As far as I understood the CS 'stole' all of their technology from what was left behind after the cataclysm. And has had a hundred years or so to build an empire and work on new technology.

I don't think they are more advanced than we are today. But their military machine might be as it is likely their main focus. Even still I imagine certain things are just lost forever.

I remember Jendan's player making up artillery rules, I think I saved them somewhere on my home PC. Perhaps UAVs should be added, and probably some other stuff.

We can discuss here and do some CS revamps if others are interested.

Also - does everyone feel as though I should have 2 OOC threads one for Coaltion and one for Tolkeen - or do you enjoy all chatting together?

Only 4 of the CS players are also in the Tolkeen group with seperate characters, so most are new players to the game.

In reply to Moloch (msg #955):

CS LONE STAR is way Advanced -  they even torture ETs for tech!.  ELLLIOTTTT!
The CS has Naurani Tech just never sanctioned or mentioned.

Hell I was reading Lone Star and almost though of dropping Castle for a Ursa Warrior!  Polar Bear and go all Golden Compass on Tolkeen!!
This message was last edited by the player at 03:20, Wed 24 Nov 2010.

The way I figure it is that Rifts shouldn't be based on 80's tech. Take what we have the current tech and make use of it. For examle

NEMA probably had UAV's, not that they were much good after the cataclysm with all the ash in the air.

As for arty rules....I forget. I know I had something for saturating an area with a barrage of mini-missiles. For example if I fire off 10 mini-missiles with a blast radius of 10 feet each I can saturate a 100 foot area. The draw back? You only do the amount of damage of what one missile does to that 100 foot area.

I think I would like three OOC threads, actually. Thread one would be for Tolkeen stuff that's related to their strategy, tactics, basically anything in game that CS characters wouldn't/shouldn't know, or just plain don't care about. Ditto for the second thread, but in reverse. I don't think the Tolkeen guys wanna hear us discussing what ammo types we're using all day, or cluttering up their thread (we're chatty bitches). Thread three is more classic OOC. Anything not game related, just goofing around and mouthing off.

As far as my parts of it, I am more than willing to help out with our equipment system. Its a bit set up heavy, but easy and simple to use in practice. You don't ask what you can and can't have, you know (base supplies not factored in). You start makign choices like "hmm, food or two more e-clips, or maybe another first aid kit? Decisions decisions."

As for UAVs, you have the Eagle in CS Navy. It provides a nice basis for working in new UAVS (though the price is off - for on million that should have a mini-nuke engine). The Robot Construction rules in Sourcebook 1 combined with the vehicle options in Rifter 50 and 51 should create just about anything you want or need or that exists but needs tweaks.

As for seperate OCCs - I can see why you'd want to. Were I on the Tolkeen side of things, I wouldn't particularly care what the CS groups are doing, unless it applied to me specifically. But I am a big fan of the filters in RPOL (as Jenden's player can attest). If I have players seeing that are not in that thread, there is a VERY specific reason for it (even though I am not always sure of that reason when I do it). And well, not to down the Tolkeen players, but playing the CS sub-game, I don't particularly care what they are doing - unless they are on the recieving side of LC's attentions. :) In that case all I can say is don't be a magic user. D-bees and rogue psychics have FAR less to fear than mages. ;)

All that said, I don't particularly care if we have a CS OOC - but perhaps we should have a thread for station keeping stuff like who has what equipment, thread specific rules questions, etc.

I second this.

less talky more roleplayiieee!!!

I think 2 works fine. I don't think people should use the OOC section for strategy so much anyway. Do it IC. OOC for house rule discussion, or how cool you think your character's haircut is, or one of Moloch's HILARIOUS "the following people are dead" jokes. Priceless.

Make it happen Moloch, these CS jerks won't shut up and I can't sort out what info is critical to the Tolkeen happenings and what is these skull-faces trying to figure out how to compensate for small dicks with big rocket launchers.

+ I just noticed we're about to reach our 1,000 post limit. Thanks a lot Deadboys, now Tolkeen needs ANOTHER one...

I'm thinking a single OOC thread would be fine.

Whenever a new game starts, there is always a huge flurry of new posts as everyone is excited about showing off their new character and settling into the character themselves.  Over the course of the first week, a few of the players will typically lose a bit of steam and the craziness slows down.

Our OOC thread will be back to normal soon I think.

 I've got no great feelings on the IC/OOC thing...

 As for the technology though.

 Artillery is alive in the real world and still damn' near the king of the battlefield, but in the real world there isn't the access to large numbers of long range, accurate missiles on all sorts of mech units either. I'm not saying artillery would be useless you understand, only that there isn't any in the standard rules of Rifts and there isn't a single ballistic weapon in any of the splat books, so it's as good a blag as any. Or we could just assume that K.S. doesn't know much about the military.

