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JA-11 Sniper/Energy Rifle Commonly known as the "Juicer Assassin Energy Rifle" Post-Rifts, this weapon has a convoluted and murky history. While most on Rifts North America insist that this weapon is indeed of German manufacture (Triax claims that they built the weapon to increase market share and sales, when in reality, they simply reverse engineered the weapon, which had been handed to Triax by NEMA in 2089 for examination) More than anything, the JA series of rifles was definite evidence that despite the fact that NEMA was arguably "peacekeepers" and often fell under UN jurisdiction and usage in other nations, NEMA was painted as the big bad guy and the NAA as the architect of everyone's woes. In 2089 a force armed with JA-11 rifles began harassing NEMA and UN troops stationed in Sudan. At first the UN commander thought there were four different, standard, weapons in the enemy arsenal. An ion blaster, a laser rifle, a 7.62mm sniper rifle, and possibly another laser rifle, as there were two separate frequencies of laser rifles in use. However, recon patrols had found nothing, despite the cooperation of the Sudanese military. In the early morning of the 5th of January, 2090, forces made an assault on the NEMA/UN compound on the Sudan/Congo border, highly accurate sniper fire seeking out crew served weaponry, sensor turrets, an vulnerable military personnel. This was immediately followed by a massed rush on the NEMA/UN compound by lightly armed personnel wearing knock-off light body armor normally worn by low-threat area security personnel. The brutal fight lasted a little over 18 hours, as the first wave was followed by eight more in succession. Literally tens of thousands of people were killed during the rushes. The whole time, the snipers kept plying their trade. When the dust settled, only the NEMA armors and the heavily fortified command post remained, and the body count of the enemy was later determined to be 34,839 dead. The UN Peacekeeping force has suffered a little under three thousand dead, nineteen Chromium Guardsmen destroyed, 45 disabled and no longer combat effective, 28 Silver Eagles destroyed, 62 no longer flight capable, and 41 disabled and no longer combat effective. UN Counter-Snipers had engaged and defeated over five hundred snipers, usually making 1 to 1 kill ratios, while the enemy snipers had made in the area of 8 to 1 kill ratios. In addition the snipers were the only forces who had disabled or destroyed any of the power armors, with the exception of a single Silver Eagle which had been hit by a missile and fell nearly 800 feet to the ground, only to be mobbed by the incoming wave attack. The UN investigators found something new on the bodies of the snipers. The JA-9 was found, as was half expected, but also found was something new, something more than a little disturbing. A new multi-function rifle, made entirely of synthetic plastic polymers and polyceramics, with no metal content beyond the bullets that the weapon was capable of firing. The weapon appeared to be based on the old Soviet SVD sniper rifle upgraded by a quad-magnetic rail system. Added to the weapon was a multi-frequency laser rifle and a short range ion blaster. All three were wrapped in a nasty single package, easily disassembled or reassembled. The weapon easily fit in the bottom of a standard sized suitcase when disassembled, and was completely undetectable by metal detectors. In addition, the weapon could be assembled in such a way that it resembled a large laptop computer, with the datascreen of the scope used as the laptop's primary screen. The weapon is entirely made out of plastics and ceramics, with a scope, laser targeter, Battlefield Tactical Network Interface system, and integral bipod. The weapon is undeniably a sniper weapon designed for anti-power armor work. Conventional wisdom stated that chemically fired rounds could not penetrate advanced armor, but someone had altered the weapon with innovative plastic "rails" that became magnetic when an electrical charge was added. Four of these rails were put at 90 degree angles to one another, and were used to accelerate a depleted uranium discarding sabot cartridge, the steel sabot acting as the only metal part of the caseless round. In addition, the weapon could also fire cased rounds, and the weapon was configured to use the old 7.62 Soviet round, rather than the NATO 7.62mm round. The scope contains passive and laser assisted nightvision, UV, IR, VIR, thermographic, and 1X/3X/5X/10X/15X/20X magnification. The scope can be hooked into the Battlefield Tactical Network by itself, or use a tactical interface screen which is usually set beside the weapon. The weapon switches between modes via a hand operated lever on the side of the weapon, which moves the parts inside around the weapon, so that the same barrel and trigger mechanism is used for the entire weapon. This strange and innovative process marked the weapon as currently under development, with the JA-9 perhaps being an early run of an anti-armor rifle being made by an unknown government and/or corporation. The laser emitter is somewhat larger than normal, allowing the frequency shift between light and heavy use via small lenses inside the housing, giving the light and heavy settings two different laser frequencies (both of which are on the frequencies that Chromium Guardsmen are vulnerable