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I was just reading before bed and thought that i would make this thread before I passed out because I know it's been a topic but on checking the availability of a lot of the CS stuff MOST of it is specific NOT available on the Black Market.

To me this says that is because I don't think Black Market guys will not touch it because it's "too hot" or because the CS has tracing devices and doesn't let their military hardware fall into enemy hands. Long story short "getting rich" by looting Dead Boys (little joke there) might not actually be as feasible as game masters and players had "assumed" it was.

This goes leagues to proving just how exotic and rare MD weapons, armors and vehicles actually are.

Something for folks to think about. Night!

PS: Rifts: GMG has become my favorite Rifts Accessory.

Excellent point.

Akashic Soldier wrote:To me this says that is because I don't think Black Market guys will not touch it because it's "too hot" or because the CS has tracing devices and doesn't let their military hardware fall into enemy hands. Long story short "getting rich" by looting Dead Boys (little joke there) might not actually be as feasible as game masters and players had "assumed" it was.

Hunting and looting Dead Boys for fun and/or profit might not be a viable tactic for many, but there will always be some who can and will do it.

--flatline

I have to say look at it like this, old style gun were sold to allied states, so you could sell the old stuff out of state. If you tried to sell it in CS territory you would likely not do well.
Now newer stuff the CS might hunt you down, might be able to track their weapons and equipment, but the range of that would be less then 100 miles.
Also enemies of the CS would buy and sell CS weapons and equipment. For example I would say Atlantis would not care if the CS got mad at them....

Well, the people paying for those stolen weapons are usually only going to pay a fraction of what they're worth in the best case scenario and much less where there's more heat for taking the goods.

Grell wrote:Well, the people paying for those stolen weapons are usually only going to pay a fraction of what they're worth in the best case scenario and much less where there's more heat for taking the goods.

There's no "heat" when selling CS equipment on Phase World...

--flatline

True, but the weapons are also inferior in many ways as well.

Grell wrote:True, but the weapons are also inferior in many ways as well.

According to Phase World, a MD weapon that is worth $X on Rifts Earth is worth $X on Phase World which is all that matters for this discussion.

But when you say Earth weapons are inferior in many ways, what exactly do you have in mind?

--flatline

flatline wrote:
According to Phase World, a MD weapon that is worth $X on Rifts Earth is worth $X on Phase World which is all that matters for this discussion.

Not necessarily. While the value may remain unchanged, how much you would get for said weapon would likely be very different. There are other factors to consider other than 'heat'. Coalition weapons would not have a big market in phaseworld aside from collectors or odd sales, so I could see getting a much smaller percentage of the weapons value. Of course if the players are selling the weapons directly to an interested party, then how much they get is a matter of business sense and RP. But pawning the guns, fencing the goods or even selling anonymously to arms dealers isn't likely to get much.

Of course, any GM can make pawning of stolen goods as lucrative as they see fit.

But when you say Earth weapons are inferior in many ways, what exactly do you have in mind?

I didn't say earth weapons. I was referring to CS weapons and what I had in mind is simply that quality will also affect how much the players could get for said guns in a setting like PW.

These items may not be available on the black market as a whole...but these items could be used to barter with for other goods outside the context of a "black market". As always, the value of these items is always based on perceptions of an interested buyer...and in some cases it's rarity. A C-12 will be far more common than a damaged IAR-4...but the C-12 may fetch a better price as it's utility is more useful than the upkeep of a damaged IAR-4. Also, one has to consider that like our modern day military, the CS would attempt to destroy any equipment that can't readily be salvaged to prevent it from being reversed engineered, or used against their own forces by their enemies (which is pretty much everybody...LOL).

Grell wrote:

flatline wrote:
According to Phase World, a MD weapon that is worth $X on Rifts Earth is worth $X on Phase World which is all that matters for this discussion.

Not necessarily. While the value may remain unchanged, how much you would get for said weapon would likely be very different. There are other factors to consider other than 'heat'.

But that's true when trying to sell anything. If you have a $30k rifle, if you go to a dealer (like the "black market"), you might only get $10k for it. If you decide to skip the dealer and spend the effort to find a buyer, you might make significantly more, especially if you have something that might be considered "collectable" by someone.