 Modern tech though - no, sorry. If you start trying to figure in the cutting edge of shiny stuff you're screwed because it's getting sharper and shinier by the day. By picking a point in time where most technology is 'about how you see it in those cool action movies' and rolling the clock forwards from there you don't have to keep up with gizmos.

 It's easily justified too - the C.S. has scraps of golden age technology and has spent time scurrying for more and developing its own, but it doesn't have a consistent whole or the knowledge to make the best use of what it's got... Or else it would be scarily more dangerous than it is - like L.C. points out, with the robot rules you can make nearly anything you want and change the face of the battlefield.

I'm sorry but it makes no sense to follow the rules to the letter if they have things like 16MB of memory in a hand held computer.  I have 20 GB of "hard memory" in my Blackberry and it will support even more if I shell out $50 for a new MicroSD card.  And I get a damn site more than 24 hours of battery life.

If we don't update the rules as we go, we'll lose that sense of playing in a futuristic post apocalyptic world.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:42, Wed 24 Nov 2010.

We don't have to assume. We know he knows jack shit.


I'd have to disagree on some of that. The new Robotech books have been interjected with modern tech as it pertains to aircraft and mecha sensors and I see no issues with adding more and more to the game. Plus the CS having stuff like UAV's, and wireless comms makes sense.

Now due to the Cataclysm the GM can say this tech or that tech is unavailable. But things like CPU's with 80's tech? Well we all know when the books were written (just look at the inside cover) and that the tech used when that book came out is outdated.

---

In regards to the OCC thread I think one is fine.

---

BTW I'm look for a few more players in my Chaos Earth game for what is most likely going to be a suicide mission. A few people here in this game are already in it.
link to another game

 Yeah, that's one of the areas where dating has obviously happened, but it's a difference of scale, not of kind. And it's not completely implausable since you're carrying that personal computer while wearing armour more resistant than a tank, carrying a gun that can hole a battleship and walking next to a fricken' giant robot.

 There's a big difference between one field of Rifts technology and another because some things are just a whole lot easier to make and others are being made in legacy tech factories. It's a seriously dodgy patch, but otherwise we start to have to completely rebuild the entire equipment list to take account of twenty years of technological improvement and our considerably better grasp of military practicality than ol' K.S.

All you need to do is improve a few items here and there. For example the amount of hard drive space on a mini-computer (aka laptop/notebook).

Red dot, and reflex scopes can also easily be added in to replace the current (as written) laser sights in Rifts/CE that give away a shooters position. For example, I am going to give the JA-11 in my CE game a red dot scope.

I agree with Lotus and Drano on the tech issue. Stylistically, one can say that the tech is a "retro-80s" future, but functionally it makes no sense to hold everyone back to a standard that's otherwise arbitrary.

You don't have to re-do the equipment list. You just make reasonable adjustments. Such as: someone with a suite that has an on-board radio and computer should be able to send text-messages (a term that didn't exist in the 80s). 16 megabytes becomes 16 gigabytes. Or you could say that they have really good compression algorithms. It's not all that big of a jump.

 Thing is, once you start improving things, it rapidly escalates.

 I mean, Skelebots right? A few mil a pop, but most of that is chasis and power pack. Why not take say, two brains and park them in a tank that requires a human operator, firing secondary armament or working ECM duties.

 Bang, instant force multiplication and crew reduction - and an absolute no-brainer of an idea given the two technologies existing. When you start using real world logic and Rifts technology, you start to very, very rapidly leave game balance far, far behind... I mean seriously, the pump grenades? They're what, about the size of a twelve gauge? And not one weapon fires them full auto?

Yep it's these little things that can be easily done.

 Oh, I do agree that you can up the computer memory easily though - that's just a matter of shifting a number, not changing a paradign.

You also have to take into account things like the fragility of high-end electronics.  Sure, you can make a robot-operated tank with a sophisticated computer brain that can almost "think" at a human level.  But one good hit knocks a wire loose and the whole thing shuts down or, worse, malfunctions and goes berserk.

Given the CS' fear of the nonhuman, I can see how, even if they had the tech, they'd avoid over-automation and instead rely on trustworthy, trained humans to do the job whenever necessary.

Even with the power creep inherent in the system, the CS is still one of the most technologically advanced civilizations on Earth, so other tech-producers (Northern Gun, for instance) may simply not have the ability to even consider robot tanks.

As for pump grenades...  Maybe they're too expensive to produce/purchase in the volume necessary to load into an automatic weapon?  There's also the "Don't fix what ain't broke" idea to consider.  Yes, you can build a bigger, badder gun, but if the weaker, cheaper gun still does what you need it to do, why bother?  If you can make two "lesser" weapons (or more) for the cost of one uber-weapon and the enemy still ends up just as dead, that's a cost savings.  And it's that many more soldiers fielding effective weaponry on the battlefield than if you put all your eggs in the super-gun basket.

