Forums of the Megaverse®

OK, so I was running a game where one of our main goals was to build a civilization, while we had allot of builders and soldiers but very little farmers. While we where overcoming this problem with robot labor, we wanted a more long term solution. At the same time we where aware of vampires infesting Mexico deep to the south. So we sent Naruni stealth drone south to find out what was going on in Mexico. Soon we found out that there where villages dotted throughout Mexico that where ruled by vampires.

Afterwords we sent Naruni stealth drones equipped with ground penetrating radar systems to the towns while we consulted with True Atlantian undead slayers on the nature of the enemies. We then had our troops trained in use of archaic weapons like assault rifles and shotguns. We went to every civilization we where friendly with an bought up as much garlic and wolvesbane as we could get and recived hundreds of gallons of holy water from our allies and bought silver by the ton.

In he end we had three main weapons against the vampires:

Silver bullets: Simply put, two bursts from a good assault rifle will put 90% of vampires deep into negative hit points where staking is no longer a difficult task and the vamp is literally minutes away from being able to retaliate.

Vamp Mace: A mixture of Garlic Paste, Pureed Wolvesbane, holy water and just a touch of preservative with the consistency of Tomato sauce this mixture is deadly dangerous for vamps. Not only does this stuff act like Mace for Vampires but it also burns them like acid and prevents them from entering a building that has been sprayed with this mixture.

Wooden Flechettes: Used in beehive artillery shells, shotgun shells, claymores and grenades these sharpened hardened fragments represented a cheap method of bringing pain to large amounts of vamps without worrying about friendly fire.

to defend against vampires we used several methods as well:

Amulets: Simply put everyone got a pair of dogtags that where actually magical Amulets. One provided a boost against horror factor and the other produced a bonus to save against mind control.

Sonic Insect Repellent: The vampire's ability to control bugs is a potentially deadly power, however when flea and tick repelling sonic generators are added to your standard equipment the vampire actually has to focus harder to keep the bugs on our soldiers because his armor is constantly driving them away.

Multi-Optics: Multi optics built into the helmet of the armor is standard issue amoung the Platinum Shield but when going south the troops are also equipped with a pair of tv monitor goggles that broadcast the multi optics. This prevents the vampire's gaze abilities from being effective.

Cross Flashlights: Particularly the one over the forehead and one on every weapon. This makes it hard for a vamp to look at you and is intimidating, even if they did not damage the vamps it would still be very useful.

So once we had a handle on our opponents and where girded for war we began raids on our foes. We would fly our troop transports into a village early in the morning and grab as many of the humans and d-bees living in the villages. we would teleport the villagers north to a prison camp where we would use magic (purge other) to remove vampire influence from the people and issue them clothes, food, and farmland (along with a sizable MDC wood farmhouse) in Northern California.

The next night the vampires would wake up to find their food missing and everything of value looted and destroyed and the villages massively booby trapped. If we had time after taking the people and their valuables we would attack the vampires but if we did not have much time we just leave them in destroyed villages.

You can if you want to go gloriously and fight vampires head on, but the fact is they are vulnerable half the day and need a very specific food source. Why fight them head on when you can just ruin their standard of living and ruin their power base?

Squiz wrote:Looks pretty good. But not killing them worries me. Sure you took their food source away, but it takes weeks for the vamps to starve, right? They're gonna be pissed, and soon you're gonna have a legion of vampires attacking you

Except you are not having intelligent calculating vamps attacking you, you have maddened blood hungry vamps who will charge you without thought to self preservation and will do incredibly stupid things to get their fix. Drop a blood bag into a field and shoot anything that runs towards it. its not like they will have the presence of mind to avoid the bullets.

Brilliant. Time consuming but brilliant

Just a question: How the vampires didnt notice the Drones and destroied then? I mean, wild vampires ignoring the is ok and sound but humans and secondary vampires would not only notice but get suspicious as well, to the point that their paranoid would attack and destroy the drone.

Squiz wrote:Looks pretty good. But not killing them worries me. Sure you took their food source away, but it takes weeks for the vamps to starve, right? They're gonna be pissed, and soon you're gonna have a legion of vampires attacking you

First they would need to know who is taking their food and where that new enemy is. If they dont have a clue to who did that they cant retaliate.

And it dont take weeks for then to starve. Sure if you mean starve to dead yes but after about 5 days without blood they are so much screwed that killing then is easy.

Nightmaster wrote:Just a question: How the vampires didnt notice the Drones and destroied then? I mean, wild vampires ignoring the is ok and sound but humans and secondary vampires would not only notice but get suspicious as well, to the point that their paranoid would attack and destroy the drone.

97% prowl + no specific scent + top speed of 75+ mph

Nightmaster wrote:First they would need to know who is taking their food and where that new enemy is. If they dont have a clue to who did that they cant retaliate.