But you'll almost always do better in a large established market (like Phase World or just about any largely populated place with stable economies) than you would trying to sell to the local "black market" in a small village somewhere...

--flatline

One thing that you could argue along these lines is what safe guards do the CS have as standard on their equipment.

What about biometrics? While any of this wouldn't be canon, with their level of tech (hell, it could be done today), their armour could be set up so that when donned, the helmet scans the wearers eyes. If they don't match with the register (either a short list in the body armours computer, or a linked IFF system in a forward command vehicle or station), then the armour doesn't function and possibly radios the nearest CS outpost or patrol.

Same with the weapons. It wouldn't take much for firearms to have a computer (and if they have a digital readout like some are illustrated with, they already do), and a fingerprint scanner on the trigger, trigger guard or fore grip. Of it's its fitted with a scope, maybe a retina scan. If it isn't in the register, the weapon won't fire.

One step up could be an active security system. Don CS armour, or try to fire a CS weapon, and it shocks you. Probably not a hell of a lot of damage, but if it shocks you for a few seconds, that might just be the few seconds needed to dodge a missile volley. Oops, you're dead.

What does this mean to the Black Market (and anyone else)?

That either it's near impossible to remove the hardware (geez, now I have to replace this entire circuit board with a custom one), the encryption is mega hard (damn it!, that's the 4th laptop this armour has fried!!), and/or doing so takes a lot of time, and thus, costs more money. Which would eat into their 'profits'.

Akashic Soldier wrote:I was just reading before bed and thought that i would make this thread before I passed out because I know it's been a topic but on checking the availability of a lot of the CS stuff MOST of it is specific NOT available on the Black Market.

To me this says that is because I don't think Black Market guys will not touch it because it's "too hot" or because the CS has tracing devices and doesn't let their military hardware fall into enemy hands. Long story short "getting rich" by looting Dead Boys (little joke there) might not actually be as feasible as game masters and players had "assumed" it was.

This goes leagues to proving just how exotic and rare MD weapons, armors and vehicles actually are.

Something for folks to think about. Night!

PS: Rifts: GMG has become my favorite Rifts Accessory.

It is an excellent book to have. Looking through my own copy, it is worth noting that the older CS equipment is very common on the black market, outside of robot vehicles which it notes that the Black Market would love to sell them, but they are rarely captured and sold (same goes for the newer robot vehicles as well). The commonly used new style armor and gear, like the basic Dead Boy and Dog Boy armors, are also commonly available in the wake of the recent-to-that-book war in Tolkeen. New style specialist armor and uncommon personal weapons do not yet have a common presence on the Black Market. Also, all power armor, except one introduced at Lone Star that no one remembers, is common enough to have a Black market price.
It should be noted as well that costs aren't the CS costs generall, just the market costs, such as the cost for skelebots, which are massively depressed due to low demand and a crapload of them/parts available.

This is a case where the Rifts rules are your friend. All shots that are not aimed or called hit the main body. So what you basically have is a bunch of arm and leg pieces, and some helmets, with a few torsos that need massive amounts of repair to be valuble.

I never begrudge the PC's quality armor and weapons because they have to spend money to fix them.

CyCo wrote:One thing that you could argue along these lines is what safe guards do the CS have as standard on their equipment.

What about biometrics? While any of this wouldn't be canon, with their level of tech (hell, it could be done today), their armour could be set up so that when donned, the helmet scans the wearers eyes. If they don't match with the register (either a short list in the body armours computer, or a linked IFF system in a forward command vehicle or station), then the armour doesn't function and possibly radios the nearest CS outpost or patrol.

Same with the weapons. It wouldn't take much for firearms to have a computer (and if they have a digital readout like some are illustrated with, they already do), and a fingerprint scanner on the trigger, trigger guard or fore grip. Of it's its fitted with a scope, maybe a retina scan. If it isn't in the register, the weapon won't fire.

One step up could be an active security system. Don CS armour, or try to fire a CS weapon, and it shocks you. Probably not a hell of a lot of damage, but if it shocks you for a few seconds, that might just be the few seconds needed to dodge a missile volley. Oops, you're dead.