 Sure, 'cept Skelebots are a proven system seemingly about as reliable as an AK-47 and you don't put them in control of jack squat unless there's a human sat in the main control cockpit.
 But how much more effective would most 'bot and tank units be with a couple of energy cannon rapid-firing under automated control?

 Triax.
 Triax.
 Triax.

 Well that'd be fine except that the CS can mass-produce rifle grenades with less damage but a larger blast and mini-fusion grenades and have never shown the least concern about the cost of their equipment, otherwise they'd re-use the same chasis for more units.

 Weapon-wise however, their guns don't work - just ask the average infantryman how he would feel about being armed with a primary weapon that on average takes an entire magazine of sustained fire to drop a single infantry opponent.

 Scrabbling for something more effective at almost any cost would seem inevitable.

I think the answer may be to update things where it is narratively convenient, and ignore them where it is not. Another thing to keep in mind is to keep OOC knowledge well... OOC. Yeah, we all may be able to say, 'Wow, it'd be great if the CS did X, X, and X with their tanks." But none of our characters have the expertise to make it happen- they're mostly illiterate, and universally unable to program advanced AIs and computer programs. And, for some reason, the boys in the backroom have decided that it's not desirable for an AI to take over that fire control. Why not? Well... That's a bit above your pay grade, son.

The average soldier (or even the above average soldier) in the CS has no idea how his equipment works, and probably has trouble imagining a way it could work better. Remember, they've all been trained from birth to know that CS technology is the peak of human skill and ability. If it's the peak... How could it get better? They're trained not to ask questions from birth. Improving on things just isn't in the nature of 99% of CS soldiers.

Triax does use robotics to a much greater extent than the CS, but they've also got the pro-human sentiment thing to deal with (if maybe not quite as rabid as the CS).  And the average infantryman is rarely consulted when the accountants are deciding how much GNP to set aside for military R&D... ;)

And don't forget that, as far as the high-ups are concerned, the bulk of their forces are thoroughly expendable; dregs culled from the Burbs who were conned into service on the slim hope of citizenship for their families.  They're easily replaceable, so why waste expensive gear on them?

"Only a thousand CS casualties in the last campaign compared to 10,000 enemy units nullified?  Those are acceptable losses.  I see no need to waste money on weapons research over production of our current weapons line-up."

And until recently, 99% of the CS' equipment was just Golden Age weaponry with the serial numbers filed off and a goofy skull slapped on it somewhere.  They're only just starting to innovate and invent on their own instead of mindlessly reproducing what previous generations created.  So, who knows, give them a few decades and they might come up with some truly scary weapons.  But, at least in the current climate, the CS is still all about baby-steps to the future.  Too much change, too rapidly could destabilize the whole house of cards.

Given how badly the Tolkeen and Free Quebec campaigns are going to deplete their active forces, though, I could see some elements in the CS command pushing for a better armed force to compensate for lack of manpower.  So, again, who knows what the CS of the future might look like (yes, pun intended).

 Soldiers no, but I'm not really referring to soldiers so much as I am those behind them.

 And no, that's a completely ass-backwards view of the C.S. army which until very recently was not the scrapings of the burbs intended to be fed into Russian Winter-War-style grindfests. It's supposed to be large, professional and well-trained representing the best of humanity standing in its defence - which is why there was so much resistance to the C.S. Juicer program for one.

 Only humans (and to a lesser extent, dog boys) can be trusted sure, but any expedient that would reduce human casualties tends to get explored, which is why they have skelebots and Dog boys in the first place.

Have we been reading the same books? O_o

It's killing me because I cannot find it now, but in one of the many books, Sembieda actually addressed the vast improvements in technology, particularly in the case of computers.

He basically said that take whatever is common for today, whenever today is, and multiply it by 100.  At least in reference to storage capabilities.

I think that is likely a conservative estimate considering technological capabilities effectively double every year and a half to two years (Moore's Law), but it is a good baseline to work from. 2 to the 50th power is...a lot.   100 times better than what we have currently will likely happen within the next fifteen years.

So think what an IPod, ITouch, IPad, Blackberry (or any Droid device) or various netbook or laptop systems can do and 'poof'...x100 and you're good (sort of).

Don't get me started on improvements in communication, nightvision and manportable weapons systems; let alone smart bombs and automated weapons systems.  And that's just scratching the surface.  Aside from not having flying cars at the turn of milennium, I think that science reality has made quite a bit of science fiction look like someone an 8 year old came up with it.