And it dont take weeks for then to starve. Sure if you mean starve to dead yes but after about 5 days without blood they are so much screwed that killing then is easy.

They found out and eventually leaked the location of their city to the Coalition, the Mexico kingdom was the only vamp kingdom that had actual effective countermeasures to this, so northern mexico was rapidly turned into a no man's land by our efforts.

You could use the same gear with a sizable army of 1-200 to assault and destroy a vamp intelligence, effectively ending the existance of a thousand or more vampires at once who couldnt make it to the battle in time.

I solved the vampire issue by using a Kinetic Kill weapon, I had a pre-Rifts weapons satellite that was essentially a giant railgun in space and managed to get it to fire a series of five, 500 ton nickel/iron slugs at Mexico at .99 of light speed. The resulting impact was enough to sink Mexico and all that water killed every unliving/living thing there. We're still dealing with the magical backlash, but hey no more vampires.

Maybe he's referring to the fact that vampires can be harmed by a squirt gun, holy water optional.

Gheralt wrote:

keir451 wrote:I solved the vampire issue by using a Kinetic Kill weapon, I had a pre-Rifts weapons satellite that was essentially a giant railgun in space and manged to get it to fire a nickel/iron slug of several tons, at near light speed, at Mexico. The resulting impact was enough to sink Mexico and all that water killed every unliving/living thing there. We're still dealing with the magical backlash, but hey no more vampires.

This sounds comical in how it couldn't be done but then again considering Vampires are Rifts comic relief I suppose it is par for course...

Yeah, since according to the rule I can't kill them w/energy weapons or nukes, but they ARE vulnerable to water so why not flood all of Mexico by sinking it. Or at least creating enough holes that let water in to the pertinent areas.

rat_bastard wrote:

Nightmaster wrote:Just a question: How the vampires didnt notice the Drones and destroied then? I mean, wild vampires ignoring the is ok and sound but humans and secondary vampires would not only notice but get suspicious as well, to the point that their paranoid would attack and destroy the drone.

97% prowl + no specific scent + top speed of 75+ mph

The first scout drones could even be ok but the ones with the sonar like sensors would need to be slow or the process of finding out the vampires underground lairs would not be possible principally because the search would have to be done by day to avoid the vamps. There is no way that the comunity would not notice a Naruni drone. Even if silent they are not invisible.

After all because of the monsters mind control there is always a part of the comunity that is loyal to then and they would report the sight of the drone the next night.

Nightmaster wrote:

rat_bastard wrote:

Nightmaster wrote:Just a question: How the vampires didnt notice the Drones and destroied then? I mean, wild vampires ignoring the is ok and sound but humans and secondary vampires would not only notice but get suspicious as well, to the point that their paranoid would attack and destroy the drone.

97% prowl + no specific scent + top speed of 75+ mph

The first scout drones could even be ok but the ones with the sonar like sensors would need to be slow or the process of finding out the vampires underground lairs would not be possible principally because the search would have to be done by day to avoid the vamps. There is no way that the comunity would not notice a Naruni drone. Even if silent they are not invisible.

After all because of the monsters mind control there is always a part of the comunity that is loyal to then and they would report the sight of the drone the next night.

The Naruni stealth drones have optical cloaking skin, as well as the fact that the community was surveyed during the day when the humans where working, the demon guards where drinking and the vampires where sleeping. The top speed has to do with the speed it can silently run away if spotted. However since the only things available to spot it where drunk brodkil, and human slaves working their fields.

Now once the army went farther south to the Mexico empire - the only empire that actually teams up with its humans and embraces technology, we started having our problems with our enemies spotting the drones. But quite simply a stealth drone is very difficult to spot.

Munchkin Slappin GM wrote:I looked though Naruni Wave 2 and didn't see a stealth spy drone, so I'd say it was r_b's creation.

Rifts Mercenaries, Buy it, own it, love it.

Gheralt wrote:

keir451 wrote:I solved the vampire issue by using a series of five nickel/iron slugs of 500 tons each at Mexicoat .99 oflight speed. The resulting impact was enough to sink Mexico and all that water killed every unliving/living thing there. We're still dealing with the magical backlash, but hey no more vampires.

This sounds comical in how it couldn't be done but then again considering Vampires are Rifts comic relief I suppose it is par for course...

Actually it could be done, esp. if the Nickel/Iron slug also contains silver. The 'Kinetic Kill' weapon or 'Rod from God' is a viable potential space weapon meant for planetary bombardments. Think Tunguska or the rock that killed the dinosaurs.

Munchkin Slappin GM wrote:I looked though Naruni Wave 2 and didn't see a stealth spy drone, so I'd say it was r_b's creation.

I am tempted to begin calling Rat_Bastard 'Arby' as a result of this post.

