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ToyotaThong posted:ToyotaThong Stories Day 2 Oh man the spy angle. In the Rifts game I played my third character was a spy for the Kreeghor Empire. At one point in time a rift opened and a bunch of dudes from Star Wars poured through led by Han Solo. Thinking that we were all going to die I confessed my sins. My friend Kevin's character tried to execute me for my crimes but I killed his guy instead. Also we survived the Star Wars assault for reasons that I don't remember. Rifts.
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May 22, 2013 12:13
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50 Foot Ant posted:When you've got a group that knows the rules, and has their little crib-card for their combat bonuses, you can actually resolve combat faster in Palladium than you can in 3.5E. One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that a lot of combats end in about 2-4 rounds. That's with power armor and everything else. It can get really really brutal. Well, saying "2-4 rounds" in Palladium is deceptive compared to other systems, since 2-4 rounds in Palladium is usually about 3-6 exchanges per character due to the way multiple attacks work (effectively a form of what we'd call "phases" in really old games), so 2-4 Melee Rounds = 6-26 rounds in other systems. A lot of it depends on the party you're fielding, of course. A party with two glitter boys, a ley line walker, a hydra hatchling, and a burster will be doing exponentially higher damage than a party with a Coalition grunt, a rogue scholar, a crazy, a cyber-doc, and a techno-wizard. One of the things to understand is that Siembieda was used to having a party of players over a dozen wide as I understand it, so a lot of the damage capability of robots and monsters is rated up to cope with that, but most gaming groups are much smaller - so you end up with creatures like gargoyles or vampires that A) attack in hordes and B) can take enormous beatings. And that's not even getting into the big villains of the game, who routinely have well over 5,000 M.D.C. and rapid regeneration... Of course, if you're playing with the old burst rules, you can just have any old Coalition grunt dump their entire e-clip every round for ridiculous damage (just don't miss...). It's expensive as hell, but it works.
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May 22, 2013 13:26
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Alien Rope Burn posted:A lot of it depends on the party you're fielding, of course. A party with two glitter boys, a ley line walker, a hydra hatchling, and a burster will be doing exponentially higher damage than a party with a Coalition grunt, a rogue scholar, a crazy, a cyber-doc, and a techno-wizard.
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May 22, 2013 15:15
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I'm always so torn on Rifts. On one hand I'm deeply attracted to the  of the setting, but on the other hand the descriptions of the rules really make me shudder. I've had the main rulebook for years but have never played a game and it was usually the 'heh, why don't we play Rifts' joke option.
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May 22, 2013 15:35
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MadScientistWorking posted:Honestly, the techno wizard typically has been the most powerful member of our group and that is actually counting a glitter boy. Magic in Rifts apparently has the tendency to bypass the word save in save vs suck and in some regards actually has the ability to take down some really nasty creatures. It gets even worst when they technically have the ability to bypass the only limitation that magic has. Yeah, there are some spells like carpet of adhesion or blind that are just farcical. What I meant is that in terms of dealing sheer Damage Per Round, a lot of TW gadgets ain't all that, from what I can recall. Maybe they fixed that in Coalition Wars or the like. But they do have head-mounted sprinklers, so there's that. CNN Sports Ticker posted:I'm always so torn on Rifts. I sometimes feel like this is a twelve-step group for people abused by percentile rolls. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 17:58 on May 23, 2013 |
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May 23, 2013 17:55
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Personal favorite Heroes Unlimited game experience- I gave my friends about half an hour to construct characters using a few copies of the book, total random rolls, and my personal one free reroll rule (mostly to get out of having to play Palladium's ancient old mutant animals). The only other instruction was "patriotic American heroes" for a one-shot game. They ended up with: Religious Right - Mutant with Mega-Wings, Godlike Aura, Energy Projection: Electricity. He was a southern baptist preacher turned angelic superhero that strove to uphold the all-american ideals of the bible. Team leader. Dressed like a southern preacher with a vest and slacks, had a short conservative haircut, and always carried a bible in one hand. His electrical expulsions were bolts of lightning from his eyes. Stealth Bombshell - Magic Weapon: Sword. Her sword gave her Supersonic Flight and Bend Light. A former Air Force officer who discovered that she could magically transform any sword held by a statue of Blind Justice into a magic blade that left glowing stars and stripes in the air as it passed. Looked like if Jennifer Connelly had played The Rocketeer instead of just being rescued by him. Rolling Blackout - Experiment with Darkness Control, Extraordinary Physical Prowess, Energy Expulsion: Electrical Field. A secret experiment by California power industry officials, Rolling Blackout could cause shutdowns in power grids but had gone rogue. Hairless, with albino skin, always wore sunglasses and a giant boater hat to keep out the sun, carried a variety of ceramic weaponry because he had a mild allergy to metal touching his skin. Hawaiian Punch - Karate Master. Owner of the oldest dojo in the Hawaiian Islands, survivor of Pearl Harbor, and 96 years young. Basically the standard cackling old martial arts master in a Hawaiian shirt. Think Master Roshi and you're already there. They were all members of a secret governmental superpowered security agency, known colloquially as The Moral Minority. Led by the reanimated zombie body of General Douglas MacArthur (brought back in death by an ancient Hukbalahap ritual and an errant bolt of lightning, he has returned), they fought against the evil influence of communists, foreigners, and the excessively liberal. For the one-shot they had to defeat a secret plot by the Prime Minister of Canada (who had redubbed himself "Minister PRIME") to activate his army of superpowered sleeper agents (all Canadian celebrities) and take over the USA. So they fought Shatner with slow-motion control, Trebek with a prehensile moustache, Dion with sonic screams, etc. It was the best game ever, despite a relatively weak system. I have been meaning to run a Moral Minority game again for years and years, and will get to it soon.
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May 24, 2013 22:24
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:I'm always so torn on Rifts. On one hand I'm deeply attracted to the Tenra Bansho Zero does a drat good job of delivering on Rifts' kind of gonzo without the cumbersome and "go balance the party your loving self" parts of the rules. You can trivially play a psychic ogre ninja, cyborg wizard, or mecha pilot carved from a tree. Hell, wormspeakers from Wormwood are just straight-up in there. Been enjoying the hell out of it every time I've played.
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May 26, 2013 01:00
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So I started (posting, it's written) an F&F writeup of Rifts: England since it's the next in the unreviewed series. Honestly I could keep going on those for a good while, probably longer than anybody else was remotely interested, but England was part of the initial line (ending with Africa) that involved the game's first grasps at a metaplot...and druids. And herbs. And a lot of talk about how pastoral and beautiful England is with its thousand-foot Millennium Trees. I didn't hate the book as a teenager, but I wasn't really impressed with it either. I hate it as an adult. It took forever to get through. It is not without a few gems (Temporal Wizardry) but they are often (Temporal Wizardry) completely unconnected to the book's Celtophile-Nausicaa theme. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3541453&pagenumber=37#post415913784
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May 29, 2013 00:54
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I loved how temporal wizards started at a die-roll level, like level D4+1, because of time manipulation. That was the biggest fuckoff to game balance there has ever been. It's like the Grand Canyon of fuckoffs, it's just beautiful.
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May 29, 2013 01:15
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theironjef posted:I loved how temporal wizards started at a die-roll level, like level D4+1, because of time manipulation. That was the biggest fuckoff to game balance there has ever been. It's like the Grand Canyon of fuckoffs, it's just beautiful. That isn't how it's written in my copy but their optional level mechanic is still super-bizarre; if they study longer they have to start at an eviler alignment and start rolling for random insanities and be either 3rd or 5th level along with more spells and bonii. If you're referring to the Raider--they're supposed to be NPCs though the text goes out of its way to be like 'well if you really want the decision is ultimately up to the GM but you shouldn't' sort of waffling. It makes me wonder what happened around an official Palladium table to get that in there. I think the higher-level wizard and warrior options were meant for speed-generating assistants to a Raider but then they don't have prebuilt Raider statblocks at higher levels, who the hell knows.
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May 29, 2013 01:29
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occamsnailfile posted:That isn't how it's written in my copy but their optional level mechanic is still super-bizarre; if they study longer they have to start at an eviler alignment and start rolling for random insanities and be either 3rd or 5th level along with more spells and bonii. If you're referring to the Raider--they're supposed to be NPCs though the text goes out of its way to be like 'well if you really want the decision is ultimately up to the GM but you shouldn't' sort of waffling. It makes me wonder what happened around an official Palladium table to get that in there. I think the higher-level wizard and warrior options were meant for speed-generating assistants to a Raider but then they don't have prebuilt Raider statblocks at higher levels, who the hell knows. Oh man is that what that was about? That's hilarious, like knowing that the Temporal Raider had between 5-30 more HP and was 24% better at Basic Math would have made for a more compelling enemy. I love Palladium so much.
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May 29, 2013 01:32
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occamsnailfile posted:It makes me wonder what happened around an official Palladium table to get that in there. I think the higher-level wizard and warrior options were meant for speed-generating assistants to a Raider but then they don't have prebuilt Raider statblocks at higher levels, who the hell knows. Well evidently Kevin Siembeda hasn't roleplayed since like at least 2003, so God only knows.
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May 29, 2013 01:57
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occamsnailfile posted:That isn't how it's written in my copy but their optional level mechanic is still super-bizarre; if they study longer they have to start at an eviler alignment and start rolling for random insanities and be either 3rd or 5th level along with more spells and bonii. If you're referring to the Raider--they're supposed to be NPCs though the text goes out of its way to be like 'well if you really want the decision is ultimately up to the GM but you shouldn't' sort of waffling. It makes me wonder what happened around an official Palladium table to get that in there. Yeah, it's not really clear. I get the impression that it's supposed to be some sort of Faustian bargain for PCs, where if you agree to serve a Temporal Raider for X years, later on you get a boost in magic and levels? It's really really not clear, though. As for the waffling, that strikes me as pure Siembieda. (It's similar to the "not recommended as a PC" blurb you see on some races beforehand, rather than just flatly saying "not a PC" more clearly.) Dr. Tough posted:Well evidently Kevin Siembeda hasn't roleplayed since like at least 2003, so God only knows. I don't think that's the case at all necessarily. Between Coffin and what Siembieda have said, I get the impression more that Kevin hasn't played in a regular campaign for quite some time, rather than not having played at all. CroatianAlzheimer's might know more, though.
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May 29, 2013 02:10
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, it's not really clear. I get the impression that it's supposed to be some sort of Faustian bargain for PCs, where if you agree to serve a Temporal Raider for X years, later on you get a boost in magic and levels? It's really really not clear, though. As for the waffling, that strikes me as pure Siembieda. (It's similar to the "not recommended as a PC" blurb you see on some races beforehand, rather than just flatly saying "not a PC" more clearly.) There's definitely that Faustian element, though leveling up never mattered a lot to a lot of Rifts classes. Woo, +5% in Radio: Basic, or whatever. I guess some of the mage classes got new spells but for a lot of classes it didn't make a lot of difference.
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May 29, 2013 03:23
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Jun 5, 2013 00:42
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50 Foot Ant posted:Pure AWESOMENESS! We must have more! I love Palladium as much as any other person with battered-GM syndrome does. but you've opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking. I had one of my home-built cities is based in Idaho using a magi-tech mix for agriculture and transportation. I miss this game... my old Hellfire Inc. Mercenary group's base used a lot of sessions of design to build properly, didnt help when we had engineers and military buffs basically describing how to properly fortify and set up. Thank you for the new way of looking at it! With cybernetics and bionics, I always figured they would be modular and easily detatchable and adjusted by a cyber-doc/mechanic/someone with telemechanice and psychic surgery. Talen_Soti fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Jun 5, 2013 |
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Jun 5, 2013 00:58
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That is a pretty good go at unifying some of the basic setting problems. A lot of actual listed costs of goods and services would have to revise (3K to charge an eclip, c'mon) but that's simpler in some ways. At the least, making nations feel more like existing entities rather than dots on a map.
