragment so badly to not be worth it unless you want to cremate the vampire and collect any fragments left in the ashes.

Then you will have to take the fragments/rounds to a specialist who can forge the rounds appropriately to fit the weapon (I don't know that you could appropirately cast silver so that it would work properly, though maybe you could). Silver contracts and not necessarily prefectly evenly upon cooling, which means it is inaccurate as hell if you simply just try to cast a silver round and fit it to a cartridge and stick it in your gun. So you are going to lose some value in having to pay someone to remake the rounds. I'd figure probably in the 25% range if you are supplying the materials.

In terms of ROI, it just isn't going to be very high fishing rounds out of a vampire to reuse.

[kaid]

I pointed out several times already, that silver, like lead fragments upon impact if it is unjacketed, especially in high velocity fire arms like rifles. So unless you are using high calibre, low velocity rounds, likely any pieces you'd be digging out of a vampire are going to be pretty tiny.

Oh, sure, if you have a spare couple of minutes, why not dig out a couple of slugs from a vampire, but you are only going to get the "main" piece most likely and generally only from pistol rounds or shotgun rounds. Rifle rounds are likely to fragment so badly to not be worth it unless you want to cremate the vampire and collect any fragments left in the ashes.

Then you will have to take the fragments/rounds to a specialist who can forge the rounds appropriately to fit the weapon (I don't know that you could appropirately cast silver so that it would work properly, though maybe you could). Silver contracts and not necessarily prefectly evenly upon cooling, which means it is inaccurate as hell if you simply just try to cast a silver round and fit it to a cartridge and stick it in your gun. So you are going to lose some value in having to pay someone to remake the rounds. I'd figure probably in the 25% range if you are supplying the materials.

In terms of ROI, it just isn't going to be very high fishing rounds out of a vampire to reuse.

Yes pretty much only would be worth while doing with things like revolvers or other hand guns. Plus side is when you are dealing with vampires you may not need to do much digging. If you have the chance to leave them out for the sun just pick through the ashes after they go poof. If you sever the head and burn the body and the head the silver puddles from any bullets should be recoverable. But yes for all the work of finding the silver again/recasting it reloading the ammo would make it not really cost effective for the most part.

[Greyaxe]

I pointed out several times already, that silver, like lead fragments upon impact if it is unjacketed, especially in high velocity fire arms like rifles. So unless you are using high calibre, low velocity rounds, likely any pieces you'd be digging out of a vampire are going to be pretty tiny.

Oh, sure, if you have a spare couple of minutes, why not dig out a couple of slugs from a vampire, but you are only going to get the "main" piece most likely and generally only from pistol rounds or shotgun rounds. Rifle rounds are likely to fragment so badly to not be worth it unless you want to cremate the vampire and collect any fragments left in the ashes.

Then you will have to take the fragments/rounds to a specialist who can forge the rounds appropriately to fit the weapon (I don't know that you could appropirately cast silver so that it would work properly, though maybe you could). Silver contracts and not necessarily prefectly evenly upon cooling, which means it is inaccurate as hell if you simply just try to cast a silver round and fit it to a cartridge and stick it in your gun. So you are going to lose some value in having to pay someone to remake the rounds. I'd figure probably in the 25% range if you are supplying the materials.

In terms of ROI, it just isn't going to be very high fishing rounds out of a vampire to reuse.

Yes pretty much only would be worth while doing with things like revolvers or other hand guns. Plus side is when you are dealing with vampires you may not need to do much digging. If you have the chance to leave them out for the sun just pick through the ashes after they go poof. If you sever the head and burn the body and the head the silver puddles from any bullets should be recoverable. But yes for all the work of finding the silver again/recasting it reloading the ammo would make it not really cost effective for the most part.

The new vampire Kingdoms has a chart on what percentage of bullets stays in a vampire. SDC small caliber rounds can be 50% of the bullets remain in the vampire. These are the bullets i am trying to collect.

[Mallak's Place]

Our Group uses a 50 gallon drum with TW powered whirlpool jet and the spells Create Water and Purification. When we are done hunting vamps we just drop the fang-face into the drum and in a minute he's gone.. repeat till all are dissolved. any clothing has to be picked out as you go but Jewelry and Silver bullets can be collected from the bottom of the barrel when done.

[flatline]

Our Group uses a 50 gallon drum with TW powered whirlpool jet and the spells Create Water and Purification. When we are done hunting vamps we just drop the fang-face into the drum and in a minute he's gone.. repeat till all are dissolved. any clothing has to be picked out as you go but Jewelry and Silver bullets can be collected from the bottom of the barrel when done.

Simple and effective. I like it.

--flatline