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Been going over some of the info in Dimensional Outbreak and Fleets of the 3 Galaxies, and running the numbers on the average damage a World Dominator's Star Fortress can do, and I think one on one, it might be able to take out Cormal. I starting with the followin assumptions:
1) The World Dominator get's the drop on Corval and begins his attack at the max range for his main weapons at 200,000 miles.
2) The Star General on Corval will respond by attacking full force, bringing Covral up to near light speed to close the distance in the next melee round (should only take about 2-3 seconds).
3) I am using averaged die rolls of 3.5 on a D6 and 2.4 on a D4to calculate average damage and assuming both sides weapons hit.
4) If Corval attempts to swallow and crush the Star Fortress, all of the Star Fortress's weapons can fire and hit, otherwise only 1/2 of the turrets can hit.
5) Demons will respond by trying to attack with Corval along with the Immune Defenders in a rapid and aggressive and likely reckless fashion, too late to realize that the Star Fortress's firepower greatly outmatches the Demon Planet's (hey the Star Fortress is tiny by comparison so obviously they'll think it's much weaker).

So the main weapons of the Star Fortress's first attack would work something like this:
I) Main Antimatter Cannon (3, and all attack separately to maximize damage) x Average roll: 3.5 x1,000,000 = 10.5 million MD (can't fire them again for another 32 rounds)
II) Heavy Beam Weapons (100, but only 50 can be used on 1st attack) x2.5 x 10,000 per melee = 1.25 million MD
III) Retractable Beam Turrets (5000 but only 2500 can be used on 1st attack) x 2attacks/melee x2.5 x 1000 = 12.5 million MD
IV) First Turn total damage = 24.25 million MD or roughly 1/4 of Cormar's 100 million MDC.
V) Subsequent turns until turn 33 (when the antimatter cannons can strike again) would average 13.75 million MD if only 1/2 of the Heavy or Retractable Beam cannons can be brought to bear or 27.5 million MD if Cormal bites and tries to swallow the Star Fortress.
VI) At the end of 2 melee rounds (30 sec) Corval could take between 38.5 to 52.25 (bites / attempts to swallow the Star Fotress) million MD roughly between a 1/3 to a 1/2 of his MDC.
VII) The Plasma Shockwave will take out any of Corval's Immune Defenders dealing an average of 3500 MD (3.5 average x 1000) every 8 minutes (32 melee rounds) so, about the time Corval starts munching on the Star Fortress, sending in his defenders and the demons start attacking, they almost all go boom in a 300 mile radius)
VIII) The Temporal Shielding will mess with any Demons or Immune Defenders that manage to get to the Star Fortress in between plasma shockwaves.

Attacks for Corval are notably weaker and he only has 15 total attacks. I am not counting legions of Demons, his own Immune Defenders and Demon Stars in orbit most of which will be neutralized by the Plasma Shockwave whenever they get too close (within 300 miles).

I) Corval will open with his Energy Blast that he can only use once every minute doing 3.5*6*1000 MD or 21,000 MD
II) Corval will continue with tentacle strikes for his remaining 14 attacks or may attempt to use 1 attack to bite/swallow the much smaller and seemingly weaker Star Fortress. On Average, using only tentacles, he'll dish out 14*3.5*4*1000 a whopping 196,000 MD.
III) If Corval goes for the munch on the Star Fortress approach his maw will be exposed to all the cannons on the Star Fortress, quickly causing him to be decimated within a minute of trying to make a quick snack.
IV) if Corval tries to take out the Star Fortress's weapons first, with slightly better than average attacks he could take out 15 of the heavy beam weapons per melee, or direct all attacks at the Anti Matter cannons and take out 1 each melee or take out 15 retractable beam cannons (possibly more if a GM so ruled that each attack could be directed at more than one as they are smaller and more numerous) but that would still leave plenty of weapons to attack. The retractable cannons alone, are so numerous that they are the most lethal when taken en masse.

Long story short, IMHO, absent a quick retreat, Coroval (and consequently his 2 spawned Demon planets and probably the demons, and demon stars on and around him) will die within a few minutes of combat against a single Star Fortress before he has time to realize the fight is over. Now GMs who wants to send their adventure group out to go and recruit a World Dominator to fight against the Demons in the Minion War?

Also given that Center and Phase World was able to repel a sizable group of World Dominators at once, what kind of power are they hiding?