What does this mean to the Black Market (and anyone else)?

That either it's near impossible to remove the hardware (geez, now I have to replace this entire circuit board with a custom one), the encryption is mega hard (damn it!, that's the 4th laptop this armour has fried!!), and/or doing so takes a lot of time, and thus, costs more money. Which would eat into their 'profits'.

Not feasible.

First how are you going to do a finger print scanner on a rifle? Oh, lets just take off my guantlets in the middle of the ambush because I haven't scanned in my finger print in the last hour?

For armor, what are you going to do? Have it electricute the person wearing if their retina doesn't match? I totally see all com gear requiring some kind of password to get it to work and probably have to have the password re-entered periodically.

For basic operation of small arms and armor, way, way, way too much trouble to make it worth it.

Bigger vehicles maybe even some PA...possibly. At the same time you'd still have to have the computer have hundreds of thousands of biometric patterns stored in it. Otherwise you get in to a situation where only that vehicle's assigned crew could ever operate it...which is not a good idea in an emergency or a lot of combat situations.

For instance what happens if the vehicle's crew gets killed trying to race to their vehicle if their fire base is attacked? Corporal jennings who is a lowly supply clerk was walking by when the raid happens and list lucky enough to dive for cover through the hatch of the abolisher...but his finger prints/retina/DNA isn't stored in the vehicle...he is a lowly supply clerk afterall. So he can't even fire up any of the weapons to help fight off the attackers.

I just don't see a scenario where CS equipment wouldn't either be easily used by most anyone, or would resist any serious hacking attempts. There are ways to secure com gear so that stolen com gear cannot access CS communications (requiring periodic pairing along with passwords and that sort of thing).

I doubt much CS gear would be sold within the CS boundries. Outside of the CS, I'd see no such issues. Though, I think there would be a pretty big market for chop shops (in the standard sense) that would modify up CS vehicles and equipment, at least body armor to make it look non-CS standard. Less in case a CS patrol comes across the 2 abolishers you managed to acquire from the black market and more so that OTHER people don't think you actually belong to the CS...which might get you shot at on sight by a lot of other people. So things like different color schemes, removing death's head motifs, maybe adding your own unit/group symbols that sort of thing.

I wonder is the armor fitted to the wearer

Mech-Viper Prime wrote:I wonder is the armor fitted to the wearer

I've always imagined (like CyCo mentioned) that you suit up, it scans your retina, then says "Greeting [rank name and serial number] of [unit name]." (remember each suit has a computerized personal assistant built-in) and then the suit is adjusted to fit the user in much the same way a Plug suit fits the Pilots in Neon Genesis Evangelion for those are familiar with it. For those that are not I wish I could upload a video for you but I am currently on dial-up speed.

I really like Armorlords earlier post and he raises a lot of really good (non-speculative) points and I'd love to see more posts like that if anyone is thinking something they have not yet said?

As for weapons, I don't think they're registered to be used by specific people but they MAY be registered to specific people. Meaning that each soldier is assigned his own sidearm and letting it slip out of your hands in a Court Marshallable offense so they dont let it happen. All I can say for sure is there has to be a reason certain CS equipment and vehicles are NOT available on the Black Market. Its not listed as "Rare" or "Very Rare" it is Never.

My groups usually once they looted one patrol or squad, kept the weapons in case their's were to get damaged. After that we just scooped e-clips and left the rest unless somebody needed armour or a replacement weapon for some reason.

Now playing star wars we ALWAYS took the Stormtrooper weapons and sold to the grey market later on.

No need to have the suit adjust to each user. Us silly humans are close-ish enough in general size to likely just have a few standard armor sizes, small through extra large. Buckles and straps can be adjusted pretty easily for enough slack to fit people within the different ranges and once adjusted you aren't likely to need to worry about much readjustment pulling it on later.

A lot cheaper and then you get around silly little issues like the armor not being wearable if the batteries go dead in it.

