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So, I was wanting to make a NPC merc unit to show up in a Rifts Earth game during the early stages of the Minion War. I wanted them to standout, be powerful, but different. Not just Naruri equipped, or taking from one of the existing groups in the Mercs books, or Megaversal Legion. I thought about the Dominator tech for minions, and thought they would be a good fit. The ideas I remembered reading for their tech would fit well with a small merc unit that hit it big with a tech find.

I get out the book, and start reading the Dominator tech entry, and ran into a problem.....Their equipment has some advantages, self repairing/recharging, and in the Nova weapons a very high damage number, but I found some issues as well. The melee weapons are basically standard earth vibroblades without the need to be charged. Same damage etc. The body armor is great, and will self repair, plus has some special abilities. It isn't hugely better in use then say Naruni Variable Camo Armor, or CCW armor with a super heavy force field, but is powerful, and different, so I may use it( especially the heavier version with the spoofers).


The real issue is the Gravity weapons. The Gravity guns make no sense against their supposed main enemy the Cosmo Knight, and do less damage against the supernatural/magic than most weapons. A Triax shotgun is significantly better against a Cosmo Knight, and a CS Plasma rifle is fairly equal against the supernatural/magic without costing millions.

Anyway, I think I'm going to change my original idea and have one NPC armed with heavy armor, and Nova weapons, with the others as say UWW Marines, or just scrap the Dominator equipment appearance altogether. I was just really disappointed that the Dominator minion tech seemed nerfed to the point of not being worth messing with.

RockJock wrote:So, I was wanting to make a NPC merc unit to show up in a Rifts Earth game during the early stages of the Minion War. I wanted them to standout, be powerful, but different. Not just Naruri equipped, or taking from one of the existing groups in the Mercs books, or Megaversal Legion. I thought about the Dominator tech for minions would be a good fit. The ideas I remembered reading for their tech would fit well with a small merc unit that hit it big with a tech find.

I get out the book, and start reading the Dominator tech entry, and ran into a problem.....Their equipment has some advantages, self repairing/recharging, and in the Nova weapons a very high damage number, but I found some issues as well. The melee weapons are basically standard earth vibroblades without the need to be charged. Same damage etc. The body armor is great, and will self repair, plus has some special abilities. It isn't hugely better in use then say Naruni Variable Camo Armor, or CCW armor with a super heavy force field, but is powerful, and different, so I may use it( especially the heavier version with the spoofers).


The real issue is the Gravity weapons. The Gravity guns make no sense against their supposed main enemy the Cosmo Knight, and do less damage against the supernatural/magic than most weapons. A Triax shotgun is significantly better against a Cosmo Knight, and a CS Plasma rifle is fairly equal against the supernatural/magic without costing millions.

Anyway, I think I'm going to change my original idea and have one NPC armed with heavy armor, and Nova weapons, with the others as say UWW Marines, or just scrap the Dominator equipment appearance altogether. I was just really disappointed that the Dominator minion tech seemed nerfed to the point of not being worth messing with.

Remember that Cosmo Knights only have a resistance to Energy attacks, not physical (kinetic energy) attacks. This means that a Gravity Gun/Rail Gun would do full damage to a Cosmo Knight.

But are you talking about the Gravity Wave weapons?

I'm talking about the Dominator's Gravity Wave weapons. I understand the fluff saying they were a failure for the Dominators, but you think they would have come up with something better.

It seems to me that they tried a number of times to discover what they could do to defeat the Cosmo Knights resistance to energy for a while, but have been unable to capture a Cosmo Knight for long enough to perform any meaningful research on them (simply because if any Dominator was able to capture a Cosmo Knight, the Cosmic Forge would send a rescue force to free them).

To be honest, the best Dominator Technology weapons that I had seen that would be effective against a Cosmo Knight would be the Molecular Melee Weapons.

RockJock wrote:I'm talking about the Dominator's Gravity Wave weapons. I understand the fluff saying they were a failure for the Dominators, but you think they would have come up with something better.

The dominators have giant ships that wipe out space fleets and can destroy planets.

why would they bother too much with making better weapons for tiny races they themselves wouldn't use? only a handful of dominators use minions, and those that do see them as ultimately expendable pawns, so not worth the trouble.