Cormal can cast Impervious to Energy on himself, or someone else can cast it on Formal by touching the planet, which negates a lot of strategies. Using the Invincible Armor spell will also absorb 1 hit no matter how big.

Axelmania wrote:Cormal can cast Impervious to Energy on himself, or someone else can cast it on Formal by touching the planet, which negates a lot of strategies. Using the Invincible Armor spell will also absorb 1 hit no matter how big.

Well sure if you want to throw magic into the mix /jk. I will admit magic is the area of Rifts and PB games I delve into the least, so this is exactly the critique to my break down I am looking for. So now the World Dominator will need some anti magic back up to succeed, like a partner capable of casting anti magi cloud perhaps or something in his arsenal that he picked up along the conquest of many systems over the millennia?

I will have to do more analysis to figure out how long the Star Fortress can withstand Cormal's best attacks, as the Impervious to energy will last quite a while before wearing off. It should be able to take quite a beating as Cormal's level of damage is about 2 orders of magnitude per round lower than the Star Fortress, until he knocks out most of the weapons.

Metamorphosis Insect on Cormal. Now has autododge and penalties to hit him. Teleport inside dominator fortress, cripple.from.inside.

Axelmania wrote:Metamorphosis Insect on Cormal. Now has autododge and penalties to hit him. Teleport inside dominator fortress, cripple.from.inside.

Neat tactic, but that will take some thinking about the actual results:

Of course once he is an insect, Cormal can no longer cast spells, and will have to have another demon cast it, and they will be roughly 44,500 miles away; Cormal is an enormous 89,000+ miles across, so shrunk to half that size it would be 44,500 miles to his center where he appears as an insect. His telepathy or ability to mentally possess others wouldn't reach far enough out to target them for some time, and then they still have to find him in a very large area until they get close enough to make telepathic contact. Indeed you now have a lot of demons flying tens of thousands of miles away from him. When they do finally reach him Teleport, Superior only has a range of 300 miles/level, and the Star Fortress is still far far out of range even for a 30th level caster it would max at 9000 miles. Even using it to get to Cormal quickly and again to get to the Space Fortress would exhaust most demon's PPE too quickly to get there and back.

The question is how many of his natural abilities can he still use as an insect in space? Does he still generate a gravity field? what about the immune defenders? Are they part of him, and become part of his insect form, or are they too stranded out in space? What about all the structures on his surface? I would assume by logic, since they are part of his body they disappear, which means all those demons are suddenly out there floating around (lots of disorientation and chaos perhaps?).

Better to use Metamorphosis Superior, because he'll retain his powers and can do the teleporting himself, at 7500 miles a pop, up to 7 times a melee (2 actions) let's him travel at 52,500 miles / melee or just fly at his sublight mach 15 speed of 10,755 mph (15x717 Mph) Which, interestingly, means it actually takes him several hours to move just one of his planetary diameters at his max sublight speed.


But I did a little closer reading on Cormal, and saw I hadn't noticed his energy resistance the first go round, so he'd be taking half damage from the attacks from the Star Fortress, so the Heavy Beam Weapons would average 625,000 MD per melee, and the Retractable ones 6.25 Million MD. IMHO antimatter weapons are not energy weapons because it is firing anti-hydrogen so they would still do full damage, averaged out over 8 minutes to 328,125 MD per melee for a new adjusted total of 7,203,125 MD. Meaning Corval can last just about 13-14 melees at best. Now if the Impervious to Energy spell IS in effect, and let's face it that's pretty likely after the first initial surprise attack in my proposal of the scenario, then only the Antimatter cannons can do any damage, which means the Star Fortress has 82,625,000 MDC (plus the to chew through starting on the 2500 MDC healed on average every 4 melees). At the start of the 9th Melee that's 82,630,000 MDC, and would average about 252 melees to burn through that at the averaged rate of 328,125 MD dealt by the Antimatter Cannons, or 8 additional attacks each cannon, so really you'd have to wait til melee 256, just over an hour of combat. During this time of course the anti matter cannons would be the most vulnerable targets to the tentacle attacks.

Also I didn't notice that the Star Fortress has electric reactive armor that reduce kinetic attacks, like Cormal's tentacles, by half, meaning he would only be averaging 98,000 MD per melee. Which the Star Fortress could withstand for about 306 melees, compared to Cormal who would last about 50 melee's less.