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Jun 6, 2013 02:13
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So, we've taken a look at how the CS would have to be set up in order for it to be a functional nation. Now, this won't cover Tolkeen, Lazlo, New Lazlo, because obviously they make extensive use of magic. But, just like high technology, magic can NOT be a 'cure all' for everything, although it will have different types of benefits and penalties, just like technology does. The biggest benefit magic can give is reactionless engines that run off a constantly renewing energy source (PPE) from the ley-lines. But, back to the CS. It's time to take a good look at something the books don't really look at, and we deconstruct one of KS's basic flawed assumptions. First of all, we need to take a look at some basic things. The population either lives in fortified mega-cities, fortified cities, fortified towns, or fortified enclaves. NO CS community can afford to be un-fortified. Teleportation, magic, giant robots, juicers, all of it makes a settlement vulnerable to terrorist actions. This means that the citizens of the CS are used to having given up certain liberties for actual security in addition to perceived security. Now, some might argue they deserve neither, but these aren't the guys who make decisions, they are just trying to live in a harsh and brutal world. Second is that they live under a constant media propaganda blitz. There are no videos of peaceful DB farmers, those farmers are shown slaughtered and the whole "Even their own kind isn't safe from them!" or there are DB villages, protected by the CS, that are little more than forced labor but protected and paraded around as "Good DB's" when they are enslaved, but the average CS citizen isn't going to see that side or even understand it. Even if they were to see it, the cognitive dissonance would give them a way to explain it away. There are constant Star Chamber show trials of insurgents and terrorists and traitors, all of them DB's, mages, or psionic using people. There will be the highly broadcasted 'trial' where the criminal was found under mind control and pardoned, that way it increases the chances of people turning in loved ones who start acting strange since 'everyone knows' that justice will be done and the truth will be found. Above all of this is the Emperor as the Father Figure, wise, benevolent to the citizenry, and an avenging angel against the enemies of the CS. KS has stated again and again that the Prosek's are master manipulators, and this would show through in their propaganda. We need to address the whole "Loves Adolph Hitler" aspect that Sembedia harps on. It's an attempt to cash in on emotional rather than intellectual knee jerk reactions by the reader to paint them as solely evil, without looking at why they might be idolizing and following in his footsteps. Germany was bankrupt, in massive debt, with national identity problems, and it was turned into a powerhouse despite being surrounded by powerful enemies. I also imagine that the Proseks and their advisors also pay attention to post World War I and World War II America for the rebuilding. Speeches, indoctrination, 'otherizing' outsiders, showing that the people of the CS HAVE enemies that will brutally kill them or even worse, all help to solidify control. Erin Tarn babbles on, but shows a frighteningly ignorance about reality for a 'scholar' in her writings. She doesn't understand how the people of the CS could live under such things, all the while surrounding herself with powerful and skilled people with the combined firepower of a mid-20th Century armor division. To the average CS citizen, all that stands between brutal death and safety are four things:
Which isn't much. They know that DB's and the Rifts destroyed civilization before. The Tri-HD shows plenty of destroyed settlements every year. Hundreds of troops come home in body bags every year, or are just a coffin full of dirt. Everyone in the CS knows someone who has lost someone and all they have is a lovely plaque with the name and rank and some platitudes about how they died. They live in an scientific and technologically advanced society. Which means they are not ignorant and illiterate because those people could kill themselves and others really easily. KS cites computer programs that 'read' for people, but that's even worse. How do we teach a child to read? By reading to them. People would pick up how to read just like that. Even the vaunted 'iconoliteracy' that's been bandied around wouldn't work that well. The CS infrastructure produces and utilizes advancements that we can foresee but cannot manufacture yet, and look at the high state of literacy required now. Sure, you can argue that the CS is a post-scarcity society, but this is far from the truth. Robots can't do all the work, and people would be mistrustful of full automation due to software corruption and the energy of the ley-lines. This means they need computer programmers, robotics designers, engineers, architects, teachers, the whole nine yards. In order for the CS to make sense as a high tech society, THEY MUST BE LITERATE. The citizenry is also taxed, probably heavily, in return for their protection. Unlike modern military expenditure the CS military is engaged in combat with invaders every single day somewhere. While they pick fights quite a bit, they can still expect an ambush at any moment. Forward operating bases and even logistics bases in the rear come under attack quite often. Body armor would be mandatory outside of buildings at any CS military base due to the chance of some rear end in a top hat using a mortar to lob in shells. The CS citizenry do not live lives of liesure, even though they are comfortable compared to the majority of people outside of CS, Lazlo, New Lazlo, and Tolkeen. The CS manufactures of imports luxury items like cars, jewelry, games, Tri-HD, MP3 players, the whole nine yards, which increases tax revenue. Your average CS citizen is NOT an evil person, they see themselves as under siege by invaders who already destroyed human civilization once, and would gladly do it again. The citizenry MUST be educated, unless they do nothing but live on welfare and sit around in their apartments all day playing VR games. Otherwise they'd kill each other, themselves, and lots of people by doing stupid poo poo that the slightest bit of education and literacy would prevent. Remember, many of them live in huge arcologies, and it would be simple for some idiot to open an emergency venting point and fill a corridor full of radioactive high pressure fluorine gas. With that, let us move to the government. Here's where most people just say "The Emperor is in charge and everyone just does as he says." This is a fallacy, and must be corrected. If the Proseks idolize Hitler, one thing Hitler did was surround himself with people who were much better than he was (even if the results were horrific) and the Proseks would take this to heart. So, we'll need to create a functioning government. The best thing they'd probably pattern themselves after is the somewhat militaristic and imperialistic US government. So to American players, the various government entities would be familiar. We'd have:
Prosek may have wanted to make them illiterate, but he'd have been quickly talked out of that. Simply by giving a bunch of illiterate poorly educated burbites a nice place to live and then show the Emperor how they all killed themselves by eating the chiclet package in the box of the Tri-HD. But what Erin Tarn might not understand is that they aren't illiterate, but rather their lexicon is limited by their education, the amount of material they've read that hasn't been censored or rewritten could fit in the trunk of a car. That and why read when you can watch Tri-HD? But let's keep looking at the government. Now, each 'city-state' (the best phrase for the CS mega-cities and the smaller ones) has it's own versions of the offices listed above. The Emperor would select each city-state leader himself (probably with the 'confirmation' rubber stamp from the Department of the Interior section) to ensure that the city-state falls in line with official policy. The difficult one would be Free Quebec, since they have their own serious national identity that stretches back as far as Chi-Town, there's French (which makes it harder for the Chi-Town censors to work over), and Free Quebec was also center of military forces and civilian refugees during the Great Cataclysm. Each City-State has its own manufacturing, it's own military recruitment, and the ability to rearm the military in their region. One of the things DH&S does is ensure that the people of each City-State don't develop nationalism for their city-state, but rather for the CS as a whole. They often encourage citizens who have just hit their majority (let's say age of voting, drinking, joining the military are all 21, since the CS is canonically using longetivity drugs for the populace) to move to another City State for job opportunities. We also need to make "Civil Service" a mandatory 3 year gig that starts at 18. Civil Service is not just joining the military, but also being transfered to another City-State, farm, manufacturing plant, all according to testing done during their years of education. If someone is lovely at reading and show no interest in it, they aren't encouraged in it, and just have to have basic iconolitarcy and have to learn basic language. Trade schools and 'apprenticeships' are very common, and probably consist of a whopping 60% of CS citizen's later education. This three year gig also will have the citizen rated on "political dependability" which often supersedes actual skill or ability for administration and leadership jobs. Additionally every type of large job pool has "Health & Hygiene Officers" who work for DH&S that the workers view as keeping them safe from psionic and magical assaults on their minds. Yes, they gauge political reliability, but that's only right, since only a mad-man or someone warped by magic or psionics would harbor hatred toward the CS! These people supervise the factory floor, offer verbal encouragement, help out with problems a citizen might be having. The H&HO's are actually a quite clever plan. Taking the place of priests, confessors, and mentors, the H&HO aren't hated, but rathered looked at as fatherly figures. These guys are directly connected to the Emperor, and speak with his voice. They care about the citizens, even the ones who work in the sewage reclaimation center. If a spouse is abusive, you've lost your job, you can't make rent, your land-lord or block supervisor isn't fixing utilities, your car broke down, you need medical care that you don't qualify for, this guy will intercede, in the name of the Emperor (of course) and get things done for you. Of course some of those emergencies that you have to see him for are manufactured by him or his office, but hey, you don't see that. You just see that your kid got cancer from Tasty-Fruit and he got you medical care and reported Tasty-Fruit and they got fined and you got part of the fine. (Tasty-Fruit agreed to this as part of the 'citizen loyalty program' since the economy is controlled by the Department of the Interior) The citizenry of the CS are well fed, have UHC, and plenty of entertainment. There's plenty of work to keep them busy, happy, and productive (The motto of the Department of Labor withing the Department of the Interior is ironically 'Work Will Set You Free' which the people eat the gently caress up) members of society. They've been under propaganda their entire lives, their view of the outside world is warped by PR and propaganda where they know that outside is a short and brutal life full of pain, fear, and danger. Let's bring up some stats. Median age: total: 42.7 years male: 39.6 years female: 45.9 years Population growth rate: 2.4% (Compared to 5.4% in 60 PA and 3.8% in 40 PA, and estimated 1.3% prior to 20PA, as well as 6.3% during the Dark Ages) Birth rate: 21.33 births/1,000 population Death rate: 14.11 deaths/1,000 population Net migration rate: 5.72 migrant(s)/1,000 population Urbanization: Urban population: 73% of total population Rate of urbanization: 0.6% annual rate of change Sex ratio: at birth: 1.12 male(s)/female 0-14 years: 1.11 male(s)/female 15-24 years: 1.09 male(s)/female 25-54 years: 1 male(s)/female 55-64 years: 0.83 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.82 male(s)/female total population: 0.96 male(s)/female Maternal mortality rate: 7 deaths/100,000 live births Infant mortality rate: total: 2.9 deaths/1,000 live births male: 3.21 deaths/1,000 live births female: 1.69 deaths/1,000 live births Life expectancy at birth: total population: 165.13 years male: 159.62 years female: 171.38 years Total fertility rate: 6.2 children born/woman Health expenditures: 21.4% of GDP Physicians density: 11.91 physicians/1,000 population Hospital bed density: 7 beds/1,000 population Drinking water source: improved: urban: 100% of population rural: 99% of population total: 99% of population unimproved: urban: 0% of population rural: 1% of population total: 0.1% of population Sanitation facility access: improved: urban: 100% of population rural: 99% of population total: 100% of population unimproved: urban: 0% of population rural: 1% of population total: 0% of population Genetic Mutation - adult prevalence rate: 2.4% Unrepaired Mutation - people living with Genetic Mutation 240,000 Education expenditures - Including Censoring: 8.5% of GDP Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 79% male: 73% female: 85% School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education): total: 16 years male: 15 years female: 17 years As you can see, the CS is hell on wheels, but that comes at a great cost, which we'll cover in the 'Burbs rebuild. The Citizens of the CS are honestly terrified of DB's and mages. Seeing one will cause hysteric panic or aggressive responses, since a high percentage of the population has military experience and has come under fire at least once in their career. (Making sure that a low threat area with bandits that are waaaay outmatched by the CS military ensures that everyone gets a few weeks of combat under their belt to ensure human supremist attitudes) Mutants are another matter, and directly related to the Burbs. Most of the mutations can be cured via retro-viral genetic engineering, but the controllable mutations are often left in place and the user trained in their use. The CS wastes NOTHING. The Burbs. God, what a cluster gently caress according to RAW. Millions of people waiting for employment or entrance to the CS? Horse loving poo poo. That's a security nightmare. We're talking riots, police attacks, and all kinds of nasty poo poo. So, we'll have to redesign the Burbs. Now, it looks like we're making a kindler, gentler CS, but oh no no no. They will come out far far more ruthless than before. It's just that there will be a framework for the zealotry, and maybe a way for the PC's to understand that they aren't fighting SPACE NAZI'S but rather a civilization that has clawed its way up over the pile of bones that was once a human only society. Remember that line from the original Red Dawn? "WE WERE HERE FIRST!" Yeah, that's the CS against everyone else. So, we've got a functioning government, we've got an explaination on the citizenry, and why there's such a high amount of vets in CS society (estimates by DH&S puts it at roughly 42% of the population has military experience) and what people do with their time. Any questions before we move onto the 'Burbs and then finally the military of the CS? I realize this was kind of rambling, but trying to apply real world sociology to a fictional universe is difficult. Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jun 21, 2013 |
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Jun 6, 2013 04:45
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How many people do you think the CS has in total? Also I liked the write up!
