Hotrod wrote:Good points, all; I should have provided sources. Here goes:
The only laser torch I know of in canon (source: Wilk's Laser Torch, RUE p269 and RMB) is not variable-frequency, and laser shots can and do ricochet off glitter boys (source: Sharpshooting skill description in New West, CB1, and other places). Therefore, using a laser torch on chromium armor would be a bad idea due to reflective hazards, as the surface geometry would change during cuts and welds, creating hazardous reflected beams (source: my brain). Do you have a source on MDC plasma torches being common (or even existing? I don't see any in GMG or RUE, perhaps the NG books?)? Given that chromium armor is more heat resistant than regular armor (source: FQ p97, QST-333 canon description), plasma torches might not work all that well on it, either.
"More resistant to heat" without a game mechanic attached to it is just pointless fluff. As for plasma torches existing... are you trying to imply that they somehow
went away between now and Rifts?
We have them now. A good plasma cutter can slice through several FEET of concrete, and is what is used to cut off and repair armor on the M1 (different types of the same tool; the one for concrete is built differently). Everyone here (and even Palladium) agrees that an M1 is an MDC vehicle (if light by Rifts standards), and plasma cutters work just fine on their armor.
Also... even if the GB is difficult to repair with a laser cutter - its still worth it. You just wear some light body armor while doing the repairs. Any good Operator should know how.
I'm curious why you would think that everyday items that aren't listed in a Rifts book somewhere dont exist in the setting, though. There are lots of things that by inferrence MUST exist (or some version of them, at least), that are never detailed. Like.. running water. Pumps. Transformers. Capacitors. Etc.
I'd go with this logic: whatever it takes to repair GBs, it exists. Because GBs have been getting repaired since the Dark Age, and are still getting repaired now. So whatever it is that is required, isn't that uncommon among people who can do repairs to robots and power armor.
Chromium is not abundant in North America; in real life, most of it comes from Asia and Africa (source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium). In Rifts Earth, Glitter Boys and a handful of variants are the only types of vehicles or armor that use the MDC chromium. Hence, it's rare, or at least, unusual; a niche market.
The chances that "Chromium Armor" has any real Chromium in it is slight at best. Its called that because it sounded like Chrome and the Glitterboy looks like Chrome. Dont kid yourself thinking anything else. Availability of Chromium (the real deal) is meaningless. FQ can make enough of the stuff to outfit not only their GBs but the Sidekicks too. Triax had no issues mass producing it when shown how. The chances that it needs real Chromium, at that point, is miniscule. Its just a particularly rare/expensive/hard to work form of super-advanced/dense armor. Molecularly bonded special mojo that you have to be shown how to do that is one step past even the molecularly bonded ceramic composite MDC armor that most stuff seems to use. Think K.I.T.T. only shiny metal instead of shiny black.
Each "round" of ammunition includes 200 flachette slugs (source: RUE, FQ). Flachettes aren't just a round rod of metal. Each is a pointed projectile with a vaned tail (source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flechette). Thus, they can't simply be made by turning simple iron or steel on a lathe.
Actually, they still can and have been made that way for centuries. There are examples of all-steel crossbow bolts (basically large flechettes) from the 1600s in several museums. Some are turned, and some are just crucible cast, which leads to my next point...
The fact that they must fly straight and true over 2 miles (source: G10 description in RUE and FQ) indicates that they must be made precisely, especially the fins, because even a small defect would deflect them (source: watching what happens when I throw a paper airplane with a bent wing).
You dont throw a paper airplane at roughly Mach 20. (Which is what the GB should actually be throwing at; the current Naval Rail gun hits near Mach 17 and isn't as powerful as the Boom Gun yet). Enough motive force will cause the least aerodynamic objects in the world to go in a straight line. They dont have to be *that* precise....
A machinist could make a single slug, but individually making the 200 needed for a single shot would be impractical, and making 200,000 needed for a full load of ammunition would require specialized industrial equipment for that specific purpose, especially if the slugs themselves must be made from M.D.C. materials.
Just a fire hot enough to make crucible steel. You could make a mold for the flechettes absurdly easily. Flechettes are NOT high tech. We've been using them for literal centuries. Oh, and extruded steel sabots. Something we've been able to make since the Civil War.
Free Quebec has clearly been able to make new Glitter Boys, yet they shell out top dollar for parts and salvage (FQ p20).
Because using spare parts is cheaper. Not sure i see a point here.
Though they've been making new Glitter Boys for generations, these have been a stockpiled reserve, and 80% of them had no power source until their deal with the NGR (FQ p). The original FQ Glitter Boy Legion was 288 (FQ p36), although 864 suits were found. The power core manufacturing process is mentioned as particularly difficult/expensive for FQ (same page). Triax has supplied 6,000 suits to Free Quebec (FQ p74), and their total GB legion numbers 15,000 GBs as of the start of war with the CS in late 105 P.A. (FQ p77). Free Quebec can make 500-600 per year (FQ p74), and has likely been doing so since the deal with the NGR, which happened sometime before 104 P.A. since that is when Triax started making and delivering their GBs to Free Quebec (T&NGR, p45). Assuming 2 years for them to design, prototype, and begin production on the T-550 Glitter Boy, this means that the deal got signed in 102 P.A. and that FQ had somewhere around 7,000 GB suits in reserve at the time that they signed the Triax deal, but only about 1400 of them had power cores (and many of those cores might have been mostly depleted, since this was a mothballed reserve).