to). There are a total of 10 different emitter sets, each one designed to fire on a frequency the Chromium Guardsman is vulnerable to. The emitter is well built, and has one of the most comprehensive shock dampening housings built. In addition it can be quickly and easily replaced by a trained user. (15 seconds for a trained user, 3 seconds for a trained Juicer) The weapon uses an eight sided synthetic ruby lasing matrix, which can be quickly changed out by an operator. The ion system uses air injection, like most modern ion weapons, however it also uses the barrel of the weapon as a linear accelerator to further enhance the ion packet. This results in a devestating ion beam, normally considered low range, able to be used at extended ranges normally thought impossible. The 7.62mm part of the rifle was the strangest. It has to be hand loaded, one shell at a time. It wasn't until a former Canadian Armed Forces sniper pointed out that a lot of snipers were trained to load the rifle one bullet at a time that it made any sense to UN or NEMA forces. The plastic magnetic rails was a system unfamiliar to nearly everyone, and the plastic was immediately given to "safe" contractors to reverse engineer. The plastic was a highly advanced polymer of unknown make and unknown manufacture. It appeared to have variable magnetic qualities, depending on the sine wave of the electricity applied, and needed far less energy for the "rail gun" effect than metal rails. The weapon also featured a canister energy source, which could not be detached, but could be recharged via standard means, or motion charging, or even if the weapon was set out in the sun, where the whole body of the weapon acted as a solar charging cell. In addition to the canister's charging port, the port could be changed with a simple twist to a power conduit input jack. The JA-11 was proof that someone out there had it in for NEMA and the UN. As the majority of the nations had membership in the UN, this made it a very small pool of possibilities, and of those nations who were not members of the UN, either they were on good terms with the multi-national body, or they did not possess the technical knowledge to produce such a rifle. The scope was one high tech piece, built in such a way that a juicer would not have to watch the rastering of the electronic screen, as the refresh rate was set high enough to comfortable to a juicer. During the Coming of the Rifts and the subsequent Cataclysm, a few of these rifles popped up in strange places and in stranger hands. The first thing to be lost was the BaTNI, the rails were the second thing to go. During the Second Dark Ages, this weapon mostly disappeared. The enhanced system of the plastic rails virtually vanished, as nobody could replicate the plastic rails, and after awhile, nobody even knew what they did. Nobody even cared about the BaTNI, so it too vanished. However, in 54 PA, a micro-fabrication unit to produce JA-11's showed up in the hands of an adventuring group who had returned from the Utah Desert. It was quickly sold to the Black Market, and the JA-11 made its appearance on the scene again. However, the plastic acceleration rails and the BaTNI are not currently in production. Triax has long claimed that they built the JA series of rifles, but in reality they reverse engineered both weapon for use by their own snipers. This biggest piece of evidence is the fact that the Triax versions of the weapon lack the plastic acceleration rails. Weight: 6.5 lbs Length: 39" Caliber: 7.62mm Maximum Range:
Manufacturer's Cost: 6,500 Cr Wholesale Cost: 32,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 40,000 Cr Black Market Price: 45,000+ Cr Wilderness Price: 15,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:24
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M-31/C-40R 15mm Rail Gun Commonly known as the SAMAS C-40R rail gun, the SAMAS rail gun has seen use all over the North American continent, as well as a myriad of other places. While the CS claims to have invented them, Bandito Arms and the Black Market know the truth, as does Triax, some adventuring groups, and even Erin Tarn once glimpsed the truth. Originally designed in 2036 as the hand weapon of the Silver Eagle, the 15mm Rail Gun has proven to far exceed the original designers expectations. Tested by the US military at Groom Lake, the weapon went through many different configurations until finally the 15mm caliber was chosen. This caliber was light, easy to carry and manufacture, and provided excellent "armor ablative capability" when used against hardened structures. In 2032 Colt Industries received the contract to make the next generation Squad Automatic Weapon, as well as the primary weapon of the (then) prototype SAMAS (Strategic Armored Military Assault Suit) to be fully field tested at the Groom Lake/Dreamland facility. A long time partner of the US Military and its paranoid associates, Colt Firearms did not even blink an eye when the military demanded not only the weapon, but when testing was finished, 14 micro-fabrication units had to be produced. In 2045 the SAMAS rail gun was complete, having passed field trials at Groom Lake, and at Fort Hood Texas, as part of the Objective Force Land Warrior Project. The weapon was discussed and accepted as an acceptable replacement for the aging M2A2 General Purpose Heavy Machinegun, that had been mostly unchanged since the early days