Something to keep in mind, the armor doesn't need to be infinitely adjustable to any size person, like I said you can have some standard sizes and also armor, especially CS armor isn't designed for any size person. They are targeted at soldiers and the CS likely has a set of physical guidelines for who they accept in to the armed forces. Probably something like the person has to be between 5 ft 4in and 6ft 6in or some similar range. You also aren't going to find severly overweight military personnel, so you don't have to worry about polymorphic extremes for the armor.

any piece of equipment that is designed to only recognise and function for a specific person is going to be designed so that you can change who that person is. for example, if someone gets caught out of their armor and shot, or is discharged, or retires, they're not going to want to just throw their perfectly good gear in the scrap heap. they will have it designed so that you can re-assign it to just about anyone. in all probability, the device to do this will be fairly common (and will likely be the same device used to assign replacement gear, for example if your body armor is damaged and is going to be in repairs for 3-4 days, they would use it to temporarily assign you a piece of gear.

i doubt it would take long for one of those devices to get into the wrong hands. once in the wrong hands, with abilities like telemechanics/machine ghost & co, it wouldn't take long to hack those devices.

but this even presumes such devices are used in the first place, which i consider unlikely. you really don't want to electrocute or lock your own troops out of their gear at the wrong time. *most* of the time, CS gear is going to be used by CS troops. making it awkward and inconvenient to use hurts the CS more than it hurts anyone else, in the end.

Kind of reminds me of Judge Dredd, where a sample of your DNA is attached to each bullet you fire, or like the movie Doom, when each guy grabbed their rifle didn't it state their call sign and rank ? I could see the CS doing this. I don't see them making it so limited that only one person can use one gun, bot, armour. I see it more like Demolition Man, remember the scene with the car ? Sandra Bullock gets behind the wheel, the car recognizes her and adjusts for her height, weight and visual preferences, then Stallone gets behind the wheel and the car quickly adjusts itself.
I could see the CS doing that to their equipment, so no NON CS personnel can use it, but all registered personnel could. Two grunts pick up their rifles, it says something like Private Smith and the other one Private Jones. Out on patrol Smith gets killed and Jones runs out of clips, so he picks up Smith's rifle and the rifle recognizes Jones as an authorized user and allows him to fire the weapon.

or, private jones picks up his gun and since the tech is not perfectly 100% reliable due to possible contaminations etc, the gun doesn't recognise him and he gets shot 5 times while screaming and swearing about the fact that his rifle picked that specific moment to not work.

a 1% chance for something to go wrong only sounds small until you realise that it's actually a 1% chance millions of times per day. and while it may not be a big deal for a soldier at the start of his patrol to have his weapon fail to recognise him, there will be times where it *is* a major problem and will lead to soldiers dying.

only has to happen a few times before morale starts to deteriorate, and most likely leads to soldiers getting their weapons modified at the earliest opportunity (with most likely a number of officers supporting it discreetly).

azazel1024 wrote:

CyCo wrote:One thing that you could argue along these lines is what safe guards do the CS have as standard on their equipment.

What about biometrics? While any of this wouldn't be canon, with their level of tech (hell, it could be done today), their armour could be set up so that when donned, the helmet scans the wearers eyes. If they don't match with the register (either a short list in the body armours computer, or a linked IFF system in a forward command vehicle or station), then the armour doesn't function and possibly radios the nearest CS outpost or patrol.

Same with the weapons. It wouldn't take much for firearms to have a computer (and if they have a digital readout like some are illustrated with, they already do), and a fingerprint scanner on the trigger, trigger guard or fore grip. Of it's its fitted with a scope, maybe a retina scan. If it isn't in the register, the weapon won't fire.

One step up could be an active security system. Don CS armour, or try to fire a CS weapon, and it shocks you. Probably not a hell of a lot of damage, but if it shocks you for a few seconds, that might just be the few seconds needed to dodge a missile volley. Oops, you're dead.

What does this mean to the Black Market (and anyone else)?

That either it's near impossible to remove the hardware (geez, now I have to replace this entire circuit board with a custom one), the encryption is mega hard (damn it!, that's the 4th laptop this armour has fried!!), and/or doing so takes a lot of time, and thus, costs more money. Which would eat into their 'profits'.

Not feasible.

First how are you going to do a finger print scanner on a rifle? Oh, lets just take off my guantlets in the middle of the ambush because I haven't scanned in my finger print in the last hour?