/Sub

Nightmaster wrote:The first scout drones could even be ok but the ones with the sonar like sensors would need to be slow or the process of finding out the vampires underground lairs would not be possible principally because the search would have to be done by day to avoid the vamps. There is no way that the comunity would not notice a Naruni drone. Even if silent they are not invisible.

After all because of the monsters mind control there is always a part of the comunity that is loyal to then and they would report the sight of the drone the next night.

I would also like to point out you are speculating on the requirements of technology that is superior to late 21st century technology. In modern ground sensing radar systems we need to slowly sweep over an area, but we are talking about the advanced tech of a alien race. While I used the term "ground sensing radar" I was trying to use a term that would get my point across, what we did was pay a considerably large amount of money to have Naruni's Gravity wave sensors and had it check for underground structures and map the town.

In order to deal with the drone the towns defenders (a small pack of brodkil) would have had to 1 spot the drone, 2 hit it before it made another successful prowl check or got out of range. It has a top speed of 150 miles and hour and can perform its task in a matter of rounds. It does nothing to draw attention to itself and the "guards" its hiding from are more interested in drinking and overseeing the human slaves than spotting an invisible opponent.

As for the Humans, in the two northernmost vampire kingdoms, you are talking about starving anemic sustenance farmers who have to work in their fields all day long in order to survive. They are to busy to be on the look out for invisible high speed drones and even if they miraculously spot them they cannot do anything to stop the drones except tell a guard, and by the time the guard is informed the drone is already gone.

rat_bastard wrote:In order to deal with the drone the towns defenders (a small pack of brodkil) would have had to 1 spot the drone, 2 hit it before it made another successful prowl check or got out of range. It has a top speed of 150 miles and hour and can perform its task in a matter of rounds. It does nothing to draw attention to itself and the "guards" its hiding from are more interested in drinking and overseeing the human slaves than spotting an invisible opponent.

As for the Humans, in the two northernmost vampire kingdoms, you are talking about starving anemic sustenance farmers who have to work in their fields all day long in order to survive. They are to busy to be on the look out for invisible high speed drones and even if they miraculously spot them they cannot do anything to stop the drones except tell a guard, and by the time the guard is informed the drone is already gone.

And that is exactly what I am talking about. I am not talking about the guards destroing the drone but by the act of become aware of the drone presence and thus the next night warning the vampire leader of the comunity. Of course they most probably would not know about Naruni Enterprises and its creations but depending on how paranoic the vampire leader and his superiors are they could increase guard activity and thus further investigation of the town would be a lot more difficult.

Remember that although the vampires disdain of technology, their daylight guards will not and the broadkill that dont have cibernetic implants are capable of staying invisible for as long they wish. I am not even acounting for magic guards that the vampires may have in the form of LLW/Mystics under their mind control or even demons, all of wich would have magical abilities that could further restric the drone activity from the start.

The scenario is not bad and the idea is really briliant but what caught my atention is how easy was to infiltrate the vampire comunities to gather data while in pratical terms it would not be that easy.

Nightmaster wrote:

rat_bastard wrote:In order to deal with the drone the towns defenders (a small pack of brodkil) would have had to 1 spot the drone, 2 hit it before it made another successful prowl check or got out of range. It has a top speed of 150 miles and hour and can perform its task in a matter of rounds. It does nothing to draw attention to itself and the "guards" its hiding from are more interested in drinking and overseeing the human slaves than spotting an invisible opponent.

As for the Humans, in the two northernmost vampire kingdoms, you are talking about starving anemic sustenance farmers who have to work in their fields all day long in order to survive. They are to busy to be on the look out for invisible high speed drones and even if they miraculously spot them they cannot do anything to stop the drones except tell a guard, and by the time the guard is informed the drone is already gone.

And that is exactly what I am talking about. I am not talking about the guards destroing the drone but by the act of become aware of the drone presence and thus the next night warning the vampire leader of the comunity. Of course they most probably would not know about Naruni Enterprises and its creations but depending on how paranoic the vampire leader and his superiors are they could increase guard activity and thus further investigation of the town would be a lot more difficult.

Remember that although the vampires disdain of technology, their daylight guards will not and the broadkill that dont have cibernetic implants are capable of staying invisible for as long they wish. I am not even acounting for magic guards that the vampires may have in the form of LLW/Mystics under their mind control or even demons, all of wich would have magical abilities that could further restric the drone activity from the start.

The scenario is not bad and the idea is really briliant but what caught my atention is how easy was to infiltrate the vampire comunities to gather data while in pratical terms it would not be that easy.

The fact is the two northernmost vampire kingdoms did not use guards other than a few summoned demons to guard the AI, I had to throw the Brodkil in to keep things interesting. It was not until they reached the Mexico Kingdom that they where dealing with people capable of doing anything about this.

The Brodkil may have toys but they simply are not that observant, not a single one made his perception check with sufficient skill to spot the prowling drones. Even if they do, what do they do? They had a army bearing down on them 24-48 hours after the drone passed through.