Interesting numbers but im not sure they really mean anything.
Fewer than 3000 Glitter Boys from prewar have been found/activated in the last 200 years across North America, though no more pre-apocalypse ones have been found in 20 years, and around 60% of Glitter Boys have been active for 100-200 years (FQ, p20). Free Quebec has sold or "lost" another 350 (FQ p72).
And how many did North America START with, during Chaos Earth/the Dark Age? If there were ten or fifteen thousand at the start of the Dark Age, and another 3000 have been found since then... having a few thousand GBs active (particularly with Archie seeding parts/suits/ammo during the Dark Age) now doesn't seem like a stretch. Theyre hard to kill to begin with, and each scrapped suit provides parts to repair several others.
Those are the facts as I understand them from canon. Now for my own interpretation:
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It seems likely that Free Quebec can't make new power cores from scratch,
Since you literally just quoted the section where it outright says they CAN, in fact, make them, just not quickly, i have no idea how you interpreted that.
or can't do so economically,
This is far more correct/likely. It's difficult for them, especially since their tech is behind the rest of the CS by about 15-20 years in most places.
and yet the math seems to indicate that they can replenish their supply to some limited extent. If Free Quebec has maintained 288 Glitter Boys in the field for 200 years, that would consume 2304 cores,
Or they could just refuel them. There's nothing anywhere about "throw power plant away when it runs out of fuel" being a thing in Rifts.
nearly three times the number that they started with. My unsupported interpretation is that Free Quebec can reprocess depleted power sources to create new ones, perhaps requiring two depleted cores to create one new one. Thus they can extend their power core supply, but until the deal with the NGR, it was a losing struggle.
It was never a losing struggle, they just couldn't produce power plants as fast as they could produce suits. Thats the only reason they dont have tens of thousands of the damn things - because they never saw the point in having a massive reserve of suits that they could never hope to power. They kicked into high gear on their own suit production when it became possible to rapidly get power plants from the NGR.
Alternately, as cores near the end of their operational lives, Free Quebec may have used some of them to power their reserve suits while refurbishing others.
Further, I believe that Free Quebec limited their pre-NGR-deal Glitter Boy Legion to 288 in order to conserve power cores, since they couldn't create new ones from scratch. If they replaced each core as it got down to one year of operational life left, they would use up 288 cores about every 50 years, assuming that they could refurbish power cores as I mentioned in the above paragraph. 200 years ago, Free Quebec found 864 Glitter Boys (FQ p74). Even refurbishing their cores, they would use up 1152 cores. This usage rate would make them about to run out of power cores around the same time that they made their deal with the NGR, which gives them a practical reason for them making the trade when they did.
I believe that the bulk of the power cores in Free Quebec's stockpile pre-NGR deal would be cores nearing, but not at the end of, their operational life (1 year left or so). This would allow Free Quebec to surge over a thousand Glitter Boys into a short conflict of Of course, FQ would also lose cores in combat and acquire more from salvaged and found suits, but I think it's reasonable for those factors to offset each other.
FQ kept their "GB Legion" at 288 because of a treaty with the Coalition States. That's straight up mentioned about a dozen times in various books. And even then, they were lying and still producing suits, at roughly 3-4x the pace they could produce new power plants.
The above conjecture is based entirely on a premise that is directly contradicted by sources you quoted yourself.
That leaves us with the 3,000 or so suits that have been found in the last 200 years. Almost a third of them went to Free Quebec. ARCHIE made and left caches here and there for the Republicans in their early years, and he continues to do so, but he does not sustain these suits. This is where I'm tempted to get a little creative.
Given the fact that descended GB pilots are a thing outside of Free Quebec, and most suits have been in service for over a century, it stands to reason that there are organizations dedicated to servicing, repairing, and resupplying these pilots and their suits. Since such organizations aren't known among the power players of North America, it seems reasonable that they would be fairly loose associations, something between a professional association and a knightly order. Given that Glitter Boys are more associated with heroism than with villainy, it seems plausible that these organizations hold themselves to some standards of behavior.
I've been thinking of exploring the idea of Glitter Boy clans/orders/associations a bit more as a way of fleshing out this class that is so visibly prominent in the game's art, and yet so unexplored in terms of its way of life/culture. Is there anything like that in canon?
You mean like.....
Operators? That have guilds, pacts, companies, asossciations, and are known to support heroes with cheap/free repairs and upgrades, and (many of whom) wander the wasteland providing their services to people in need?
Yeah, there's something like that in canon.
Also, the Black Market, as of the founding of Bandito Arms, can make the power plants. The Shadow Boy is literally a Glitter Boy without the Chromium Armor. It was the only part of the armor they couldn't make (because they didn't find the formula for it). They can even make the Boom Guns.