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Jun 6, 2013 12:50
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The Arcologies and Burbs The "elite" of the CS live in the arcologies and the surrounded "Protected Districts" behind a high MDC wall with point defenses, air defenses, and anti-magic defenses. These arcologies are designed based on Pre-Rifts designs to handle urban over-crowding in the metropolises. Additionally the CS had the data from NASA and 'Project Starscream' for self-sustained cities to be built on Mars as part of the Terraforming Project (Green Mars Project, see Mutants in Orbit, which we're mostly ignoring) and the early CS leaders (Many of them descended from the military leadership of the surviving military forces of NEMA and the US & Canadian military) decided that a self-contained arcology might be exactly what would be needed to survive the Great Cataclysm. Chi-Town was built along these lines (although it took a long time to be finished, and there are theories that the arcology was actually designed Pre-Cataclysm as an experiment by the American Empire) to provide completely self-sufficient cities. Underground are sewage and water treatment and processing, primary power generators (Chi-Town boasts a working geo-thermal plant, unlike the unused one at Lone Star), with levels above being strategic stockpile resource storage. Above that is the manufacturing facilities, many of which are not in use any longer, or have never been in use but the CS prefers not to pull them apart. (A good example would be Level B3A2, which produces some kind of high velocity kinetic weapon system, but requires orbital manufactured parts that the CS does not possess and were used for maintenance of war machines long gone during the Dark Ages) Down here there are "Subbie Gangs" that have left the upper levels for many different reasons, from mutation, to crime, to just non-government beliefs. Every year CS investigators find another section that had previously been overlooked or even misidentified. The "deep levels" give rise to the rumors that the arcology was there before the CS and the NEMA survivors moved into it as there are strange equipment that nobody is quite sure what it is for. The arcology has 'between floors' where the environmental systems are. Once again there are gangs of mutants, rogue dog-boys, and criminals who hide out in the parts of these maintenance levels that are unused and abandoned. Many of the levels seem to be for advanced environmental scrubbing. (If the rumors are true, feel free to have a lot of these systems clogged by volcanic ash) The arcology is not a solid building, but rather there are hollow sections, mainly artificial parks and vast hydroponic gardens. The Chi-Town arcology is massive, literally square miles inside. There are four main "shafts" inside that are from the base floors to the very top, which can be protected by retracting 'blast shielding' although they are only tested once every few years. Surrounding these primary shafts are malls and stores on the lower levels and at places on the way up. The arcology is literally 340 stories, with the half-stories in between it is 510 stories totaol, 5,130 feet tall. The upper levels of the shaft areas are high end housing and high end stores, for the rich and elite. Contrary to popular belief, the Proseks actually live on 265, with one of the smaller secondary shafts that uses clear polyceramic shielding that is always closed with a thicker armor shield. The outside is heavily armed with point defense systems, anti-air systems, SAMAS and Sky Cycle bases. The majority of the outer layer is military controlled, much to the irritation of the rich and elite who would like to have those outside sections and are jealous of the high ranking officers who have housing there. What they don't realize is there is sporadic terrorist attacks by teleporting attackers who often fire off magic or a man-portable missile barrage. While most of the time the shields snap into place, the point defense can often handle the missiles, but now and then attacks get through. The arcologies have a thin disenfranchised class, a small lower class, a large and healthy middle class, and an upper class. Upward mobility is supposedly merit based, but in reality cronyism and patronage make a big deal. The lower class is mostly people who have just managed to get citizenship to one of the arcologies, and are the most watched by arcology security. This is known in advance and signed for in advance. The middle class encompasses everything from factory workers to management, with taxes as high as 33%. The upper class handles upper management, higher up government positions, and company owners. Interestingly enough the higher class pays up to 80% income tax. Above that are the truly elite, which has a tax bracket of 90%, and are either current or former CEO's of massive CS companies, high level government officials, and 'Heroes of the Empire". While obvious security is pretty much even between the classes, the hidden security is more intense the more important the family is. Outside the arcologies are the rest of the city. These are massive buildings built of MDC construction materials, some as high as 250 stories high, that are everything from corporation offices to housing. These city sections stretch out for several miles around the arcologies and have internal walls built to handle security and other problems. (In 27 PA a plague broke out, supposedly released by Federation of Magic agents, but possibly a DB disease that got into the population. At that time the walls were used to seal off infected sections, and it was proven that those internal walls had air defense and other defenses) Air traffic is strictly controlled by computer assisted air traffic control. Quality of life is high within these city sections, and while crime is low, it is not entirely absent. (Estimations put it at 1 per 10,000, while official stats put it at 1.7 per 10,000) Beyond that and the greater city walls are "the Burbs", which is the growth of the mega-cities in flux. While there is crime, much of it is in either the sections suffering urban decay or the outer sections. The closer to the wall, the higher the standard of living, the better the police protection and law enforcement reaction times, and the higher the citizens identify with the CS. These sections are often slated to become the next section of the city, and the politicians living there are always trying to get the CS to grant them official recognition as part of the megacity. While the more crime ridden sections of the 'Burbs may have DB's and mutants, these DB's and mutants are more likely to be registered with the CS. Mutants often hope to be granted retroviral gene therapy to cure their mutation and acceptance into the CS. The DB races often claim to be mutants and are close enough to Earth Human to pass on a gene scan. There are widely publicized DB 'enclaves' where 'good DB's' are allowed to live, and often tell horror stories of outside and the monsters that haunt the non-CS areas. Outside that is CS controlled territory. Many people think it is largely wilderness with sporadic patrols, but in reality it is largely settled with farms, manufacturing, military bases, towns, small cities, controlled zones, and other regions necessary for a large nation. Unlike the US there are constant patrols in CS territory, from robot combat armor patrols, SAMAS and Sky Cycle patrols, vehicle patrols, and ground patrols. Interlocked phased radar arrays watch the skies, leylines are patrolled heavily with backup only minutes away, the ley-line nexuses are heavily fortified with a high military presence experienced in fighting invaders from the Rifts and magic users. Ley-lines and nexuses extensively use mass detection systems and motion detectors as well as vibration sensors (programmed to record but not display patrols) in order to find invisible enemies. In the contested areas the patrols are heavy, but those areas (Southern Texas and other regions) do not enjoy the advantage of the security infrastructure that the more settled areas do. This makes raider attacks harder to detect in advance, and drone flights more likely to be shot down. In Southern and Central Texas drones are routinely shot down to the point where it's rare for a commander to send out a reaction force to check the area the drone was shot down in. Even high altitude ones can be vulnerable to a bored robot jock or aerial enemy force. The shanty towns around the "Burbs are more like what Sembedia described the 'Burbs as in the Core Rule Book, temporary settlements that are often bulldozed down or everyone is flushed out of. Many times these 'cluster towns' are built on the remains of Pre-Rifts towns, some of which still have working infrastructure that just needs maintenance. Some of these Cluster Towns are decades old, are known black market areas, but are allowed to exist due to the fact they fill some kind of demand within the CS. At the very least they work as areas to concentrate troublemakers so they aren't spread out through the larger population. While in the suburbs the police maintain a strong presence, they often treat the citizenry with kid gloves, since the CS troops may run into CS citizens who prefer to live and work in the suburbs. The Cluster Towns and the more crime ridden Fringe Areas (which are more like the Core Rulebook burbs) the police presence is the same, just with quick reaction forces often deployed all over the city. Summary execution and the more harsh penalties are in force in those areas, as well as officer discretion toward applicable force being more lenient. Interestingly enough the more zealot of the CS citizens often come out of the burbs areas. These are people who are proving their loyalty, are in the military to earn citizenship, and who whole heartedly believe in the CS way of life. Even the odd DB from the "Enclaves" who joins the military is often a bigger zealot than their human comrades. This has led to few DB's earning citizenry within the arcologies, and more than a few Heroes of the Empire that are DB's or former mutants. There are very few mutants within the CS, mainly because of gene therapy treatments. (CS territory mutants need to only make 1 roll on the Gamma World mutation charts. The most they might have is 1d4-1 mutations (minimum of 1) and any disadvantage mutation is rerolled with the best of the rolls taken. One interesting thing about CS territory is the "Coalition States Geological Survey Service" has been making very careful scans of CS territory. They have found, since 73 PA, six areas that were marked as hazardous areas due to 'Pre-Rifts reactor meltdowns" and are cordoned off by the military. In reality these are the same kind of facilities as Lone Star, just usually in much worse shape. However these sites have been a gold mine, data, equipment, and refurbishing the two that were recoverable has provided excellent high security military R&D facilities to do research that the Lone Star facility is either not configured to do or has set to the side. "Site Baker" is a dog boy creche area, complete with the force-growth lab, that has minimal human interaction and mostly just over-sight. It's also where a lot of dog-boys retire to, and it's seen by dog-boys as the equivalent of living in the upper levels of Chi-Town. Another amazing find by the CS was a "genome vault" that contained uncontaminated seedling, embryos, and the like from before the Great Cataclysm, including the 'enhanced wheat' strains used by the CS. Highways connect towns, cities, and the like, and are patrolled by the CS military. and there's quite a bit of traffic. From robotic convoys of massive cargo trucks controlled by dog-brain AI systems and guarded by SAMS to small family sized ground-cars heading to a vacation area or to another city for a visit. Sensor systems and survelliance on these highways is high, as the CS high command understands that those highways are a weakness, a target for terrorists, and a potential invasion route. The population of the CS understands that compared to the rest of Rifts America they are indeed wealthy, secure, and prosperous. The society is jingoistic and military worshiping, with career military soldiers being held in high esteem. While in Free Quebec they hold in higher esteem Glitter Boy Pilots, who are usually following family tradition and have a long family military linage which can be traced into the Dark Ages and the Great Cataclysm. However they are just as jingoistic and myrmidon as the rest of the CS. CS Iron Heart has been fully brought into the fold, and often the citizens of Iron Heart are more fanatical and zealotry filled than members of Chi-Town. Lone Star is NOT a standard city, as it is 96% military or former military, covered in heavy security, with NO 'enclaves', fringe areas, or DB's allowed. The Lone Star territory, however, has a higher number of DB's and mutants than the rest of the CS. The CS Census, completed in 95 PA, was 32.9 million. Chi-Town: 3.3 million CS State of Illinios: 7.8 million CS Missiouri: 6.6 million CS New Chillicothe: 1,980,000 CS Texas: 2.5 million CS Lone Star: 125,000 (50,000 human) CS Iron Heart: 3.9 million CS Iron City: 480,000 CS Free Quebec: 4.3 million CS Free Quebec (City) 2.1 million That's counting only citizens and registered squatters/indigent personnel. The census put an estimation of another 9.4 million non-citizens. Among citizens unemployment is a startlingly low 0.6% (not counting retirees and disabled veterans), and even the non-citizen unemployment rate is amazingly low despite what other nations believe, only 1.34% among even the DB's. One of the reasons that the CS has a high immigration rate is because the Department of the Interior has estimated that there at 1.76 jobs per person. The pressures of maintaining such a large military is actually hurting the GDP of the CS, as the propaganda of the last 30 years has caused a 'brain drain' from the civilian sector, and the military industrial complex has risen to consume 60% of R&D, manufacturing, and military support, pulling away a vast percentage of the CS's potential into the military. CS Citizens have several 'quality of life' enhancements that non-CS citizens either do not have or do not even dream is possible. Gene therapy is possible in the womb, and genetic testing has enabled the CS to make sure that the chance of birth defects is so small that it can be mathematically said to not exist. (Birth defect/mutation rate is 1.25 per 10,000 live births) Additionally they have a small cybernetic device implanted during childhood that boosts the immune system, can clean parasites, bacteria, and viruses from the host. Those who suffer birth defects or injury get cybernetics or bioware to correct the problem, as part of the Universal Health Care system. Longevity treatments (including gene therapy) have slowed aging, with the most recent generation having a adolescent phase that lasts from 12 to 19, with full adulthood onsetting at 21. (A 21 year old CS citizen looks about 18, and then ages much slower than non-CS citizens) CS Tri-HD service has over 240 channels, showing everything from (sanitized) Pre-Cataclysm movies and television shows to documentaries to propaganda to 'educational' shows to live broadcasts of CS Senate proceedings. Average median wage is roughly 1,500 credits a month, with minimum wage being a solid 1,000 credits per month, adjusted for Area Cost of Living Adjustment Rates. Cost of Lifestyle Disenfranchised: 0-100 Low: 100-400 Middle Class: 400-800 Upper Class: 800-5,000 Elite: 5,000+ This is the cost to maintain such a lifestyle, including rent in an appropriate area, food, entertainment, clothing, recreation, electronics, and the like. As base pay for a CS grunt starts at 1,700 credits a month before bonuses, increase in pay due to time in service or specialization, this puts the CS grunt comfortably in the lower middle class range and slightly above average median wage. Estimates put Defense Spending for the CS at roughly 54% Of the GDP, although shadow budgets and black budgets may increase that to as high as 61%. quote:How many people do you think the CS has in total? Also I liked the write up! That means that around FIFTY PERCENT of the population took part in that cluster gently caress. Even if the CS won the war, they'd be finished. They wouldn't be able to sustain the war effort, and afterwards the strain on the population would lead to a collapse. Just look at the strain that WW-II put on England, Germany, the US, and imagine if they'd sent HALF of their population into the meat grinder. No matter what levels of automation the CS had they'd suffer widespread famine, collapse of social services, industry and infrastructure decay, and a host of other problems. So I made extrapolations on population based on typical formula and came out with 22.9 million total. For reference, the population of Europe during the High Middle Ages was roughly 120 million. Any questions or requests for further information before we move into the CS military industrial complex and the propaganda in the CS that's taken what should be a major shining star in North America and turned it into a genocidal monster? Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Jun 21, 2013 |
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Jun 6, 2013 14:07
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50 Foot Ant posted:
Since they've finally put Chi-town as on top of Colfax, IL, how big of an area do you think that the city and all its suburbs would take up? I ask because I want to set up a test cmapaign to get back into gaming and I want to see if my hometown would be swallowed up or be a burb. http://goo.gl/maps/7DNg2 There would be a nice Cache of Weaponry, tech, and gear at the Rock Island Arsenal. http://goo.gl/maps/rQTrR It is a small island, where the river level is about 10 feet deep. However, flooding(flood stage is 15 feet and the river due to the cataclysm would go up by 30+ feet) would cover the island,since the highest building is only 4 stories high. How high, do you think, would the Mississippi river actually go up? How small could a town be and still be self sustaining?