For armor, what are you going to do? Have it electricute the person wearing if their retina doesn't match? I totally see all com gear requiring some kind of password to get it to work and probably have to have the password re-entered periodically.

For basic operation of small arms and armor, way, way, way too much trouble to make it worth it.

Bigger vehicles maybe even some PA...possibly. At the same time you'd still have to have the computer have hundreds of thousands of biometric patterns stored in it. Otherwise you get in to a situation where only that vehicle's assigned crew could ever operate it...which is not a good idea in an emergency or a lot of combat situations.

For instance what happens if the vehicle's crew gets killed trying to race to their vehicle if their fire base is attacked? Corporal jennings who is a lowly supply clerk was walking by when the raid happens and list lucky enough to dive for cover through the hatch of the abolisher...but his finger prints/retina/DNA isn't stored in the vehicle...he is a lowly supply clerk afterall. So he can't even fire up any of the weapons to help fight off the attackers.

I just don't see a scenario where CS equipment wouldn't either be easily used by most anyone, or would resist any serious hacking attempts. There are ways to secure com gear so that stolen com gear cannot access CS communications (requiring periodic pairing along with passwords and that sort of thing).

I doubt much CS gear would be sold within the CS boundries. Outside of the CS, I'd see no such issues. Though, I think there would be a pretty big market for chop shops (in the standard sense) that would modify up CS vehicles and equipment, at least body armor to make it look non-CS standard. Less in case a CS patrol comes across the 2 abolishers you managed to acquire from the black market and more so that OTHER people don't think you actually belong to the CS...which might get you shot at on sight by a lot of other people. So things like different color schemes, removing death's head motifs, maybe adding your own unit/group symbols that sort of thing.

Talk about a brain fart! lol. Yeah, wouldn't work through the armour. Duh! lol

But instead, have the gun link to the suit. Be it a blutooth or wifi connection, or something more 'hitech'. The suit reads the users retinas then if verified, unlocks the weapons safety.

As for electrifying someone not on the suits register, why not. Each suit has a personal assistant/pda/computer. This then suggests each suit has a battery pack. A small addition of a capacitor and a couple of electrodes within the suit, and bingo, the suit is now a taser. The battery mightn't last long, then it only has to work once if it's being used by someone not registered for use.

As for being way to much trouble to be worth it? Dude, you do realize this is Rifts don't you? In this future the CS are uber fabricators extraordinaire! Citing just one example, how many Samas suits do they have, active? And lets not forget how many they have in reserve. Adding this level of tech wouldn't be much on their amazing production line. Hell, I'd even say that some of the suits that monitor body function already have electrodes that are placed against the skin in the suit. All that they have to add is the ability to amp up the juice the on board battery pack can generate to act as a taser. I didn't say electrocute, just stun.

As for a digital link between a suit of body armour and firearm, that doesn't take much of a leap. We do it today with our cell phones and ear pieces. In this alt future, this should be a doddle. And would allow a headup display of the weapons ammo count, for starters. With a scope and linked to the helmet, you could look around corners with your weapon.

As for the chance of it not working any given moment, I'd say that this is all military grade for a start, so hopefully that sort of thing is minimized. Say it just works point to point (a la communications), and is hardened. But this is tech. Do 'slug throwers' jam? Sure they do. Could that soldier die because his weapon chose that moment to jam? Sure, it's totally possible.

Again, it's tech. You can overstress the beams in your catapult and drop the rocks on the head of your own army. That's still a tech fault.

Hell, just yesterday at work, when my mate was driving, the van chose to disregard what gear he was putting it in and following his command. From a standing start, he put it in reverse. It went forwards. This happened 5 times in a row before we were going backwards. Damn semi-automatics. Again, a technical fault (the shift computer in this case).

So what happens to the soldier who gets caught out of their body armor? They have to spend 5 or 10 minutes suiting up before they can grab their rifle and fight back? Sure caught out of body armor in an MD fire fight and you are quickly toast...but at least you COULD still grab your rifle and plink off a shot or two before diving for cover.

For the link. One word. Jammer.