Yet the Dominators spend the energy and effort to designed the Gravity Wave weapons to defeat Cosmo Knights in the first place?

It is just hard for me to buy an entirely new "type" of weapon invented by the Dominators that has two special abilities separating it from say a standard laser, one to do SDC damage to SDC targets, and the other to self charge, in exchange for being weaker than run of the mill tech in most other ways. The Gravity Wave Pistol weighs more than a Naurni NE-50 Particle Beam Rifle, while having a shorter range, and roughly the same damage to a standard MDC target, or Cosmo Knight. It does have the ability to recharge itself, but gives up the usability of e-clips. On top of that, the Dominator Gravity Wave gun is less useful against magic, or the supernatural then the P-Beam.

The Nova Plasma weapons still have issues with CKs, but they pack the punch of a sawed off Shemarrian Rail Gun or Boom Gun. This is more inline with what I would expect from an Elder Race.

The Molecular Blades are a basic, Earth tech, vibroblade without the battery.


Thundercloud portrays the weapons being 50,000 year old relics, and that the Dominators had dozens of slave races. Dominators may not make use of minors today, but it is pretty clear that they did at one time.

I'm really just annoyed by a cool idea seeming to be nerfed to the point of it being a weapon nobody would ever use.

RockJock wrote:The melee weapons are basically standard earth vibroblades without the need to be charged. Same damage etc.

Their Starsplitter melee weapon is the same as an Vibroblade? Since when do Earth Vibro-Blades do 3d6x10 PLUS hand-to-hand damage (which minimum is 5d6)? Which Fot3G (pg47) states can be "greivously injured by the blade" (and looking at the stats in DB2, that's pretty spot on, 1vs1 in melee, a Dominator has a huge edge in defense/offense for MDC).

RockJock wrote:Anyway, I think I'm going to change my original idea and have one NPC armed with heavy armor, and Nova weapons, with the others as say UWW Marines, or just scrap the Dominator equipment appearance altogether. I was just really disappointed that the Dominator minion tech seemed nerfed to the point of not being worth messing with.

2 things to keep in mind when considering Dominators:
-one they are 30ft tall humanoids, any equipment/hardware they have for them is going to be sized for them. This probably limits who can use their weapons directly, but any race should be able to use vehicles or 'bots to handle them, power armor isn't likely (except for natural giant-size beings which are about 1/2 their size, unlike humans that are 1/4).
-Keep in mind the Dominators are supposed to collect hardware over the eons, which could still be potent and could be attributed to them IF the source is no longer around or not much is known about them so you have some ability to get creative and tinker.

Nekira Sundance wrote:why would they bother too much with making better weapons for tiny races they themselves wouldn't use? only a handful of dominators use minions, and those that do see them as ultimately expendable pawns, so not worth the trouble.

Who says it has to be technology they produced? DB2 pg96 states "Plus most dominators have 1D6 additional unique and/or powerful weapons and vehicles they have collected over the eons." So the hardware might not be Dominator tech, but some ancient hardware they have collected but can't necessarily use because of their size (30ft-ers are pretty rare in Palladium, most giants are half that).

Also pg96 mentions that some "build up an army of conquest" and "using humanoid pawns as go-betweens". So it is certainly possible that a Dominator could have pawns and equip them.

ShadowLogan,

I was talking about the equipment in DB 14: Thundercloud Galaxy, which talked about Dominion Minion/Slave Race equipment, as well as a few weapons and tech pieces used by the big boys.

I was referring to the general human sized, or slightly larger sized equipment, not stuff for the 30 footers.

@RockJock
DB14, that would explain it. I don't have DB14. IIRC the highlight bullet point list in the store/WU at the time where different than they are now and didn't mention anything about the Dominators.

Still why would the Dominators equip their minion/slaves with the best equipment they have? They could have reasons to limit the power of minions/slaves and/or it could be a matter of scale (there advanced tech/magic can miniaturize only so much before losing performance/edge)

So the books gives two new "types" of energy weapons. First the Gravity Wave comes in 30ft and a more standard size(still heavy, but gives penalties for weaker characters, and isn't crazy). The minion sized versions are heavy, but usable, especially by enhanced characters. The problem is they don't do the standard 1/100 damage to CKs, and less than full damage to creatures of magic and the supernatural, and do SDC to SDC targets. Basically they are less useful than standard PW weapons.