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Jun 6, 2013 18:05
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Just in case you're not following the FATAL & Friends thread, occamnailfile's Rifts England writeup wrapped up, and my Rifts Africa writeup has started as of Friday. Links to the posts are archived here for England and here for Africa as quickly as Syrg Sapphire puts 'em on up. Enjoy! Or don't, whatever, that's cool.
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Jun 9, 2013 06:12
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Just in case you're not following the FATAL & Friends thread, occamnailfile's Rifts England writeup wrapped up, and my Rifts Africa writeup has started as of Friday. Links to the posts are archived here for England and here for Africa as quickly as Syrg Sapphire puts 'em on up. Man, when Rifts Africa came out, I thought it was sooo coool because I was far more easily impressed back then - kewl monsters, new RCCs, necromancy and the Four Horsemen! OMG SO AWESOME. Loving the current FATAL and Friends writeup of it though.
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Jun 9, 2013 19:45
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Just in case you're not following the FATAL & Friends thread, occamnailfile's Rifts England writeup wrapped up, and my Rifts Africa writeup has started as of Friday. Links to the posts are archived here for England and here for Africa as quickly as Syrg Sapphire puts 'em on up. England and Africa are two books that need heavy rewrite no matter how you cut it. I know the one time I saw it ran out of the books it was a terrible cluster-gently caress of non-enjoyment that we powered through to get back to the regular campaign. Anyway, time for my writeup. And thanks for doing those, ARB.
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Jun 10, 2013 21:25
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Talen_Soti posted:Since they've finally put Chi-town as on top of Colfax, IL, how big of an area do you think that the city and all its suburbs would take up? I ask because I want to set up a test cmapaign to get back into gaming and I want to see if my hometown would be swallowed up or be a burb. http://goo.gl/maps/7DNg2 I always did this oddly shaped circular area, roughly 12 miles across, but I had Colfax as a agro-station built on the ruines that used the existing infrastructure that survived the apocalypse reworked to support the agro-station. Rock Island I believe is in the CS Navy gook (Mine is lent out or I'd check), but why don't we get to that in the CS Military section. Now, there is something we need to address right off the bat. Racial Breakdown of the Coalition States Scientists have estimated that by 2200 the races will be so intermixed there won't really be any race any more, not like we think of it. So, that's pretty much how it comes out. There are some people lighter skinned than others, some darker, some with heavier Asian features, some with less. Most people look more Hispanic than anything, and (like the rulebook says) with the DBees from the Rifts and the grinding warfare that the CS has been under since the Great Cataclysm, racism as we know it has all been transferred to non-humans. Sexism is something that was rampant a hundred years ago, but now is rare within the CS. Advances to the human genome have really evened out the sexes physically, right down to making it so that flatulence has no severe smell, birth control is something that can be turned off and on easily, and the menstrual cycle only occurs when a woman is trying to get pregnant. These genetic changes to the human race are primarily only in the CS territories, although they have spread in the last 50 years to non-CS areas. People in the CS are smarter, stronger, better looking than non-CS people, thanks to genetic tweaking and alterations to the human genome. A CS citizen has +4 stat points to put wherever they want in their ability (Usually in Physical Strength, Intelligence, Physical Beauty, and Physical Endurance/Physical Prowess) and +3% to their technical skills. CS citizens are innoculated and immunized against a wide variety of diseases as well as having their femoral artery attached immune system booster. Due to the long years of propaganda the CS citizen, weirdly enough, gets a +2 on their saves to resist mental domination and mind control, despite non-CS propaganda that they are all weak minded. Contrary to popular non-CS belief, they are not weak minded from all the propaganda and for following the word of the State, but actually are focused and driven people who have often seen the horrors left behind by marauding D-Bees, as well as seen the terroristic attacks on such things as agro-farms, ranch areas, factories producing furniture or cheap food, and the like. This has created a feedback effect where both sides (CS and non-CS for this discussion) do nothing but perpetuate the fanatical view of each other sides. One Kingdom kills some CS patrols, the CS occupies a couple of villages and lines 'insurgents' up against the wall and shoots them after a short field trial, the Kingdom attacks a CS forward operating base, the CS seizes a couple of factories and engages the Kingdom's patrols, and so on and so on. As soon as the first engagement occurs the Coalition States Military High Command pulls out the plans to absorb that territory and begins working on it. After all, the Kingdom has proven itself to be nothing but a haven of lawlessness and anti-human sentiment. And that leads into something that KS, and by extension, people like Erin Tarn don't understand: Planning. The CS has plans for the invasion and defense against every kingdom. Yes, the CS had plans to take over Free Quebec by force, but the government and military of Free Quebec knew about these plans, as they were just part of the massive library of military planning that the CS Military Command routinely keeps updated, practices war games revolving around, and shares with their allies. Yeah, Erin Tarn has 'uncovered' the 'secret CS plans to take over Lazlo' but remains ignorant that those plans cover everything from massive invasion by a superior force from the Rifts to handling an uprising of the Dog-Boys. With that, let's move onward... The Coalition States War Machine When people think of the CS they don't think of the multi-layered civilian population, the agricultural fields, the ranches, the expansive beef/pork/mutton/chicken cloning vats, the quick and efficient police force, the wealth and comfort of the citizenry. No, they think of this.  The Rifts book suffers from KS's viewpoint of the military sending out patrols in four or six or three man teams, never really understanding anything about an organized military. The first thing we need to remember is that the CS has the records and FM's of all the NATO militaries as well as NEMA, that means that they'll have a fusion of the best military tactics from the Golden Age and the Second Cold War. From the Rifts book we soon learn that apparently the CS doesn't do checkin during patrols, doesn't follow up on military intelligence, doesn't have quick reaction forces, or anything along those lines. So not only do we have to rewrite the military itself, but we have to rewrite their doctrine. Now, this is going to make the CS one of the tougher opponents of the CS. I've done extensive armor and weaponry writeups on the Palladium boards, and I'll reprint that data here later. But the big edge, the reason why the CS can take on supernatural opponents and win is because of the highly trained military, use of tactics, and their high tech gear. Megadamage body armor is the duty uniform of all CS troops, with dress uniforms (pictured below) worn only in secure areas and only during official work or political work. Most CS troops below the rank of Sergeant First Class or Lt Colonel don't even keep their dress uniform at their current duty station. Another thing I noticed going through the books is that it looks like the CS is officer heavy. Robot jocks, SAMS, technical officers. Once again points to Sembedia not really understanding how a military works. So right off the bat, let's figure some things out. A UAR-1 Enforcer has, by doctrine, eight people slated as crew-members. The crew is usually a medium grade NCO (E-4 to E-6) with a lower ranking soldier acting as the co-pilot/gunner. Originally the UAR-1 was designed with a communication/ECM/ECCM operator (slated as "Electronic Warfare Crewmember" in older doctrine) but most of them do not have that capacity. (I, personally, recommend that the UAR crew size be buffed up to 3 or 4, but that's up to you). Each robot has four regular crews, since CS doctrine states that six hours is the maximum "non-combat" piloting time for robots and power armor. This gives the armor a "ready crew" at any time, as well as preventing a sniper or lucky mortar round from taking a robot out of service. Additionally the UAR-1 needs at least 2 hours of maintenance a day just sitting in the bay, and 4-6 hours after combat even without armor repair. That requires one dedicated mechanic per 3 robots, but military doctrine for the CS assigns a motor pool size that roughly works out to 3.5 mechanics per 2 vehicles. Most of these are lower ranking, being supervised by upper level NCO's and lower rank officers, with Technical Officers and Warrant Officers mixed in. All work on a robot combat armor or power armor is signed off by the "section leader" in the motorpool. SAMAS armor has three or four pilots per suits, 1-2 mechanics per suit, often with same rules as the UAR-1. SAMS are flight capable, have a lot more minaturization, and more moving parts than a UAR-1 that are susceptible to metal fatigue and vibration. Because of this your average SAMAS suit only requires about an hour of maintenance day when depoted (unless put in storage mode, which is not supposed to be done while based for semi-active duty, only for storage) but a whopping 4-6 hours of maintenance after a flight patrol. (Three experienced mechanics working on a SAMAS after a flight patrol can do maintenance in an hour) Despite the desires of the Military High Command Oversight Committee, the CS military is still infantry and ground troop heavy, with approximately 1 UAR per 25 ground troops, 1 SAMS per 75 troops. The CS military (in 101 PA) is a whopping 2.5 million active service military, but this is divided across the CS Army (1.5 million), CS Navy (750,000), CS Air Force (250,000). What most outsiders don't know is the front line troops are actually only a small fraction of the forces. (Sembedia doesn't understand this. Like a lot of people he thinks that infantry pretty much is autonomous and doesn't need the support infrastructure that is so important to a modern army because he's never really done research) When it comes down to it a single infantryman in non-powered armor has EIGHT soldiers that support him. A SAMAS pilot or UAR crew have TWELVE soldiers that support them, while a Sky Cycle (usually part of the CS Air Force) has nine supporting soldiers. Most kingdoms that try to emulate the CS military have no real understanding, and just having information from CS deserters, which are rarely high ranking, highly trained, or mentally stable. Larsen, of Larsen's Brigade, is an anomoly as he is not only mentally stable, intelligent, and high trained, he's also a deserter from the CS who found himself receiving CS aid (till the Tolkeen War) in return for a non-aggression contractual agreements. Most of the time a kingdom's CS "adviser" was low ranking and deserted for reasons other than the "CS human supremacy" that they claim, but because they weren't recognized for their obvious brilliance and genius. This means that those people don't understand that just putting on the rank of a General doesn't make you a general, a general has decades of experience, years of schooling and training, and nearly holds a PhD in military theory and history. These kingdoms might be sporting armies numbering in the hundreds of soldiers, but they don't have the force multiplies that the CS so ruthlessly trades on. They don't have the constant training that the CS holds. Your average infantryman in two years faces the following rotation: Initial Training. Basic, followed by Advanced Individual Training (Or AIT) in Infantry School, for a total of 6 months. Green Zone (usually Burb patrols backing up the MP's and civilian LEOs, or guarding farms, patrolling the highways and the like) for 6 months Amber Zone (Usually near border farms, factories, farms) for six months. Red Zone (Usually border patrols, posting in border farms or ranches) for 6 months. Amber Zone (More high security areas) For Six Months. Green Zone again. This time the duty is in a secure rear area, and the CS troop sees the best postings that the CS has to offer, usually near where they grew up or ID with. During the last two postings in their 3 year tour they receive extensive psychological oversight as well as therapy if their Red Zone Tour was particularly high threat. During the Green Zone stationing they are suggested to reenlist. This posting system creates high retention numbers, which means the CS doesn't suffer through a high loss rate of trained soldiers. This also means that ALL CS troops not in their first 18 months have their Combat Action Award and experience in combat operations as well as combat drawdowns. All soldiers, from officers to technical specialists to artillery soldiers, undergo the same posting rotation. This also helps weed out those who don't have it in them to be long term career soldiers. With the life extension medical technology available to the CS a person doesn't hit middle age until roughly 80 years olds, and doesn't start suffering the effects of old age until roughly 150 (estimated) as currently the fourth generation of longetivity treatments have just been rolled out and nobody is sure the extant of life extension that 4th Gen offers. The CS military estimates that a soldier could have a career within the CS military from roughly 20 years old to 130 years old, meaning that they are facing a future problem of high ranking officer ranks solidifying. To handle this, in order for