So still a much closer battle than I originally called it, but I think the Star Fortress still succeeds.

I kind of find things really interesting and silly, considering that the Star Fortress almost 3000 times smaller than Cormal, and has weapons that do a couple orders of magnitude more than the much larger world.

J_cobbers wrote:

Axelmania wrote:Metamorphosis Insect on Cormal. Now has autododge and penalties to hit him. Teleport inside dominator fortress, cripple.from.inside.

Neat tactic, but that will take some thinking about the actual results:

Of course once he is an insect, Cormal can no longer cast spells, and will have to have another demon cast it, and they will be roughly 44,500 miles away; Cormal is an enormous 89,000+ miles across, so shrunk to half that size it would be 44,500 miles to his center where he appears as an insect. His telepathy or ability to mentally possess others wouldn't reach far enough out to target them for some time, and then they still have to find him in a very large area until they get close enough to make telepathic contact. Indeed you now have a lot of demons flying tens of thousands of miles away from him. When they do finally reach him Teleport, Superior only has a range of 300 miles/level, and the Star Fortress is still far far out of range even for a 30th level caster it would max at 9000 miles. Even using it to get to Cormal quickly and again to get to the Space Fortress would exhaust most demon's PPE too quickly to get there and back.

The question is how many of his natural abilities can he still use as an insect in space? Does he still generate a gravity field? what about the immune defenders? Are they part of him, and become part of his insect form, or are they too stranded out in space? What about all the structures on his surface? I would assume by logic, since they are part of his body they disappear, which means all those demons are suddenly out there floating around (lots of disorientation and chaos perhaps?).

Better to use Metamorphosis Superior, because he'll retain his powers and can do the teleporting himself, at 7500 miles a pop, up to 7 times a melee (2 actions) let's him travel at 52,500 miles / melee or just fly at his sublight mach 15 speed of 10,755 mph (15x717 Mph) Which, interestingly, means it actually takes him several hours to move just one of his planetary diameters at his max sublight speed.


But I did a little closer reading on Cormal, and saw I hadn't noticed his energy resistance the first go round, so he'd be taking half damage from the attacks from the Star Fortress, so the Heavy Beam Weapons would average 625,000 MD per melee, and the Retractable ones 6.25 Million MD. IMHO antimatter weapons are not energy weapons because it is firing anti-hydrogen so they would still do full damage, averaged out over 8 minutes to 328,125 MD per melee for a new adjusted total of 7,203,125 MD. Meaning Corval can last just about 13-14 melees at best. Now if the Impervious to Energy spell IS in effect, and let's face it that's pretty likely after the first initial surprise attack in my proposal of the scenario, then only the Antimatter cannons can do any damage, which means the Star Fortress has 82,625,000 MDC (plus the to chew through starting on the 2500 MDC healed on average every 4 melees). At the start of the 9th Melee that's 82,630,000 MDC, and would average about 252 melees to burn through that at the averaged rate of 328,125 MD dealt by the Antimatter Cannons, or 8 additional attacks each cannon, so really you'd have to wait til melee 256, just over an hour of combat. During this time of course the anti matter cannons would be the most vulnerable targets to the tentacle attacks.

Also I didn't notice that the Star Fortress has electric reactive armor that reduce kinetic attacks, like Cormal's tentacles, by half, meaning he would only be averaging 98,000 MD per melee. Which the Star Fortress could withstand for about 306 melees, compared to Cormal who would last about 50 melee's less.

So still a much closer battle than I originally called it, but I think the Star Fortress still succeeds.

I kind of find things really interesting and silly, considering that the Star Fortress almost 3000 times smaller than Cormal, and has weapons that do a couple orders of magnitude more than the much larger world.

Seeing how the spell specifies that spells are out because speaking can't be done as an insect, and "the performance of human skills" are also out, I'd limit what can be done to stuff that wouldn't require speaking, or limbs, or what have you.

The Beast wrote:
Seeing how the spell specifies that spells are out because speaking can't be done as an insect, and "the performance of human skills" are also out, I'd limit what can be done to stuff that wouldn't require speaking, or limbs, or what have you.

Indeed, that's why I would think Cormal's better off using Metamorphosis Superior. Can you imagine the damage this sentient Demonic Hell world waltzing on another planet in the guise of say, a snow white rabbit ala Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Assuming he can still manipulate his gravity field, think of the damage he could do on an Earth Sized world, just messing with Gravity alone! Oh lets pull the moon into a closer orbit, or just screwing up it's orbital projection. Oh look that planet is now orbiting a small furry mammal.