So you abduct whole towns of innocent people, loot their homes and then destroy the only place they have to live...

Are the vampires your enemy...or simply your competitors?

Noon wrote:So you abduct whole towns of innocent people, loot their homes and then destroy the only place they have to live...

Are the vampires your enemy...or simply your competitors?

If he takes them to northern Cali then sets them up with land to call there own, but allows them to leave if they want, then Id say he is doing good.

Noon wrote:So you abduct whole towns of innocent people, loot their homes and then destroy the only place they have to live...

Are the vampires your enemy...or simply your competitors?

Lets not whitewash things, what we did was only marginally better than what a slaver does.

That said, take into account the lives these people lived. They literally had it worse than people in pre-horseshoe dark ages, a person who lived to thirty was considered ancient. Personal property beyond clothing was not allowed, all psychics, people who could resist mind control and people who spoke up to much where killed. People would wake up at sun up, work the fields all day with bone and stone tools (because wooden tools where banned) then sleep. There was no expression, no hope, no music, no choice, just painful life and (hopefully) quick death.

I'm not saying we are better (we are not pretending to be saints, we did this for profit), but if you where in their shoes which master would you choose?

The adults who did not kill themselves became fairly fanatical supporters of ours, the children are turning out more normal.

Thinyser wrote:

Noon wrote:So you abduct whole towns of innocent people, loot their homes and then destroy the only place they have to live...

Are the vampires your enemy...or simply your competitors?

If he takes them to northern Cali then sets them up with land to call there own, but allows them to leave if they want, then Id say he is doing good.

They are allowed to leave now, a decade later but if they left they would have been tracked down. But quite frankly these people where a broken people, when someone with authority tells them to do something they do it or they take a quiet way out.

Noon wrote:So you abduct whole towns of innocent people, loot their homes and then destroy the only place they have to live...

Are the vampires your enemy...or simply your competitors?

I didn't bother, my gamers felt the cost in personnel would be to high so we shattered the entirety of Mexico and unfortunately, but out of absolute neccesity, killed every living thing in Mexico.

keir451 wrote:

Noon wrote:So you abduct whole towns of innocent people, loot their homes and then destroy the only place they have to live...

Are the vampires your enemy...or simply your competitors?

I didn't bother, my gamers felt the cost in personnel would be to high so we shattered the entirety of Mexico and unfortunately, but out of absolute neccesity, killed every living thing in Mexico.

and created a new nuclear winter....

Seriously what you expect from happening if you manage to hit Mexico with a kinect weapon that does what you said it does?

Volcanos today can affect the entire global climate when they erupt if they are large enough just by puting out too much cinders.

A impact like the one you described as the effect of that orbital weapon, would create a effect similar to the one suposed to have been the reason for the extinction of dinosaurs. Congratulations on destroying the NGR, puting the CS on it knees, killing the native american tribes (by killing over time the animals they hunt for food) and very other situations around the globe.

Most probably your group would be chased by a angry mob deities because you killed their favored workshipers.

rat_bastard wrote:I'm not saying we are better (we are not pretending to be saints, we did this for profit), but if you where in their shoes which master would you choose?

Kind of an irrelevant question - they didn't get to choose.

Noon wrote:

rat_bastard wrote:I'm not saying we are better (we are not pretending to be saints, we did this for profit), but if you where in their shoes which master would you choose?

Kind of an irrelevant question - they didn't get to choose.

You are correct, both on the count that what we did showed a lack of respect for their rights as sentient creatures and was eventually the same as enslaving them. On the other hand every human and d-bee in Mexico supports demon infestation whether they want to or not. Leaving them and killing the vampires would have just ensured another batch of vampires would come and take their place within a day or two, we had to strike at the vamp's food supply to lower the vampire's numbers and hold on Mexico.

What we did was not exactly on the truely good scale of things, but we are an unprincipled bunch who needed results, we wanted farmers, we got farmers, we wanted items the vamps had, we took them.

Nightmaster wrote:

keir451 wrote:

Noon wrote:So you abduct whole towns of innocent people, loot their homes and then destroy the only place they have to live...

Are the vampires your enemy...or simply your competitors?

I didn't bother, my gamers felt the cost in personnel would be to high so we shattered the entirety of Mexico and unfortunately, but out of absolute neccesity, killed every living thing in Mexico.

and created a new nuclear winter....

Seriously what you expect from happening if you manage to hit Mexico with a kinect weapon that does what you said it does?

Volcanos today can affect the entire global climate when they erupt if they are large enough just by puting out too much cinders.

A impact like the one you described as the effect of that orbital weapon, would create a effect similar to the one suposed to have been the reason for the extinction of dinosaurs. Congratulations on destroying the NGR, puting the CS on it knees, killing the native american tribes (by killing over time the animals they hunt for food) and very other situations around the globe.