a a soldier to advance beyond roughly E-7/O-6 they must be officially crosstrained in other Military Occupation Specialties, as well as serve is a highly diverse range of duties, including working with CS LEO's in medium and high threat areas. This has created some stresses within the ranks between Second and Third "Genners" as Third (and some 4th Genners) see First and Second Genners as "dinosaurs" who get in the way of modernizing the military. Weirdly enough General Cabot is idolized by the 3rd/4th Genners (He's a 78 year old 1st Genner, who is in the physical condition of a 50 year old and expected to live roughly 115 year) as well as General Underhill (A 2nd Genner who appears in his mid-20's despite his late 30's, and is expected to live to 125). Other generals fought against the formation of the CS Navy and CS Air Force, against the inclusion of the Brown Water Navy and the Rapid Deployment Force as well as degraded the weapons and armor section. But, let's take a look, beginning at the top of the military. The Military High Command is directly under Prosek. Headed by General Cabot as the Permanent Secretary, with General Underhill being the Permanent Undersecretary of the MHC. There are 23 members, however the "Joint Chiefs" consist of generals from the CS Army, the CS Navy, the CS Air Force, CS Intelligence, CS R&D, and CS Law Enforcement, for a total of six in all. Below that are the 15 members of the MHC, with additional members representing Chi-Town City, CS State of Illinios Territory ,CS Missiouri Territory, CS New Chillicothe City, CS Texas Territory, CS Lone Star Territory, CS Iron Heart Territory, CS Iron City, CS Free Quebec Territory, CS Free Quebec City. The final two members are the Sergeant Major the Military (Current Senior Command Sergeant Major McMurphy, a 65 year old 2nd Genner and a huge proponent of robot infantry replacing standard infantry and a bitter rival of General Underhill) and the "Extreme Measure Response" General (responsible for the CS's nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiation arsenal). The final member is a representative from the Military Oversight Committee, a civilian who is nominally supposed to be equal to General Cabot, but in recent years has found himself 'forgotten' to be invited to meetings, and actively locked out of discussions. Despite this members complaints to the Emperor (as well as the Military Oversight Committees complaints to the Emperor) this person has still found themselves put to the side and actively marginalized. The MHC spends a lot of time with planning, meeting with members of the Military Oversight Committee, the Emperor, reps from the various cities and territories, CEOs of major military contractors, and other highly placed civilians. Currently they are overhauling doctrine to deal with the new weapons and armor, as well as closed sessions that the rep from the MOC is not allowed to attend despite their complaints. The MHC sends aides on 'fact finding missions' all the time, touring and examining military bases, checking out how well armor has performed in the field, and getting 'on the ground' information to supplement the official information. Cabot and Underhill's charisma and ability to form extremely loyal relationships have allowed their investigators to get the real deal on the ground rather than the whitewashed reports that the MOC provides. Currently the MHC is trying to wrest their budget from the MOC, as well as their manufacturing and military contracts. The Military Oversight Committee was put in the place by the original Prosek in hopes to give some civilian oversight to the military. While supposedly put in place to act as civilian liasons to the military, the MOC has managed to accrue a LOT of power in the decades since the Federation of Magic War. They handle the military budget, have to authorize military force deployments, handle military expansion and military procurement. Much to the MHC's dismay the MOC has final approval on military contracts, often handing the CS military equipment that has far worse deployment and operational records than what the MHC had approved. The MOC is a hotbed of graft, corruption, cronyism, bribery, and empire building. Every member is at least 60 years old, wielding vast influence throughout the CS. The former military members were often career military that disagreed with Underhill and Cabots vision, or joined at their family's behest to increase their family's wealth. The most extreme examples of the MOC's dealing with graft and corruption are the C-11 rifle and the standard body armor. The C-11 rifle was complete failure across the board and one of the worst weapons in history, while the body armor has changed from highly advanced armor that gave the CS troops an immense force multiplier as well as a high degree of protection, into a poor excuse for body armor that's often called "Body Coffin" or "SABB" (Skull Adorned Body Bag) that constantly is held up by the MOC as "the ultimate in individual protection" and is called a "stripped shell of a concept" by the MHC. Below that is the Military Intelligence Oversight Board, in charge of taking intelligence and spotting threats as well as advising on troop movements. The MIOB has, in recent years, become more about empire and personal power building than about protecting the CS. For the last 15 years a few of the senior agents have allowed information to fly under the radar that resulted in major terrorist attacks in order to embarrass a rival within the MIOB. False flag operations aren't a needed thing when the CS has so many enemies, but allowing information on an imminent terrorist attack on a farming enclave, a small town, a civilian convoy, or a large patrol force to be ignored in order to allow the attack to go through often results in funding increases. The MHC suspects (correctly) that the MOC has been slowly increasing their status and power among the MIOB. Below that we have the top of the chain of command for the Air Force, Army, Navy. While they have difference in their operational planning they were orignally supposed to closely coordinate, but in the last 20 years they have slowly but surely fell into infighting. It started in 78 PA with the CS Navy insisting on having their own ground security forces as well as shipboard security and boarding/amphibious assault forces. The Army was supplying that initially but insisted that the Navy pay for it out of their own budget rather then the Army's. In 87 PA the Coalition States Marine Corps was established in order to take the manpower pressure off of the Army, which was forced to drawdown to only 45,000 active duty soldiers (although the MOC kept reporting the numbers as 1.45 million by misrepresnting the members of half-pay semi-retirement, Home Guard, and Reserves) since 82 PA. The real thumb in the Army's eye was that the soldiers currently working with the Navy were directly transferred over to the newly forced CS Marine Corps (which is under the Navy) while left on the Army rolls, bringing down the real number of active duty troops within the Army to 32,000. The CS Air Force was established in 55 PA, but their lack of operational use during the Federation of Magic Campaign (mostly due to incompetent planners) led to their drawndown from 85,000 troops to 12,000 troops. However in 86 PA the MOC transferred all SAMAS and Sky Cycle forces from the CS Army to the CS Air Force, along with all responsibility for Deaths Head Transports. Again the CS Army was left with the numbers on their own roster, meaning that the 28,000 soldiers transferred over were left on the Army's rolls, reducing the actual numbers of CS troops in the CS Army at 4,000 troops, divided among 8 "divisions" of 500 actual soldiers (while each division had 4,000 soldiers on the record). It took the Army directly appealing to the MHC and the Emperor, presenting accurate reportings of troop strength and equipment listings to get this changed. In 92 PA, over strenous objections by the MOC, all four forces were massively reenforced, numbers were shuffled around, and the entire force underwent a three year restructuring. Mothballed bases were reactivated, vehicles were pulled out of storage, and the military was directly overseen by the MHC as well as the MOC. That was when it was discovered that over 14,000 UAR-1 Enforcers were missing, as well as 9,000 SAMAS suits, and more than half of the vehicles in storage were either counted multiple times, were incomplete, or were made from substandard materials and manufacturing. While no official charges were ever brought forward, this led to even more tension between the MOC and the MHC. The Army is currently composed of 12 Armies. Each Army consists of 5 Corps, each Corps consisting of 4-8 SubCommands, each of those consisting of several divisions. Right now the Army is undergoing a massive buildup that started in 98 PA and shows no sign of slowing down. Soldiers have noticed that the new Abolisher has IFF records for "XM" vehicles that only carry a number designation, which has led to rumors that the Abolisher is just the first of what might be a fairly large revamping of the outdated and old equipment currently fielded by the CS Army. The CS Navy mostly handled old mothballed US Navy vessels (The few advanced naval vessels found by the CS were turned over to Naval R&D and Naval Intelligence) until 94 PA, when newer vessels began undergoing trial phases. The CS Marines also began getting new weapons and armor, rather than having to rely on hand me downs from the CS Army. This has proved to reduce interservice tensions that had been blocking a lot of cooperation between the military services. The CS Naval bases had formerly all been part of the CS Army, but in 97 PA construction began on specialized naval bases, as well as their own training facilities. The CS Air Force had been making due with old F-22 and F-25 jets, as well as F-38 Bombers from Pre-Cataclysm, but these vehicles all had tens of thousands of flight hours on parts that were supposed to be replaced within a few hundred flight hours. The addition of the SAMAS suits and the Sky Cycles from the CS Army was not what the CS Air Force had wanted. They requested Air Force vehicles, and were actually quite angry with being handed all of those vehicles, which they saw more as Air Cavalry vehicles that belonged with the CS Army or the CS Navy rather than the Air Force. The CS Air Force underwent the same crazy expansion, with new bases being built, designed from the ground up to support air operations, despite the desires of the MOC that they continue to use only Army or Navy bases. This means that all "four" services have their own training facilities, although some MOS's have overlapping training facilities. Their own officer and NCO codes, training facilities, and as of 99 PA, their own uniforms. The Navy is primarily concerned with protecting river shipping, patrolling rivers, and guarding shipping in the Great Lakes. Recently (99 PA) the CS Navy has begun patrolling the NE edge of North America. At first those patrols were small, but recent attacks in 100 PA have resulted in the Navy boosting patrol forces as well as laying down the keels for some major ships. By 101 PA the CS Navy has a lot of firepower available but is still shaking down doctrine for it. The Marines, oddly enough, seem to have lifted the majority of their doctrine from the old American Empire Marine doctrine. This resulted in a lot of Marines being dropped back the Army if they did not meet the suddenly increased standards. The Air Force has officially turned back over the majority of SAMS and Sky Cycle forces to the Army as of 99 PA. While the Air Force still has nearly 5,000 SAMAS in service they have been rapidly expanding their standard air power, taking over DEW stations, handling interdiction and recon flights, and high speed recon flights. Most of the CS civilians have no idea how much work the CS Air Force actually does, now that satellites are no longer a thing. Currently the CS has over 30 "AWAC Zones" where there at least 2 AWACS in flight at all times. These planes stay in the air for up to 72 hours at a time, with rotating crews, airplane and SAMAS counter-air patrols, and refueling support. The Air Force does a lot of high altitude recon flights with high speed cameras that can get 1080p resolution ground imaging of the ground from as high up as 20,000 feet and MACH-Three. Imaging from these flights can make out faces in perfect detail and even read bar codes on armor, weaponry, and robot power armor. The Army is what the majority of people think of when they think of the CS. Most of them are unaware that the military isn't just broken down into platoons and that's it. Patrols in high threat areas usually draw from 3-6 different brigades to ensure that air cavalry (SAMAS/Sky Cycle) works with Armored Infantry (Robot and Power Armor) and Mobile Infantry (standard infantry) and Armor (Mark V APC) and Artillery. Most people who "know" about the CS have no idea that the patrol has heavy artillery within a few minutes, from pounding artillery barrages, to laser terminal guidance missiles, to mortar rounds. Currently the CS fields up to 8" artillery with over a 75 mile range (High Velocity Magnetic Acceleration + in flight rocket motors) that can laser guided in at the end, with the small 60mm man portable mortars with 5.5 mile range. This allows patrols at the edge of the CS territory to call down artillery if they find themselves facing massed troops. Common CS doctrine is to use smoke upon encountering the enemy, as the CS military has thermal vision enhancement as well as even the standard armor for the basic infantry having enhanced vision allowing them to see on specific wavelengths that the smoke allows through. This allows them to blind the enemy while being able to quickly manuever to a superior advantage. When smoke isn't deployed it's usually because the CS troops were rapidly able to move into position. CS troops provide fire support for each other, use interlocking fields of fire, as well as are highly trained at quickly taking down and putting up crew served weaponry to increase their force multiplier. Let's take a break here. Any questions? 