If the cannons are forward facing, Cormal should be able to teleport to his advantage, eventually grapple the ship and keep it from ever firing at him while he crushes it slowly. Right?

Even if they aren't forward facing, grappling the guns themselves should do the trick.

Inability to cast spells from speech lack notation no longer applies if you use Underseas rules for silent casting.

Cormal may normally do that anyway.. Does he even normally have mouths capable of speech? Do maws have tongues?

Alrik Vas wrote:If the cannons are forward facing, Cormal should be able to teleport to his advantage, eventually grapple the ship and keep it from ever firing at him while he crushes it slowly. Right?

Even if they aren't forward facing, grappling the guns themselves should do the trick.

The Star Fortress is a giant sphere, kinda like a mini Death Star, so at most only 1/2 can fire at Cormal at a time, hence the numbers I used in my calculations, other wise the damage would be doubled. There aren't any notes on allowing Cormal to grapple IIRC in his stats, but not unreasonable. Also there is no enumeration of how many tentacles he, specifically but the Three Galaxies entry gives a demon planet 2D6+6 of them with 2D6x10,000 MDC each. Cormal's stats say his are twice as long and thick so likely he as twice as many with twice the MDC. So say 4D6+12 (max 36) and 4D6x10,000 MDC (max 240,000 MDC) These tentacles being twice as long as normal ones can only reach 2000 miles. I think I was wrong about his size earlier and thought that the listing was diameter, but looking that's comparing him to Jupiter, I believe that it was his circumference of 98,000+ miles round. Depending on where the Fortress is in relation to the maw of Cormal will determine if it can bring them to bear, because these are Maw tentacles, they are going to be localized around the mouths of the beast, and if the fortress starts out even a few thousand miles away, it will take quite awhile to bring them to bear. The Maw itself is "Planet sized" not sure if that is rocky planet or gaseous planet, but if rocky, assume then it's the size of Earth for simplicity, or about 7900 miles long, with even distribution of maximum of 36 Tentacles about every 220 miles along the maw, meaning about 9 Tentacles at a time will have an overlapping reach. If in range, trying to wrap around the back of the star fortress puts them in range of all the beam cannons that can't target the surface (because they are on the back side of the sphere shaped star fortress). The retractable beam cannons combined on that back half can do 6.26 milling MD, and will be able to easily take out 9 tentacles in a single round.

Additionally once the Fortress has killed whichever tentacles are an immediate threat, then I would look at the difference in sub-light speeds to see how long it would take for Cormal to bring another into range. Cormal moves at Mach 15, the Fortress at Mach 4, for a difference of Mach 11, roughly 8440 MPH, which works out to about just under 36 miles per melee. Best case then, Cormal takes 6-7 melees to rotate the 220 miles needed to bring another tentacle into striking range of the Star Fortress, and much much longer if the star fortress is now where near the main maw. A single tentacle will be vaporized in no time. Unless of course Cormal goes all immune to energy, then my prior analysis basically says, the star fortress takes a beating (if in range of the tentacles) and uses the antimatter cannon. If the World Dominator is really smart, he'd hit the tentacles first during the initial surprise attack thus eliminating the majority of physical attacks that Cormal could have even reached the Fortress with and greatly reducing the chances that the antimatter cannons would be destroyed.

Thing is, compared to Cormal, the Star Fortress is tiny, but able to dish out order's of magnitude greater damage. Imagine you trying to swat a fly with your bare hands, that has the punching power of a boxer, and is about half as tough as you and and that's kinda a good analogy for this fight based on their stats.

Axelmania wrote:Inability to cast spells from speech lack notation no longer applies if you use Underseas rules for silent casting.

Cormal may normally do that anyway.. Does he even normally have mouths capable of speech? Do maws have tongues?

No clue if Cormal has tongues to speak or cast spells per se, in his normal planet form, but he does have giant maws and but he is able to cast spells so he must have some way of speaking. I never much cared for the underseas stuff so I've never really gotten into it, but I'll take your word. I guess it would have to apply to spell casting in space for space worthy beings.

WB7p63 one spell per round max, costing 3 actions.