Most probably your group would be chased by a angry mob deities because you killed their favored workshipers.

Technically our kinetic energy is less than the rock that killed the dinosaurs, our slugs are only 500 tons as opposed to a multi million ton asteroid and we have a deeper penetration rate at our speeds vs the slower and shallower asteroid impacts. As far as Triax and
the CS, because of our penetration depth we'll produce far, far less ash than was created during the cataclysm. The majority of the world is unaffected as the damage is extremely localized, except for earthquakes and tsunami's (most of which are nullified by the inrush of water to of approx. 10 degrees for no more than 5-10 years. I double checked this info w/ my roommate who has a Masters degree in Geology.

keir451 wrote:

Nightmaster wrote:

keir451 wrote:

Noon wrote:So you abduct whole towns of innocent people, loot their homes and then destroy the only place they have to live...

Are the vampires your enemy...or simply your competitors?

I didn't bother, my gamers felt the cost in personnel would be to high so we shattered the entirety of Mexico and unfortunately, but out of absolute neccesity, killed every living thing in Mexico.

and created a new nuclear winter....

Seriously what you expect from happening if you manage to hit Mexico with a kinect weapon that does what you said it does?

Volcanos today can affect the entire global climate when they erupt if they are large enough just by puting out too much cinders.

A impact like the one you described as the effect of that orbital weapon, would create a effect similar to the one suposed to have been the reason for the extinction of dinosaurs. Congratulations on destroying the NGR, puting the CS on it knees, killing the native american tribes (by killing over time the animals they hunt for food) and very other situations around the globe.

Most probably your group would be chased by a angry mob deities because you killed their favored workshipers.

Technically our kinetic energy is less than the rock that killed the dinosaurs, our slugs are only 500 tons as opposed to a multi million ton asteroid and we have a deeper penetration rate at our speeds vs the slower and shallower asteroid impacts. As far as Triax and
the CS, because of our penetration depth we'll produce far, far less ash than was created during the cataclysm. The majority of the world is unaffected as the damage is extremely localized, except for earthquakes and tsunami's (most of which are nullified by the inrush of water to of approx. 10 degrees for no more than 5-10 years. I double checked this info w/ my roommate who has a Masters degree in Geology.

Sure the size is smaller and the amount of ash is lower too but even then the amount produced could still create a nuclear winter like effect, only instead of hundred of years it would last just a couple like 3-5 (the cataclysm winter lasted for almost 50 years) and that is more than enough to destroy any hope for the CS or the NGR to produce enough food for their people during those years. Your friend is a Geologist not a expert in weather (no ofense). Today is know that some volcanos out there in the world if they erupt can produce enough ash to drop global temperature by almost half a degree (celsius) for up to 2 years. Even a drop of 5 degrees would sure destroy most plant lifeforms thanks to the sudden change in weather.

The amount of ash produced by a impact with the force to literally sink the Mexican peninsule and flood it with the sea water could very well be enough to create a winter for a decade i guess.

Perhaps, then again perhaps not. Triax and the CS most likely have genetically engineered strains of various plants and animals that could survive that kind of tempurature drop(we certainly do). The CS has Lone Star after all, and has a trade agreement w/Triax so by now they've traded enhanced strains of wheat & corn as well as new strains of cattle and the like.
But any way, my overall point was this was how I dealt w/ the vampires, was it nice? No. Did it cause problems? Yes. The difference is in that particular setting we had allies who were willing to go that far to eliminate a serious threat AND had the capability to help mitigate the worst effects of their actions. They felt that fighting the vampires "traditionally" would be as bad as a land war in Asia, so this was their solution. We don't always play nice in our games.

rat_bastard wrote:

Nightmaster wrote:Just a question: How the vampires didnt notice the Drones and destroied then? I mean, wild vampires ignoring the is ok and sound but humans and secondary vampires would not only notice but get suspicious as well, to the point that their paranoid would attack and destroy the drone.

97% prowl + no specific scent + top speed of 75+ mph

Plus Superior Invisibility. They still show up on Thermal. Use your mages, man!

Balabanto wrote:

rat_bastard wrote:

Nightmaster wrote:Just a question: How the vampires didnt notice the Drones and destroied then? I mean, wild vampires ignoring the is ok and sound but humans and secondary vampires would not only notice but get suspicious as well, to the point that their paranoid would attack and destroy the drone.

97% prowl + no specific scent + top speed of 75+ mph

Plus Superior Invisibility. They still show up on Thermal. Use your mages, man!

They only show up on thermal when they fire their laser, otherwise matching ambient is child's play for them.

Rat, why on gods earth are you buying and using stuff from Naruni. Those guys are bad news...you're gonna regret it...

dark brandon wrote:Rat, why on gods earth are you buying and using stuff from Naruni. Those guys are bad news...you're gonna regret it...