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Jun 11, 2013 00:13
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So no comments or questions? I don't really want to monopolize the thread.  I love the gently caress out of Rifts, and this thread inspired me to start a new campaign set back in 101 PA and only allowing the Core Book for the PC's and Conversion Book One and Sourcebook One for me.
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Jun 17, 2013 07:31
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Eh, it's fine really, and interesting to read. It's not like Rifts is exactly a thriving game these days, and it's as good a place to dump related thoughts as any. Just because folks aren't chiming in just means they have nothing to immediately add, not that the thread's not being read. 
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Jun 17, 2013 08:32
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I looked in my Coalition Navy Book and there is no mention of Rock Island at all. I am really enjoying your description and rewrite of the information, and would like your opinion of that area.
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Jun 17, 2013 13:53
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I am definitely enjoying the writeups, and am looking forward to seeing who you take a look at next. Now that the new version of fate is out, I am taking a look at it to see how well it would handle a rifts game.
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Jun 17, 2013 16:56
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50 Foot Ant posted:So no comments or questions? I don't really want to monopolize the thread. It's quite useful to people wanting to poke at it, but most of my energy for that kind of thing admittedly is going into the writeups. But after finishing Rifts Africa, I'll give you some tips on how to make it unsuck without just throwing out the whole deal:
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Jun 17, 2013 20:37
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Simbieda wrote super villains the way kids pretend-play them. I swear I am 100% certain that he'd float an idea like the horsemen to his staff, then they'd say things like "I shoot my holy TW cannon at them" and he'd say "nuh uh, because they have a magical field of bugs that protects them from holy energy, C.J.!" and it would just go on like that til they had filled a page. Whatever his staff didn't think of counts as a weakness.
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Jun 17, 2013 21:01
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All righty then, let's take a look at CS Territory itself, along with the CS military bases. First of all, I need to reiterate. RPG books themselves suffer from severe lack of understanding how civilizations, societies, cultures, and the like spread. Most of them have never used or even know about the formula to determine population expansion, or understand that population vs resources is not a straight line graph. Most of them picture resources vs population like Malthus, who did not take into account technological advancement would create new resources, make resources go further, or replace old resources with new ones. Most people look at post-apocalyptic populations and run from 100 years since the cataclysm and only put a population at a few million after 100 years (roughly 5 generations, although after a disaster it is estimated that generations would run at the 15 year marks) with a starting population of 250,000. In reality, 250,000 after 100 years with 20 year generations and a growth rate of 3.9% would result in a population of 12.5 million after 100 years. A good way to see just how terrible RPG's can be when computing growth rates, technology upgrades, and the like, is to take a look at 1E, 2E, 3E, 4E Forgotten Realms, where apparently the population growth index, with healing magic in the mix, and a High Medieval period, is a horrifically low 0.02%. Plus there's the distribution/profit curve to look at, and blah blah blah. (Hey, blame 2 years of college) So, we'll take a good look at the CS. Now, we'll steal the map from Alien Rope Burn's excellent writeup of Sourcebook One.  Now, look at all that territory, and you can see I made a serious mistake with the population estimate, so I'll revise them in the previous post. While Sourcebook One states that the CS has 14 million people, that's still barely anything. Really, it is barely anything when we're talking that massive amount of territory. Sembedia talks about how there's like 1 person per 100-300 square miles, and that's just retarded. Now, the CS has had a full CENTURY of expansion, and that's a lot of time. Take a look at the Midwest and Western US expansion and urbanization between 1850 and 1950 and you'll get an idea. Now, the CS had to contend with monsters, bandits, rifts, ley-lines, and all the rest, so that's pretty much the whole reason why it isn't the Coalition States of North America, but within their territory we're looking at a secure area, a loving powerhouse capable of smashing the living poo poo out of anyone who comes at them. The whole territory shown in that image isn't CS territory, but a LOT of it is. Within the CS towns, cities, and burbs are protected by high tech walls. Think Judge Dredd Megacities. These walls, once again, contain point defense for artillery and missiles, anti-aircraft missiles and energy batteries (far stronger than you'd find on even a robot, we're talking tracked vehicle weaponry or battleship class weaponry), rapid deployment SAMS forces and Air Cycle forces, as well as having a garrison that probably consists of anywhere from 2.5%-25% of the population. There are over three dozen military bases within CS territory. The older ones are Army bases, many of which are built on the skeletons of old American Empire military bases. Each of these military bases house at least a division of troops, with 26 of them hosting two to four divisions. Each military base has at least 1 airfield capable of landing the CS equivelent of a C-5 Galaxy cargo jet, as well as handle multiple Death's Head Transports at the same time. Surrounding those military bases are small towns that first grew up providing services to the CS troops, mostly civilian luxuries as well as more grey market items. Over time (often in as little as 20 years) the little sparse settlements have grown to full blown cities. This provides the budding city with heavy defenses, military protection, as well as priority defense status. Most of the civilian industrial expansion that took place between 45 PA and 85PA was centered around these military bases. Six of the cities have populations measured in the hundreds of thousands of registered CS citizens, with often double that of "temporary visa" citizens on a highly restricted citizenship card. In the last 15-20 years urban blight has hit some of the cities, with the CS citizens that were more affluent fleeing to the suburbs and pushing the low income out in a gentrification process that has resulted in more than a few urban cores being home to mutants, lawless gangs, and "reliable" DBees. The newer bases, mostly Air Force, Navy, and Marine, have smaller communities around them, usually only 10,000-25,000 people. These bases underwent massive expansion in the 90's, and some (such as Navy or Marine bases) are still in the process of being built. The smaller bases, still under construction, often only have the construction crews, their families, and those who are looking to provide goods and services to the incoming soldiers or the construction crews. Large retailers, fast food chains, convenience store chains, and the like have already come in, using the population vs profit mapping algorithms to ensure that they have the premier real estate as the city grows according to the Department of Interior planning and their own database analysis. Some areas within the CS are industrial areas that have walled cities built up around them. Most of these were pre-Rifts "turnkey" operations or large industrial complexes built during the Second Cold War, when America had to move its defense industry from overseas and multiple contracts spanning multiple multinational corporations and move back to CONUS industrial areas. During the Second Cold War this was responsible for rapid industrial expansion, but due to heavy robotics use and AI improvements phasing out the majority of the population. This assisted the post-apocalyptic rebuilding as an entire factory that made clothing could be run with replacement of the fuel rods (easily taken from old combat robots) and firing up the facility, which then would need to be overseen by a maximum of five people. (CS law states that even fully automatic factories must be supervised by 10 living humans, with a full security detachment, to prevent terrorist strikes involving everything from software reprogramming to add cyanide to baby formula to blowing up the factory) High speed trains, with multiple rails, is used for both civilian and industrial transport, as well as transport of heavy military equipment. It is common for a CS citizen to see a train laden with UAR-1 combat robots, Mark-V APC's, Abolisher robots, and other military vehicles at least once a week. Three rails move from CS Core to CS Lone Star and five rails move from CS Core to Free Quebec. Currently, CS farmland could support 235 million people, cattle ranches could provide the necessary meat for over 145 million people's daily diet, nutrient farms could support another 450 million, however much of the produced wheat, soy, genetically engineered corn, and other former nutrient crops are actually used for industrial applications. (Organic superlubricant needs to be grown in a soy infused suspension liquid as well as fed a steady diet of soy based protien) Currently, the entire CS agriculture system not only provides the entire CS with food, but ships food to surrounding areas, as well as ships to Europe for use by Triax, who's farmland had been severely depleted by rising sea levels, the coming of the Rifts, and the war with the gargoyles. All right, so we've got the rebuilt CS. A vast military-industrial juggernaut, with a highly motivated civilian populace, a dedicated career military, heavy industry, and a wide range of food sources, synthetic and ethanol based fuels, and soy based plastics. So, where does that leave the PC's? Either working for the CS, or in the dangerous world outside the CS.
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Jun 21, 2013 14:05
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Now, by Popular Request: Rock Island Arsenal CS Territory. In 2078 the US military had decided to upgrade the Harbinger Total Infantry Combat Suit (Now referred to as a "Glitter Boy", although the Harbinger was vastly different then the NEMA Chromium Guardsman) to the A5 version, which improved the accuracy of the rail gun system, improved armor and endo-skeleton density while lowering weight, increased pilot survivability for "Total Extinction Scenario" situations, increased the ECM by 11% and the ECCM by 18.7%, as well as miniaturized and improved the accuracy and fire control of the the leg mounted SRM system and the point defense system. This required the US military to upgrade their existing arsenal of 50,000 suits of Harbinger armor (Which included National Guard, Reserve, and storage suits) as the new systems were no longer compatible with the existing suits, which had undergone Service Life Extension Program upgrades for over 30 years. (Now, if you think this is too long, remember that the M1 went into service in 1980, and is currently being upgraded to the M1A4 version with another 10-20 years of life expected) Rock Island Arsenal was publicly one of the larger military museams, containing everything from the prototype SAMAS to early runs of the Harbinger, to the Bulldog, the Abrams, the M22, and the ZSU-23. By 2098 it had extensive outdoor exhibits, VR simulations, and indoor exhibits showing off military systems from World War One all the way to the 2096 Congolese Insurgency. Tens of thousands of people visited the museum every year, figuring the existence of the military guards were just to guard what was powerful military grade equipment. When the Coming of the Rifts occurred, the rising river and rampaging floodwaters wiped out many of the buildings on the edge of the island, but left not only the museum, but the factory complex that produced parts for the SAMAS railgun system and flight systems remained intact. In approximately 15 PC (Post Cataclysm) survivors had built up a heavily defended facility, relying on the refurbished military weaponry that had been on display at the museum. However, in 19 PC a industrial leak in ruins further upriver poisoned the water badly enough with colorless, odorless, and tasteless chemicals that within 4 days everyone within the facility was dead. The site sat usused for a long period of time, until sometime during the Dark Ages the forces that later became Chi-Town seized the area, began bringing the factories back online, as well as building additional industrial facilities and the first slips for building small river patrol boats. This required engine manufacturing, MDC polycarbonite resin, and other required materials to build high tech military water craft for the then fledgling CS "brown water" Navy. During the Federation of Magic attack and the following insurgent war the naval production facilities came under heavy attack by dragons backed by mortal mages as well as psychics. However, a junior lieutenant managed to rally other boat crews and defend the island from the river, using the onboard weaponry systems. Despite the loss of 2LT Irma Edelson and most of the boat crews (who took 30% KIA and 70% WIA), 65% of the shipyard facilities, and 45% of the industrial facilities, the work force and R&D researchers suffered less then 8% casualties, which the CS thought as far more important than the loss of physical facilities that could be rebuilt. As of 101 PA the CS used Rock Island Arsenal as a facility to build brown water naval vessels, naval cybernetic conversion, Rock Island Naval Hospital, refit smaller vessels (Destroyer class), as well as manufacture naval components and munitions. The island has no civilian populace, with everyone working there either military or their dependents. The island has 11 drydock facilities (with 3 being built for Cruiser class vessels), 32 dock facilities, 2 Marine Corps training facilities (amphibious assault course, ship boarding training & navy cyborg), 2 Navy training areas (sensor systems, fire control, engine repair, and nuclear reactor maintenance), as well as manufacturing facilities for naval cyborgs, a military hospital with a top rated burn and trauma centers, as well the CS BUDS facility. (Basic Underwater Demolition School) The island's manufacturing facilities as well as the hospitals and dependent housing use a positive pressure air system, with a genetically engineering bacteria pumped through the air that is magically active (high levels of PPE that are actually only a fraction of a mechanical point) that prevents magical surveillance and reconnaissance. The island has Defense Early Warning stations capable of tracking thousands of targets from hundreds of miles away, with millimetric phase radar arrays capable of ground mapping. The missile defense batteries are extensive, as are the naval defenses. Underground are shelters able to shelter the entire population of Rock Island for up to 14 months, climate controlled storage facilities that hold high value manufacturing materials, stockpiles of secure ship components, cyborg components and chassis, ship weapons, and Marine Corps equipment, in addition to food and medical supplies. This is not only in case of the supply lines being unable to restock Rock Island, but in case the Island is completely cut off and under long term bombardment. In case of supply line disruption the naval facilities on Rock Island are still capable of repairing ships damaged during the conflict. The entire base is currently under the command of Major General Doretha Hennessy. The Marine Corps training facility is under the command of Lieutenant James O'Brien, the active duty Marine Corps forces and basing is under the command of Lieutenant General Sheba Dallison, the Active Duty Naval Forces and basing are under command of Admiral Sean Gattleson, while the Naval training facility is under command of Rear Admiral John Stanford. The entire surrounding area is patrolled by experienced and highly trained operatives, including UAR-1 Enforcer crews, SAMAS pilots, infantry ground troops, and mechanized infantry. They keep a "no unauthorized personnel" policy within 20 miles. The "no-fly zone" extends out slightly further, and any non-CS aircraft within 100 miles are engaged and shot down without warning. Nearby ley-lines are heavily guarded, with motion sensor auto-turrets, land mines, and company sized garrisons. Additionally, as CS robot power armor and power armor suits are rated for underwater use, the river bed is heavily patrolled by robots packing 'green frequency' lasers and torpedoes loaded into the missile launchers. Fully taking up Sylvan Island is a heavily reinforced military base that caters to 3-67 Armored Cavalry Battalion, which handles the UAR-1s, Abolishers, as well as the SAMAS pilots. This post, nicknamed "Gravel Pit" or "Riverbank". As of 101 PA it appears that the entirety of 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force has been rotating through Rock Island Arsenal in Battalion level force.