This was more crippling when you would start with 1 or 2 actions. If a mage with 2 for living 2 for hth 1 for boxing used it then it was roughly the same since half of five would be rounded up to three anyway.

With sped up single action casting it is now triple time so that seems more balanced.

It doesn't give more for high level spells but I would double/quadruple to 6/12 as usual and cap to one per two or four melees.

Kill the Dominator and the star fortress explodes. Send a massive amount of life fragments to possess the Dominator slaves that attack him. Teleport demons inside the star fortress to also attack the Dominator. Cast solar flare and create nebula around the star fortress then cast summon comet for damage (2d4x1000+5000 M.D. per spell) and target the inner core of the star fortress. It has only 3 million M.D.C. vs. the 20 million of the main body of the star fortress. Use the main tentacles to grape the star fortress and smash it on to Cormal surface and have thousands of his crater tentacles attack with millions of his immune defenders and demons. Oh hell maybe just possess the Dominator himself and take out his nova gun and point the gun at his temple and pull the trigger. Oh and set it on the highest setting of 1d4x100 M.D.....

Just some quick thoughts...

Also one more thing. Cormal is naturally resistant to energy attacks and takes half damage.

Dragon Mage wrote:Kill the Dominator and the star fortress explodes. Send a massive amount of life fragments to possess the Dominator slaves that attack him. Teleport demons inside the star fortress to also attack the Dominator. Cast solar flare and create nebula around the star fortress then cast summon comet for damage (2d4x1000+5000 M.D. per spell) and target the inner core of the star fortress. It has only 3 million M.D.C. vs. the 20 million of the main body of the star fortress. Use the main tentacles to grape the star fortress and smash it on to Cormal surface and have thousands of his crater tentacles attack with millions of his immune defenders and demons. Oh hell maybe just possess the Dominator himself and take out his nova gun and point the gun at his temple and pull the trigger. Oh and set it on the highest setting of 1d4x100 M.D.....

Just some quick thoughts...

Also one more thing. Cormal is naturally resistant to energy attacks and takes half damage.

Cormal's energy resistance is factored into my updated damage calculations if you read through them you'll see that. The Tentacles are a non-threat based on how much MDC they can have vs what the star fortress can dish out. and how many there are and how long it would take Cormal to move them into position, again read through my break downs. Crater tentacles are too short to reach the star fortress, and would be destroyed pretty quickly as well. The possession is probably the best course of action, but the specs on Cormal are vague as to range of his possession and what the base save is. Plus I think the Dominator's high ME would help, though I'm not sure, been a while since I looked at the rules on possession, and I haven't been able to find them in the RUE. But yeah, viable tactic, especially since the WD is vulnerable to magic if you can peel him outta his star fortress.

Any teleporting would be take a while to get close given the distances involved and the fact that it is a blind teleport to the interior of the star fortress, making it hard to target it specifically. I looked at teleportation in the context how how far Cormal could teleport after using a metamorphosis spell, and it would be tricky (again read some of my earlier posts).

Don't you need a WP to be able to make called shots? Does a Dominator have a WP for the weapons that would be used to target tentacles?

Axelmania wrote:Don't you need a WP to be able to make called shots? Does a Dominator have a WP for the weapons that would be used to target tentacles?

The Dominators do not need any skills to use their starships, it says so right in their Skill list: the ships are entirely automated and do whatever the dominator tells it to do automatically. It's an automated targeting system.

Wouldn't the computer need a WP skill to be able to make called shots with its weapon systems?

Without that maybe an AI is only capable of making strikes at the main body.

Axelmania wrote:Wouldn't the computer need a WP skill to be able to make called shots with its weapon systems?

Without that maybe an AI is only capable of making strikes at the main body.

The AI has all applicable skills. WP skill programs for AIs are easy

It being possible doesn't mean it's there though. Star Fortresses are so powerful that they could probably destroy most thing's main body in a single shot, so the ability of making called shots via programming a WP skill may not have seemed necessary.

They could have battled defensively, simultaneously attacking anyone who shot at them, meaning they would just have to make a strike roll and never worry about having to get the strike roll high enough to beat high dodge rolls.

I don't think even impervious to energy would save cormal since dominator weapons count as magical attacks.

Ignatius wrote:I don't think even impervious to energy would save cormal since dominator weapons count as magical attacks.

Except Impervious to Energy works against magical energy, so why would that be a problem?

Only a problem for Mystic Knights!