Because we did not have the capability to produce allot of the vehicles we needed for our survival but we had a great deal of money.

rat_bastard wrote:

dark brandon wrote:Rat, why on gods earth are you buying and using stuff from Naruni. Those guys are bad news...you're gonna regret it...

Because we did not have the capability to produce allot of the vehicles we needed for our survival but we had a great deal of money.

That's what they prey on...I'm telling ya man...watch yourself with them.

dark brandon wrote:

rat_bastard wrote:

dark brandon wrote:Rat, why on gods earth are you buying and using stuff from Naruni. Those guys are bad news...you're gonna regret it...

Because we did not have the capability to produce allot of the vehicles we needed for our survival but we had a great deal of money.

That's what they prey on...I'm telling ya man...watch yourself with them.

The fact of the matter is without the Space Fighters the New Alexandrian government purchased from Naruni New Alexandria would have been wiped off the map by the vastly superior Coalition air force. The spy drones, fighters and munitions have enabled New Alexandria to thrive because they gave them the power to fight off all comers.

dark brandon wrote:Rat, why on gods earth are you buying and using stuff from Naruni. Those guys are bad news...you're gonna regret it...

because naruni enterprises is the wal-mart of rifts. anything you want at a discounted price, and who cares about the consequences.

really, naruni is not a bad place to shop, as long as you avoid taking on any debt like it's a plague.

Shark_Force wrote:really, naruni is not a bad place to shop, as long as you avoid taking on any debt like it's a plague.

I've actually gone into debt with them several times, but not more than I could reasonably pay back by hocking some surplus goods. The first time was to add force fields to all of our company's power armor, that paid for itself. In an emergency we could have sold one of our troop transports at a loss and paid off the debt.

To be clear, Naruni is a problem if we cannot pay them and when they sell our enemies weapons.

Thankfully, on earth nobody else is buying Naruni goods in the quantity we have bought them (we have a truely amazing fleet of delta wing space planes, fire breather bombers and dragonstar fighters) and Naruni takes Xitixix weapons, magic items, techno wizard items and Alexandrian credits. Our war with the Xitixix has been profitable because Naruni pays 20% value of aforementioned trade goods. Our Lord Magi produce talismans and amulets and we trade a decent quantity of them to the Naruni instead of currency. This allows us to avoid devaluing our currency by giving it wholesale to the Naruni. We also spend billions on our own aerospace program so we can one day not be dependent on Naruni for our space program.
Occasionally we have a problem where a group of mercs or mercenaries buy up a bunch of Naruni gear but we usually are able to destroy them without much difficulty. Also the government is not allowed to go farther into debt with an arms deal than they can pay within six months, and its never been a huge problem. They rent a stadium and a block of space from us at a premium, we buy fighters, munitions and gear from them with their rent money and whatever we can trade from them and its been a pretty good arrangement for both of us.

Wrongtoon wrote:

dark brandon wrote:Rat, why on gods earth are you buying and using stuff from Naruni. Those guys are bad news...you're gonna regret it...

I though on the Naruni board of directors there was a Vampire intelligence also.


Could be wrong. Been a long while.

unless it's the same vampire entity that they're attacking in mexico, it probably still wouldn't care. just because it's a vampire intelligence doesn't mean it cares what happens to other vampire intelligences... in much the same that if the splugorth were to invade lazlo, the coalition states would probably just get out some popcorn and fire up the observation drones to watch the show.

RoadWarriorFWaNK wrote:

dark brandon wrote:Rat, why on gods earth are you buying and using stuff from Naruni. Those guys are bad news...you're gonna regret it...

because naruni enterprises is the wal-mart of rifts. anything you want at a discounted price, and who cares about the consequences.

They're not anything like Wal-Mart... Naruni's door greeters are MUCH nicer!

keir451 wrote:Perhaps, then again perhaps not. Triax and the CS most likely have genetically engineered strains of various plants and animals that could survive that kind of tempurature drop(we certainly do). The CS has Lone Star after all, and has a trade agreement w/Triax so by now they've traded enhanced strains of wheat & corn as well as new strains of cattle and the like.
But any way, my overall point was this was how I dealt w/ the vampires, was it nice? No. Did it cause problems? Yes. The difference is in that particular setting we had allies who were willing to go that far to eliminate a serious threat AND had the capability to help mitigate the worst effects of their actions. They felt that fighting the vampires "traditionally" would be as bad as a land war in Asia, so this was their solution. We don't always play nice in our games.

It' seems to me that Rifts should always be played with a Higher tech level than the 1980's or 90's, like how Rat plays (and subsiquently I do), as such The NGR and CS would have No prob building underground or walled in farm lands Miles in size! Come on, they got 1000ft high arcos fer pitty sake... The NGR & CS woulda Loved it had Mexico been taken out. No more enemies hiding from them out there, no more vamps, the new cooled weather in the reigon woulda made fer better southern grown crops, the lesser advanced city-states that are enemies to the CS would have died out w/o the CS needing to expend a single resource OR those city-states would now need to come crawling to the CS fer help and end up becoming All New CS Satellite cities utterly dependent on the Coalition!