Mil Spec gear has to be robust and pretty much fool proof (within reason). The military can't put up with things like blue tooth and similar, because they aren't 100% reliable. The chances of failure or the enemy being able to tinker with something are just too likely to be worth the advantages that it would offer in regards to rendering the gear unusable to the enemy if it were to be captured.

Look at current prison issues. There is a device designed to render prison guard side arms unusable. It relies on an RFID type chip within a bracelet that the prison guard wears and if his side arm is more than a foot or so away from the bracelet the fire arm is rendered unfireable until it comes within range again (electromechanical safety). It is not all that widely used because it is not 100% reliable combined with the issue that if the prison guard is overpowered, the bracelet can still be taken from them and used by the person then possessing the gun. So the limited additional safety factor of preventing the fire arm from being able to be immediately used by a prisoner grabbing it from a guard is outweighed by the occasional (and it is very rare) unreliability of the system (between the RFID not being read correctly to the electromechanical safety sometimes not disengaging properly).

Back to the jamming, even if you develop near field point-to-point communications with the systems, that doesn't prevent jamming. All you need to do is apply broad spectrum jamming to jam the region of the EM spectrum you are using. If it is near field, it is going to be extremely low powered (you want not want to be able to pickup the signals at a distance, just makes it easy to triangulate your exact position). The closer you are, the higher the signal strength. What is a -90db signal at 3ft is completely unable to be picked up at 500ft using any kind of resonable sized radio antenna. The downside is that it is still a super weak signal. Pump out a 100w signal and at half a mile it is likely to be a 0-10db signal (which corresponds to a signal that is around 10^10 times more powerful). If you are 200ft away that signal might be 20-30db. You can build some pretty powerful processing engines behind your receivers, but there is a limit to just how much noise you can filter out no matter what. You likely could filter out 50db of noise. You probably could not filter out 100db of noise if it is stepping completely across the spectrum you are using.

How long does it take to put on a suit of body armour? That's how long it would take. I don't see any biometric scan taking 10 minutes. Even seen someone use a thumb scanner? I've seen it, and it took several seconds. Again, in the alt future that is Rifts, I can see this being done practically as soon as the armour is put on. Put the helmet on (most likely the last item put on), and lock the seal (for those sealed suits), and it's already done the scan.

As for how a firearm connects to the suits computer, I simply used blutooth and wifi as it's our current, real world analog. Since we're talking military spec, I should have come out and said laser comms. I kinda did, when I said point to point. This is usually a laser connection that transmits the data you want to send. Sure, it can be interrupted by particle matter in the air, like smoke or gas, but if you use InfraRed that helps negate that obstacle. I'm not totally sure what else could interfere with laser comms, especially since we're talking of a distance of only a couple feet at most.

And if you're worried about taking too much time to don your armour and diving away with only your firearm, what about using your idea and use RFID chips embedded in the soldier? Most CS military types could even have them embedded without their knowledge, during a fitness exam and they're given a 'shot' that will help protect them from some nasty 'mutant flu' d-bees can have. Or if they're cybered, then it's in their first bit of metal.

Don't worry about 100% reliable. Nothing is 100% reliable. There is a chance of something stuffing up at all times, including people and their equipment.

Really, all my ideas amount to is that old chestnut, aligned weapons from D&D. Don't want your players to collect an ever increasing hoard of magical weapons? Give the magical weapons the same alignment of the evil monsters that are using them. Since most PCs are good, they won't be able to use or maybe even pick up that shorts sword used by the Goblin King. But don't make all encounters with evil monsters have aligned weapons, you have to let the players have the shiny stuff some of the time.

Shark_Force wrote:or, private jones picks up his gun and since the tech is not perfectly 100% reliable due to possible contaminations etc, the gun doesn't recognise him and he gets shot 5 times while screaming and swearing about the fact that his rifle picked that specific moment to not work.

a 1% chance for something to go wrong only sounds small until you realise that it's actually a 1% chance millions of times per day. and while it may not be a big deal for a soldier at the start of his patrol to have his weapon fail to recognise him, there will be times where it *is* a major problem and will lead to soldiers dying.

only has to happen a few times before morale starts to deteriorate, and most likely leads to soldiers getting their weapons modified at the earliest opportunity (with most likely a number of officers supporting it discreetly).