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Jun 21, 2013 15:43
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50 Foot Ant posted:Now, by Popular Request: Rock Island Arsenal CS Territory. drat...I can definitely use this in my campaign 50 Foot Ant posted:...but the factory complex that produced parts for the SAMAS railgun system and flight systems remained intact... As a little bit of trivia, these buildings are currently building howitzers, and making the anti IED armor for our Humvee fleet. there is also an armament testing and research facility on the far east end of the island. 50 Foot Ant posted:In approximately 15 PC (Post Cataclysm) survivors had built up a heavily defended facility, relying on the refurbished military weaponry that had been on display at the museum. However, in 19 PC a industrial leak in ruins further upriver poisoned the water badly enough with colorless, odorless, and tasteless chemicals that within 4 days everyone within the facility was dead. The industrial leak would be probably the John Deere Manufacturing facilities, located just to the southeast of the island(river runs east to west here) or it could be the Cordova Nuclear Power Plant, about 5-6 miles up river. 50 Foot Ant posted:Underground are shelters able to shelter the entire population of Rock Island for up to 14 months, I like this, It gives weight to the long standing local rumor of an underground facility where LOTS of R&D is going on on the island. 50 foot ant, do you need more information that the wiki wouldn't have?
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Jun 21, 2013 16:13
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Sure, feed me all the information you want to, and I'll go full 'conspiracy theory' on the Island and make it into something more akin to the Rifts game I usually run. We'll go with superscience (2090's extrapolation), Second Cold War insanity and paranoia, hidden military testing site due to 'transparent government' agendas, and more. Hell, I can even do a threat lurking in the depths of the "Golf Class Hard Site" that the CS has woken up. Right now I'm doing a write-up on "the Subway", the pre-Cataclysm high speed underground rail system. I'll probably finish it all tomorrow, today I gotta hit the VA. Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jun 21, 2013 |
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Jun 21, 2013 16:59
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I wish I could put up the section from one of the early Dragon Magazines with a Gamma World section called "The Subway", which was an excellent resource. OK, Number One, I did not create this I flat out stole it. The Number One Rule in RPG's is "Steal whatever you can", and I do NOT claim credit for this idea, that credit goes to Gary Jaquet, original author. One of the main things that Sembedia lost sight of was that Rifts is, from the Core, a post-apocalyptic setting. Sembedia seems to have largely lost focus on the "Fall of Man, most of the world deserted, with exploration taking place as people begin to look beyond their community" that I always felt was a core part of early game-play. So, in the race to put out high megadamage rule of cool creatures that they played "nuh-uh your attacks bounce off" playtesting with, they kind of left behind what Rifts Earth would have in its corpse. There was the Golden Age of Man, an 'era of unprecendented scientific and technological advancement' that Sembedia doesn't seem to do much more than use to justify kickass robots. Let's change that, shall we? So, with that, I present: The Subway. By 2032 oil prices had risen to over $3,200 a barrel and cargo/industrial transportation was on the ropes. The days of zero-inventory systems were over, and consumers were unwilling to pay the price for shipping from overseas factories. While many thought the world governments would license nuclear reactors for the proposed "Gigacargo Ships", the destruction of Albuquerque New Mexico, United States, by a nuclear device built by a rogue nation and the melt-down of the Liberian registered Star of Malduna super-cargo vessel's reactor in Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, meant that no nation was willing to trust a corporation (or many of the world nations) to possess reactors onboard ships. This meant that cargo couldn't be shipped in cheaply by air or ship, which meant the global industrial web was already starting to retract, with more and more nations returning to producing goods locally, and only major shipping moving such cargo as crude oil or strategic minerals. High seas piracy was a trillion dollar a year business, with Letters of Marque being reissued to commit economic warfare on the high seas. In 2035 Litton Energy Research made a major breakthrough in micro-fusion plants, these plants being roughly the size of a small compact car, but putting out enough energy for a major vehicle. While it was mostly used by the US Navy to replace the aging fission reactor designs. America was in need of a way to ship goods quickly and easily across the country. With ecological concerns being highly placed, since the Albuquerque Incident, Global Warning finally starting to turn around, and the Mississippi Delta Disaster following Hurricane Douglas, ecological groups immediately tried to stop the use of the He3 reactors. However, the use of fusion reactors to power steam turbines in order to power large vehicles was seen as a national security issue and the lawsuits put in place by the ecological groups were tossed out due to political pressure. In order to avoid large problems with the proposed high speed rail system, the system was decided to be placed underground, following the old Interstate system that had largely been defunded and fallen into disrepair. Initially the plan was to use existing rail infrastructure, but it turned out that the rail system had been largely defunded, the private corporations that had taken them over having moved onto other things that did not use fossil fuels. Underground allayed concerns about children or vehicles getting in the way of a train that was proposed to move at over 200 mph. By 2052 the main arteries of the underground rail system were finished and the government began building the capillary systems. Despite an attempt by several corporations to force the government of the United States to privatize the 'subway system' the lawsuits were thrown out and the use of the fusion reactor design was not available to be licensed to civilian contractors. The work was largely done under the cover of "Interstate Revitalization Program" and largely featured the Army Corps of Engineers doing the work. The tunnels themselves are 100m to 200m wide, with two to eight magnetic 'levitation' strips allowing two trains to run simultaneously, and allowing switching to prevent collisions. The shell is constructed out of duralloy, with radiation shielding (including EM frequencies) and built to withstand any possible detonation of the engine's fusion reactor (a safety procedure insisted on by the NEC) so that any explosion will not damage the surrounding area. For the most part the tunnels are built 20-50m below ground. The tunnels have access points every kilometer to the surface. These access points are ferrocrete squares raised roughly six inches above the ground. In the middle is a circular plate (originally painted yellow and black stripes but since the Great Cataclysm those paint stripes have worn off) with a bar in the middle. Grabbing the bar, lifting it, giving it a 180 degree turn, and pushing it back down (a familiar thing for Rifts Earth adventurers) will sound a siren and a verbal warning to get back at least 10 feet, and a 30 second countdown. At the end of 30 seconds the plate will open, revealing a larger than man sized tunnel down with a rung ladder on one side and strip glow-lights on the other. The tunnel is large enough to allow a person wearing full environmental to climb up and down. If the tunnel beneath the plate is vacuum atmosphere explosive bolts will blow the plate open and there will be audible woosh as the air pressure equalizes. At the bottom of the tunnel is a small 10m x 10m room. This room has racks for four suits of environmental armor, four places for atmosphere recharge, and four racks of eight oxygen packs. There is also an airlock door with the legend "DANGER: POSSIBILITY OF VACUUM, WEAR PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT" painted on it. Due to the damage the system has taken over the years and the Great Cataclysm 99% of the subway tunnels are no longer in vacuum state. These access tunnels have 1km between each one, and are used for emergencies where a train is running the risk of hitting a worker, a worker has run low on oxygen, or the tunnel needs serviced. Every 100km are stations where controls for the trains are done. Subsection control stations Subsection control stations are located every 100 kilometers along the route of the sub-train tunnels. These stations are for monitoring the operation of the sub-train system and also function as repair depots for the section of the tunnel they control. These control stations were largely manned by one or two men as robots and automation handled as much as possible. They were used to manually control switching, tunnel repair if necessary, and maintenance. Each station consists of the following parts: 1. Elevator - The elevator in the control station leads to the surface (the surface entrance to subsection control stations is detailed later). The elevator is operated by a simple up/down pushbutton control panel, located within the control room. Normally, Pre-Cataclysm, the surface entrance for the control stations are ferrocrete cinderblock buildings, surrounded by duralloy chickenwire with concertina wire on top. However, most of the buildings are long gone, have been transformed into buildings for other uses. By and large the computer systems in the cinderblock buildings are long gone, destroyed by volcanic ash, or scavenged for other purposes. With the power having failed on the surface, the buildings were almost useless. Access to the subway system through these buildings would require aventurers bringing in power (a robot combat power armor generator and cables would work) to connect to the wiring beneath the floor to provide power to the floor panels to retract and the elevator. The 10m x 10m plates on the floor at 1/4" thick, and the building is 30m x 30m and 90 of those plates. These duralloy plates would bring 1,500 cr each for sale on the black market, but may go as high as 3,750 cr each to someone in need of them. Seeing as these plates are commonly used on frontier town walls, these plates can be in high demand if the PC's haul them off. 2. Control room- This main room of the control station contains a long, L shaped control console beneath the macro-plast windows facing the sub-train tunnel, with seats for three operators that are rarely used. There is a 2m gap between chairs where usually robots are plugged into the system. This console is normally used only for monitoring the operation of the sub-train system, but can, if necessary, override any system function or operation within the section it monitors. The console is very complex as a whole, but individual banks of controls are fairly simple - one bank of switches may operate the lighting system in the tunnel near the station, for example. Another may operate the doors to the maintenance equipment storage area, and so forth. On the other side of the room from the control console is a large table-like object, the system status display. This device illustrates, by means of colored and flashing lights, the positions of all trains in the system, their rate and direction of travel, destination, etc. Beneath the light representing each train is a symbol code for that train that could be used to call up further information from the main control console. Attached to the wall near the elevator door is a small blue case with a large white cross on the cover: a first-aid kit. The cover is hinged and is held closed with a simple latch. Inside are 5 RMK kits (needing recharged), 4 IRMSS kits, 2 Emergency Trauma Cradles, 10 pain reducers, 10 stim doses, 3 cur-in doses, 5 Med-X, 1 dose of anti-radiation serum, and 1 can of dressing spray (an antiseptic spray-on "skin" that stops minor bleeding, promotes healing, and protects the wound). Attached to the wall below the first-aid kit is a fire extinguisher. It sprays a dry chemical powder and is good for 15 seconds continuous operation. 3. Maintenance area locker room –If necessary for a human operator to go into the sub-train tunnel itself, he would of course have to prepare for vacuum conditions. In this area are three lockers, each containing a special vacuum suit. These suits are modified Department of Transportation Plastic Man and contain life support for 72 hours, 2-way radios for communication with other operators in suits and with the control station, a medi-kit, ultraviolet and infrared sensors, and a powerful tight-beam light mounted on the helmet. The suits are powered for up to 72 hours of operation by a hydrogen energy cell. When replaced in the lockers after use, the suits were automatically recharged (both power and life support) within 30 minutes. Also in this area is a robot-recharging station, a rather complex control panel at which a robotic unit can plug itself in to recharge. There are 4 maintenance robot cradles in here, which may or may not be full. 4. Maintenance area - A garage-like area for storage of a personnel carrier and two maintenance-equipment carriers. The track for these vehicles leads from the tunnel across a platform and into the maintenance area through two heavy doors. These doors may be opened by controls in the maintenance area itself or from the control room. The maintenance area contains equipment to repair up to 30 km of the tunnel (one bored crew in 2065 built 25 km of usable tunnel by hand in 3 months), including several thousand 10x10m plates of duralloy, and tens of thousands of credits worth the Pre-Rifts computer and electronic equipment. There are also a dozen maintenance robots in charging/maintenance cradles. These robots have onboard welders, grasping claws, fission cutters, anti-radiation spray, and other tools necessary to perform maintenance work, up to and including a full tunnel section rebuild. At the far end are large tanks holding roughly a thousand gallons of each of the following: Liquid He3, Liquid Nitrogen, duralloy softening agent, and duralloy hardening agent. 