The CS would come out of this Rich, and the NGR (being 1000's of miles away) would have seen little effect from the damage in Meh-he-co and Further more would see better business & suprot from the better off CS... Makin out like Raccoons (all bandity like). keir451's solution was a boon to the US and Just made travel to the CS allies in South Am Much easier as travel by das boot is safer than by land.

The only problem is that he just increased his threat O meter rating to 10!! And painted a country sized bulls-eye on himself... Now the CS, NGR, South Am, Lazlo, Splynn, The Gods of Mexico, The Spirits of the Native American, Red Giants, And the P!SSED OFF Japs & Aussies (since you just sent a 1000ft tall wall of Tsunami watery death at their Island counties) all want you dead Dead DEAD!!! You've made your self the highest threat in the whole REDZone [Rifts Earth Dimension].....


But other than that... Good idea!
Of course, I'da gone with something a lil bit safer/nicer/and less "**** off the other guy-ee ness" in style... Like highering a buncha Earth and Water Warlocks to flood Mexico over night... (Earth Warlocks to sink earth into permanent canyons, and Water Wars to fill it in with sea water)... but that's just me.
And what I did way back 17 years ago in '93'!

ok so maybe using stack farms the mega cities survive.

what about everyone else?

They'd be S.C.R.E.W.E.D.

So
Complete
Ruined
from an
Eternal
Wintery
Emo
Death

Steeler49er wrote:They'd be S.C.R.E.W.E.D.

So
Complete
Ruined
from an
Eternal
Wintery
Emo
Death

so you plunged a billion humans, d-bees and other creatures who don't have the luxury of a indoor city into nuclear winter. Wow, your worse than... all of the vampire kingdoms, ever.

Steeler49er wrote:

keir451 wrote:Perhaps, then again perhaps not. Triax and the CS most likely have genetically engineered strains of various plants and animals that could survive that kind of tempurature drop(we certainly do). The CS has Lone Star after all, and has a trade agreement w/Triax so by now they've traded enhanced strains of wheat & corn as well as new strains of cattle and the like.
But any way, my overall point was this was how I dealt w/ the vampires, was it nice? No. Did it cause problems? Yes. The difference is in that particular setting we had allies who were willing to go that far to eliminate a serious threat AND had the capability to help mitigate the worst effects of their actions. They felt that fighting the vampires "traditionally" would be as bad as a land war in Asia, so this was their solution. We don't always play nice in our games.

It' seems to me that Rifts should always be played with a Higher tech level than the 1980's or 90's, like how Rat plays (and subsiquently I do), as such The NGR and CS would have No prob building underground or walled in farm lands Miles in size! Come on, they got 1000ft high arcos fer pitty sake... The NGR & CS woulda Loved it had Mexico been taken out. No more enemies hiding from them out there, no more vamps, the new cooled weather in the reigon woulda made fer better southern grown crops, the lesser advanced city-states that are enemies to the CS would have died out w/o the CS needing to expend a single resource OR those city-states would now need to come crawling to the CS fer help and end up becoming All New CS Satellite cities utterly dependent on the Coalition!

The CS would come out of this Rich, and the NGR (being 1000's of miles away) would have seen little effect from the damage in Meh-he-co and Further more would see better business & suprot from the better off CS... Makin out like Raccoons (all bandity like). keir451's solution was a boon to the US and Just made travel to the CS allies in South Am Much easier as travel by das boot is safer than by land.

The only problem is that he just increased his threat O meter rating to 10!! And painted a country sized bulls-eye on himself... Now the CS, NGR, South Am, Lazlo, Splynn, The Gods of Mexico, The Spirits of the Native American, Red Giants, And the P!SSED OFF Japs & Aussies (since you just sent a 1000ft tall wall of Tsunami watery death at their Island counties) all want you dead Dead DEAD!!! You've made your self the highest threat in the whole REDZone [Rifts Earth Dimension].....


But other than that... Good idea!
Of course, I'da gone with something a lil bit safer/nicer/and less "**** off the other guy-ee ness" in style... Like highering a buncha Earth and Water Warlocks to flood Mexico over night... (Earth Warlocks to sink earth into permanent canyons, and Water Wars to fill it in with sea water)... but that's just me.
And what I did way back 17 years ago in '93'!

Dude dont know what you are smoking but you must stop.

The main problem is that the CS and the NGR (and pretty much everyone else besides Atlantis) dont have the means to detect the sudden drop in temperature until it actually happens. The reason? Weather (dont know the proper word) Satellites... they dont have any (or any satellite of any kind).