True, but in all those futuristic movies the tech is so perfect it never fails, but then we also have the flipside of that and end up with the Terminator series or iRobot, lol

As for fingerprinting for the rifle, it could be a chip implanted into the skin, not literally needing contact, that could also eliminate any delaying of scanning. Just have all the chips broadcast the same thing, so that means ANY CS personnel could use ANY CS equipment. It won't be registered to a specific user and that saves all the hassles of someone not being able to access something in an emergency situation.
Now someone mentioned jamming the signal, first of all wouldn't they have to know that there is a signal that requires jamming? Second, how much range does a jammer cover ?

Another option could be they all "jack in" to what ever equipment they are using. Give each member in the CS a bionic implant of a cord and that cord gets plugged into anything they use, gun, computer terminal, vehicle. But I guess that would be kind of limiting because they would have to unplug from the gun if they wanted to use something else. Unless you just restricted needing the cord for major things. Like you need it for your rifle, but maybe not your side arm, or personal handheld computer. But you would need it for a stationary computer terminal back on base (which could also aid people not knowing how to write to avoid needing to use a password and login since it's keyed to your body) and larger things like PA and robots.

To easy to hack then to resell it. Especially with machine ghost in the mix, it was be child's play for anyone who wanted to resell the gear to duplicate any kind of RIFD chip and just sell a wrist band or plantable RIFD grain sized chip that anyone can wear/use to use ex-CS gear.

You still have issues if the weapon must be tied to the armor. As I mentioned, the obvious one of what if they are caught without their armor?

For laser com between suit and weapon, plenty of ways it can accidently be blocked. Get a heaping of mud on you and the emitter/receiver could be blocked easily enough. Cast some impenetrable darkness and an infrared com isn't going to go through that (it is light afterall).

It isn't that it needs to be nearly foolproof from private idiot getting it to work and working under most conditions, it has to be smart person proofed so that the relatively smart guy on the other side can't easily spoof and/or block it.

azazel1024 wrote:
You still have issues if the weapon must be tied to the armor. As I mentioned, the obvious one of what if they are caught without their armor?

Well that's where my cable idea could work, being a bionic implant, it's connected to you not your armour. But there is also all the drawbacks I mentioned too, lol

azazel1024 wrote:It isn't that it needs to be nearly foolproof from private idiot getting it to work and working under most conditions, it has to be smart person proofed so that the relatively smart guy on the other side can't easily spoof and/or block it.

Good point, the CS aren't exactly famous for educating their people.

Regardless of security precautions, Rifts North America is big enough that the second hands arms market will always include at least some official military gear. The primary reason a lot of the newer stuff isn't on the Black Market is due to it being just recently rolled out, where as the older style CS gear has been in production for a few decades.

CyCo wrote:How long does it take to put on a suit of body armour?

1D4 rounds for Men at Arms
1D4 minutes for everyone else.

Unless body armor is pretty radically different and there seems to be no reason why it would be, I think, no matter what the books say, you are probably talking 1d4+4 rounds for a man at arms and double for everyone else.

15-60 seconds pretty much simplies you can almost litterally just step right in to it. Crap, even rushing it takes me more than 15 seconds to pull on boxers, jeans, a t-shirt, long sleeve shirt and socks...let alone pull on probably a dozen+ different pieces of armor, even if they are self latching and stuff and there are no straps, buckles or anything else that needs adjusting. I think a minimum of a minute is going to be needed and probably at least slightly longer.

Speaking of donning times for armor, anyone know how long it takes for a cyborg to put on their flavor of armor? I've gotten the impression that it magnetically attaches to their bodies, but nothing more than that.

I always assumed it was bolted on, kind of like the first Iron Man suit he made in the movie, but that would require someone to always help the borg into the armour.

Borg armor, I think is going to latch on just like regular armor to a human. Any type of borg can use borg armor (though the little 'uns can't use the really heavy armor). It is not environmental though, so it is probably a little easier/faster to don than EBA is.

So I'd say probably similar times to get it on as EBA (taking in to account even if it is a little less complicated, it is much heavier, despite the augmented strength it is probably still a little harder to manuever the pieces.