The other energy weapon is much more "powerful", still minion sized, but is comparable to cut down versions of the Boom Gun, or Shemarrian Railgun usable by a humanoid. Both types have regenerating eclip.

The melee weapon I was talking about is minor sized, and does the same damage as standard Earth Vibroblades, though without a power source.

On top of that there are a couple of suits of sort of suped up EBA that borders on PA.

All the equipment is extremely expensive, which I'm fine with since it is suppose to be ancient and extremely rare. I was going to use the Dominator minor stuff as equipment for an NPC merc unit on Earth for the Minion War. Not to give it to players or anything, just something different.

I enjoy the book, and suggest picking it up if you like PW.

RockJock wrote:Yet the Dominators spend the energy and effort to designed the Gravity Wave weapons to defeat Cosmo Knights in the first place?

well...yes?

Some of them have minions, and cosmo knights bother them when they try to destroy worlds for some reason. so they're willing to spend SOME effort to create weapons to fight them and give them to minions, but they don't care enough to put MUCH effort into it.

Because making a relatively new technology is simpler than spending decades refining that technology to where it's really good. a Rifle is a simple concept once you know about explosive powder, and yet it took a thousand years to go from crude arqubus to AK-47. They simply havn't had the time (or more likely, the inclination) to do the hundreds of iterations necessary to make gravity weapons really effective.

It is just hard for me to buy an entirely new "type" of weapon invented by the Dominators that has two special abilities separating it from say a standard laser, one to do SDC damage to SDC targets, and the other to self charge, in exchange for being weaker than run of the mill tech in most other ways. The Gravity Wave Pistol weighs more than a Naurni NE-50 Particle Beam Rifle, while having a shorter range, and roughly the same damage to a standard MDC target, or Cosmo Knight. It does have the ability to recharge itself, but gives up the usability of e-clips. On top of that, the Dominator Gravity Wave gun is less useful against magic, or the supernatural then the P-Beam.

The Nova Plasma weapons still have issues with CKs, but they pack the punch of a sawed off Shemarrian Rail Gun or Boom Gun. This is more inline with what I would expect from an Elder Race.

The Molecular Blades are a basic, Earth tech, vibroblade without the battery.


Thundercloud portrays the weapons being 50,000 year old relics, and that the Dominators had dozens of slave races. Dominators may not make use of minors today, but it is pretty clear that they did at one time.

I'm really just annoyed by a cool idea seeming to be nerfed to the point of it being a weapon nobody would ever use.

Wait, why is a P-beam more effective to magic and the supernatural?

anyway I don't care to speculate too closely on the reasoning behind entirely fictional technology made by entirely fictional beings: but consider this. if the newest ones are 50,000 years old, then the dominators stopped making them 50,000 years ago. and if they stopped making them, then it's possible they stopped using them because they really did suck

They're not perfect. their technology path is likely littered with thousands of bad ideas they later abandoned. Dominators are not immune to the "I learned 999 ways to not make a light bulb" phenomina.

The P-Beam doesn't have a negative damage modifier against the supernatural or creatures of magic. The Gravity Wave weapons do. So a god or a drakin takes a maximum blast from a NE-50 P-Beam they each get 40 damage, taking a 40 damage blast from a Gravity Wave gun and the god takes 20 and the drakin takes 13. I could have used the lighter HI-80 with bursts, but I picked the NE-50 single it doesn't have a built in burst and was similar weight.

If you are going to have a big baddie with equipment that is off limits to most groups because it is so powerful (such as most of the other Dominator items in the book) it should be on the high end side, not worse than most Rift Earth native equipment.

I would have thought of something much more insidious from an ultra-advanced race like the Dominators. Ongoing damage would be something.
Gravity Wave that creates negative effects due to high gravity for several rounds.
Super plasma that burns for full effect for several rounds.
Projectiles that super accelerate for massive damage - the further away the more damage but lower to hit chance.

The mother ship has some good thought but not much below that.