As much they have greater technology their means to predict weather are back into the age of 1940-50, before the first satellites were launched. Also even if they could build underground farms, it would take a lot of time to actually build then and no matter how much you wish they would not be able to create mile long underground farms to replace the ones they are gonna lost thanks to a nuclear winter. Constructing a above the ground structure like the fortress cities is one thing, constructing a underground structure is a complete different task.

Lone Star could change some aspects of plants and cattle genetic structure to allow then to grown in a more colder environment but not through a winter pure and simple. Even if they could create plants and cattle that could survive a winter and still grown, it would need to be reasearch first and that takes time (sometimes a lot of time) and time is just what the CS dont have.

The main point is that while the CS and the NGR would rush to try to compensate for their loses in food production, the majority of the population would starve. The Burbs around the fortress cities will become empty by the migration of people to places that maybe could feed then, like places where magic can make a difference (poor Lazlo and New Lazlo folks they will got their worst nightmare from this).

In the end either three things will happen to the CS (the NGR as far as the books portrait is doomed) over a couple of years:

A) They sucumb to their own inability to feed its people and the government is overthrow because the majority of the elite in the upper levels would be receiving most of the food that they can produce and that, no matter how good is your speech, caused revolutions during all know history.

B)They ask for help to the other nations in NA (including the magical ones) out of desperation and humiliate thenselfs just to survive.

Or

C)The government remove the ban on magic to try save thenselves because only magic will have a chance to resolve the problem.

Either of those scenarios is the end of CS we know and what will be born from its ashes is anyone guess...

Ok, first off, a 5 degree temprature drop isn't actually that major of a global effect. Furthermore, the effect wouldn't be permanent and would at the max last 5 years. Krakatoa, which is the closest catastrophic equivalent in volcanic form, did affect a temperature drop of a few degrees for about 3 years and was only major the year it erupted, which was the year that is now known as the year without a summer. That was in 1883 and I don't know of any major die offs of cities and the like from freezing. In fact, the Little Ice Age (16th-mid-19th century) had a larger average global temperature drop than resulted from Krakatoa or Pinatubo (1991) and it is fairly apparent that we all survived that without too much difficulty. If you really want to argue it, the average global temperature dropped 7 degrees CELCIUS during the last Ice Age. That is an even larger drop in Fahrenheit, but there isn't a really good way to say what it is because of the difference in the scales and unfortunately, all scientific work is done in Celcius or Kelvin, which are equivalent scales. Saying that people cannot adapt to this is simply wrong as serfs in the 16th century did, and are (apparently)smarter than the CS or NGR. Also consider the fact that America was being settled during the time of the Little Ice Age and we did survive.
Steeler49 has the right of it. Why would the CS care about the 'Burbs (they typically raze them every so often anyway) or the Kingdoms of their enemies? Again we already have genetically altered plants and animals (we've been breeding them for centuries, how else do we have dogs, cats, and the "Tea cup pig"-5 years to breed w/out genetic manipulation). Weather? Ever hear of the Farmer's Almanac? Radar weather reports are the common standard TODAY (and the CS definitely has radar) but they weren't in the past and many races on RE come from Palladium, they KNOW their weather the same way our ancestors did, they lived it and survived it, else you and I would not be here having this discussion.
As far as painting a target? They will probably pause and go "OMFG, who did that?" and If they tried attacking we repeat the process to their capitol cities, Splynn himself would not touch that w/ a 2 light year pole. Bad for bussiness and all that old chum.

keir451 wrote:you really want to argue it, the average global temperature dropped 7 degrees CELCIUS during the last Ice Age. That is an even larger drop in Fahrenheit, but there isn't a really good way to say what it is because of the difference in the scales and unfortunately, all scientific work is done in Celcius or Kelvin, which are equivalent scales. Saying that people cannot adapt to this is simply wrong as serfs in the 16th century did, and are (apparently)smarter than the CS or NGR. Also consider the fact that America was being settled during the time of the Little Ice Age and we did survive.

ummmm... are you implying that converting celcius to fahrenheit is impossible? i really hope you're not.

it's actually really quite easy. 1.8 degrees fahrenheit (approximately) for every degree celcius. since we're just discussing a temperature change and not an actual specific temperature, we don't even need to have a common point (but if you have a hard time remembering 2 numbers, -40 is the same in both celcius and fahrenheit)

guys can you start a new thread called Pros and cons of dropping a large rock on something, cause this is my thread and I don't want your fighting to get it locked.

[quote="rat_bastard"]guys can you start a new thread called Pros and cons of dropping a large rock on something, cause this is my thread and I don't want your fighting to get it locked.[/quote
Sorry RB, didn't mean to start a fight, just intended to answer your post with the way I killed the vampires in my game. As far as I'm concerned the topic is closed on my end.
I actually find your way does have merit, if a little too complex for my taste. But, hey, that's just me!