5. Personnel carrier bay - This large bay, 30m x 100m, contains ten Personnel Carriers, each in a charging station for the backup batteries. There are the spare parts here to built 5 more carriers, but no frame components. A small vehicle resembling an enclosed 20th-century golf cart. The personnel carrier will hold three persons dressed in full maintenance suits with a 2m x 2m cargo area, complete with strap tie-downs. It operates on the same principle as the sub-trains (superconducting electromagnetic propulsion). Controls are simple: forward and reverse, speed, direction change (for "Y's" in the rail system), and lights. Mounted on the dash of the vehicle is a removable portable control unit used to command the engineering robots. These carts use Lithium-7 batteries, however age has rendered the capacitance gel inert and they will not hold a charge. Maximum speed of these vehicles would be up to 100km/hr on open track, but age has debonded some of the filaments and it could make a maximum of 15km/hr at this time. 6. Maintenance carriers Bay- These bays are 50m x 200m, with charging bays, one rack of maintenance robot bays on the right and left walls each. These bays contain 12 maintenance robots normally, but many of the substations have no maintenance robots left as they were used up trying to repair the catastrophic damage to the system. Aside from that there are 10 maintenance carriers in these bays. These small train-like vehicles consist of three sections. The forward section resembles an open personnel carrier with an engineering robot at the Controls. Behind this section is an enclosed cart for carrying materials and equipment, and behind that is a similar cart which is not enclosed. The enclosed cart contains small tools and parts; the open cart can hold large structural repair materials and a small boom and winch. Surface entrances to subsection control stations ground-level entrances to control stations along the sub-train route will be found directly above the station, generally near a rebuilt ferrocrete Interstate Highway (as mentioned earlier, the sub-train system usually follows beneath the highway). The entryways were lifts that raised the train up, but for the most part these lifts are either filled with dirt and volcanic ash or are empty with the aboveground section ruined and unable to be opened. These entryways were not used on a daily basis the robots that operated the stations usually stayed around the clock, and when it was necessary to leave the station (for maintenance or other purposes) they used the personnel carrier in the tunnel itself. However, when a human operator was required in the station (for periodic check-outs, maintenance of robots, etc.) the surface entrance was generally used. The surface entrance is a simple structure with an adjacent vehicle parking area surrounded by a chain-link fence. The gate in the fence would open by radio signal from an authorized vehicle and close automatically after the vehicle was admitted. The entrance structure itself is a small, square building made of light metal alloy. The doorway to the entrance structure would open with use of a blue Code II maintenance ID. Inside the structure is a small room (3 meters by 4 meters). In the room is a desk and filing cabinet. On the desk is a communication console that connects with the main sub-train centers and the sub-section control station below. In one wall is another doorway, the elevator to the station. The elevator requires a special sub-train systems worker ID or a Code 4 law enforcement ID to operate, or may be operated from the station below (after clearance through the communications console). Control of the elevator is by a simple up/down pushbutton panel as described earlier for the subsection station control room. Main section control stations Main section control stations (not used in this adventure) are merely larger sub-section control stations. They would be found in the sub-train system wherever tunnels intersect or branch, to monitor and control switching procedures and further monitor all subsection control station operation within their section. Entry/exit control stations Entry/exit control stations (not used in this adventure) are similar to main section control stations, but they control the entry and exit of sub-trains into or out of the system for loading and unloading. Such stations would generally only be found near population centers. Sub-train master control centers (not detailed here) are the overall control and monitoring centers of the entire system. There were twelve control centers in North America, each supervising roughly an equal share of the overall system. OK, now for the big question... WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH RIFTS? Well, Rifts is about exploring the unknown, with threats from beyond space and time, but half of the fun was always finding some old facility from Pre-Rifts tims. Places like The Subway give a hint to the ancient high tech that is still nearly magic to the residents of Rifts Earth. The technology used in The Subway is beyond Rifts Earth capabilities, with much of the larger and more complex equipment built in the Zero-G manufacturing facilities or the Micro-Gravity stations in places like Tycho Prime. We all know Rifts Murder-Hobos are worse than D&D ones, they will steal EVERYTHING, up to and including dirt if they think it has any kind of value what so ever. For the most part the vast underground high speed cargo system is destroyed. Only 1-10km sections are left scattered around North America, many of them the smaller tributaries. But you have to remember, Pre-Cataclysm Earth was in the middle of the Second Cold War, and the MCTS was built tough. It was designed to handle multiple nuclear impacts, to act as secondary shelters, places to pre-stage recovery equipment, and the entire scenario bits. While there was no real warning, the Cataclysm took hours, days, weeks, months to carry through. Rapid Deployment elements would have immediately moved into the MCTS quickly, and the characters can find anything from train cars full of body bags (full or empty), food, Harbinger Power Armor, Goblin IV Power Armor, M47A6 Main Battle Tanks, or even nuclear weapons and launch systems for strike back capability. Of course, the PC's are probably going to strip this place to the ground, but a good thing to do is to make it obvious that these places contain rare Pre-Rifts maintenance stations for robots, power armor, and armor. I've also allowed them to find and clear out and then keep military substations in order to use them as bases, or just loot the living poo poo out of them. The CS keeps an eye out for any scavenger teams who come back with MCTS parts. They will bypass the black market and directly approach the PC's with fair deals. Mainly because the computer systems used for traffic control can be used for land based fire control systems, giant combat robot piloting and fire control systems. All right, next up we'll mess with some other stuff. As you can see, the old Gamma World Stuff can work great. Next Up: The Legion of Gold and Famine In Fargo (GW 1E Modules) and how to weave it into the campaign.
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Jun 23, 2013 10:08
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The Legion of Gold This was one of the first modules for Gamma World, and was a HUGE deal. It contained expanded loot tables, rules for different caliber and condition fire arms, gave us our first settlement, and pitted tribesmen against an ancient threat from the mists of the past against the world. If you are familiar with The Legion of Gold, you'll see a LOT of parallels between it and the first Fallout game, as well as Fallout Tactics. We're not talking the newer one (I'm unfamiliar with it) but this one from the bad old days of conflict/adversarial RPG gaming. There are 4 sections that as a GM you may want to work into your game. The first is the City of Horn, which you should put out of CS territory. Now, because of certain realities of where things are I would recommend putting the entire things either on the North Carolina coast or one of the Great Lakes. The City of Horn will need updated. Sure, right now there's no MDC Rifts gear in there, but it's easy to arm the guard with knockoff armor and cheap power armor, and it is the center of a barony. Having the place be borderline "no mutants" and hardline "no mutants" and having the Baron of Horn trying to court the CS, that puts some serious time pressure on the PC's to find where the Gold Legions are coming from, since they are making the Baron look bad. Or, you can ditch the module except for the subaquatic research station, the shelters, and the Legion of Gold HQ. Let's handle the Shelters first. Now, it talks about 2300's and blah blah blah. I know that those are WAAAY too small to be fallout shelters, much less livable for 10 years. You'd have people go mad inside of a week, and your first murder by week two. So there would be notes on the half-fried computers that these were emergency shelters for common people, intended to last only 24-72 hours, until the occupants of the shelters could be moved to large facilities. BUT, we're going to do something different. BACKGROUND AKA poo poo ONLY THE GM CARES ABOUT With the Second Cold War going on one of the major problems that were tackled by the DoD were soldier survivability. The Harbinger, Goblin IV, and Novastar VII power armor systems meant that the power armor pilots could survive, arguably even inside the nuclear fireball (For the Harbinger, that was a verified fact after the Congolese Nuclear Incident of 2067 and the fact that the armor systems stationed at the Albuquerque power plant survived the detonation as did the pilots) which meant the big problem was logistics and most of all repair and refit. So the military knew that they'd have people to perform search and rescue on any people who managed to get the shelters. However, the ley-line explosions made it so that barely anyone got there, and those that did, well, they couldn't unlock the door (because they didn't want people to suddenly panic and run outside) and they eventually killed each other, committed suicide, or eventually starved to death. So the shelters should be found at least 2 miles from an old ruin, preferably near an old Interstate Highway, and by and large were forgotten. The only corrections to make is that the fission micropiles, if they are intact, are worth approximately 1.5 million credits. But by and large, it's just a little fun thing for them to find. Stock them will old junk, lovely loot, or just weird stuff. Last time I used them, a gang of thrill kill hoverbikers were using them as a base to kill people on the CS Highway. SAMURI OK, this is the best place ever. Personally, I added in the Andriod Rebellion of 2072, meaning that Androids are out there, just haven't been seen since the bitter 2 year war that destroyed most of them. Players have never heard of androids, so finding this base was a huge shocker, and eventually led to the Fallout Tactics based adventure, where Androids had taken over the original NORAD and were finally leaving in order to take over a weakened North America now that they could survive and avoid the ley-line energy. I added Glitterboys guarding it, both of them with depleted reactors, and of course, it was the party's first encounter with the mil-spec Harbinger suits, and they moved hell and high water to recover those suits. Making the place low-MDC or just high SDC made it so that battles were short, sharp, and with hand weapons rather than rail guns and projectile weapons. I can do a full writeup, but you're getting the idea. ----- Legion of Gold is good for starting characters, even if you have a GB, a dragon, 2 SAMAS pilots, a ley line walker, and a full conversion cyborg. By modding the creatures you can do it several ways. My two favorite ways is to either have the PC's being CS investigators to the city of Horn to see about their absorbtion by the CS, or have them being freelancers who get involved and end up, at the end, finding a high tech military bunker. I personally extended out the map of the Legion of Gold HQ to be a six level deep massive place, with killer robots and all of that fun stuff. I really recommend getting this module and converting it to Rifts, since it's a lot of fun. ---------- FAMINE IN FARGO Of course, this module assumes that the PC's are semi-retarded murder hobos sent to save their tribe. That's the Gamma World way, baby. But no, for this one, the players are high tech murder-hobos who find the whole thing and need to clear it out. Why? Because a high-tech chicken processing plant like this, only 20 miles outside of 'official' CS territory can be sold to the CS for hundreds of millions of credits. Now, one thing about Rifts is that credits go FAST if you have robot jocks and cyborgs, because they have constantly pay for ammunition, armor repair, systems refits, all of that. Tell the party they'll want to go in SDC only. Clearing it out is an interesting adventure, but selling it, or becoming Chicken Meal Magnates of Rifts Earth can be just as interesting. It's a good layout for a Pre-Rifts facility taht most GM's would overlook as having adventure potential, as well as letting the players feel like their characters are making a difference in the world. Get the PDF, or find the module cheaply on eBay. I'm not sure how the new one is, but you aren't looking for mechanics, you're looking for the maps, the scenario, and the descriptions. So a PDF off of DriveThruRPG should work just fine. Next up: A little break, and taking a look at an alternate campaign setting around Pitz Burke.
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Jun 23, 2013 11:47
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50 Foot Ant I have basically nothing to add but I thought you might want to know that I am printing out your ridiculously extensive posts and reading them like they are a straight up lost expansion on how to make Rifts exciting again.
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Jun 23, 2013 11:51
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50 Foot Ant needs to move to Salt Lake City and run games for me and my friends, I would LOVE to play in your version of RIFTS!
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Jul 20, 2013 04:42
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deathbagel posted:50 Foot Ant needs to move to Salt Lake City and run games for me and my friends, I would LOVE to play in your version of RIFTS! Yeah this is totally getting me excited about RIFTS. Move to Australia though.
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Aug 1, 2013 02:34
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