of 20th Century warfare. The weapon, code-named Project Book of David, and listed as the XM-31, is made of advanced hyperalloys and polyceramics, with a sturdy frame designed to hold up during the rigors of combat, during high-G SAMAS maneuvers, be unaffected by the sonic shock of a firing "boom gun", light enough to be mounted on a vehicle or carried by heavy infantry cyborgs or a three man SAW team. While many proponents of rail guns stated that the XM-31 should fire a single round, like the Boom Gun, Colt Firearms went with the ablative effect, using multiple round impacts to "sand" the armor, as well as cause micro-fractures in ion or molecularly bonded armor that were capitalized on by successive strikes by follow up rounds in the same burst. This usually caused shards of armor to be blown free of the armor plating struck by a burst from this weapon. Comparison studies between ablative bursts and single, traditional, armor defeating rounds showed that for the smaller calibers, the burst of light rounds did more damage faster, with less resources (including rail power) than traditional rounds. However, with higher caliber weapons, the traditional armor defeating methods still won out. The forward heat shroud is made of heat transfer resistant non-magnetic alloy, with an internal Faraday Cage to restrict "rail bleed", as well as shielding the weapon from attracting metallic ferrous debris. In addition power armor pilots and cyborgs could use the front heat shroud as an addition handgrip, much like a regular soldier would use the forward handgrips on an assault rifle. The barrel had an unheard of 8 rails surrounding it (The CS would later drop this to 4) that accelerated the light 15mm rounds to a muzzle velocity of 4525m/s (Mach 14) which was still well short of the 11.2 km/s that a light round would require to break free of Earth orbit, thus eliminating the chance that the weapon could be used to destroy orbital infrastructure. The Chromium Guardsman weapon nicknamed the "Boom Gun" could be used to shoot down orbital structures, providing an "enhanced range" package was used. (Some accused NEMA of the elimination of the certain Brazilian satellites during the Brazilian invasion of Suriname, a claim that NEMA never disproved or acknowledged) The chamber and feeding assembly were built of light hyperalloy, with the internal mechanisms tested for heat expansion, wear difficulties, light damage, and battlefield electromagnetic conditions. After a nuclear detonation simulation performed at Groom Lake/Dreamland the weapon was discovered to be "EM Saturated" resulting in the chamber no longer functioning correctly to "inject" the rounds into the barrel. This resulted in additional circuitry being added to create an "EM Reset" manual switch on the side of the weapon. Pushing the button discharged power into the weapons internal systems to reset them in case of EM saturation. The chamber itself uses magnetic pressure to inject a round into the barrel, propelling it at over 100m/s into the rail accelerators, which then fling the round forward. Innovations by Colt Firearms resulted in a lowered power usage for firing. Chamber pressure could be "fixed" for the first rounds once the chamber's magnetic systems were activated, resulting in each successive round taking slightly less power until the last 10 rounds used only 23% of the energy that the first round took to inject them into the barrel. Second the magnetic pressure would be increased for a single shot, resulting in faster barrel speeds 5763 m/s for a single round. Other advances came in magnetic shielding and superconductor linings created an environment where the only thing touched by the round itself was the feeder port and the rails. This drastically reduced wear on barrel and firing mechanism parts, extending battlefield endurance and weapon part life. The trigger assembly sported four modes. The safety mode also depended on a pistol grip safety, single shot selection, which enabled the weapon to be used to sniping against soft targets, the standard attack mode, as well as fully automatic, allowing the weapon to be used as a point defense system, anti-vehicle mode, and against massed troops. Sticking with a long tradition, Colt eschewed an electronic trigger assembly, choosing to stick with a mechanical trigger assembly that activated the various electronics. The mechanical trigger assembly proved highly effective and accurate in testing. The stock was molded into the weapon, part of the weapon's lower receiver, and used hydraulic recoil compensation, rather than the traditional recoil spring systems in use by other companies. The hydraulic master cylinder and the hoses and additional cylinders were carefully built and shock dampened. User weapon maintenance trained to "eyeball" the hydraulics for leaking or "sweating" components, as well as having a digital pressure readout on the side of the hydraulic master cylinder. The feed mechanism was carefully crafted by Colt Firearms, and during Groom Lake/Dreamland testing, the railgun's feeding mechanism was rebuilt nine times, and three times during Fort Hood OFLW Project. The final product was a dual loading system unlike anything originally designed. The shells were packed in a case 40, which was attached to the belt via magnetic linkage (it required 340 psi force to break the magnetic valence bonding) that gave the belt flexibility and integrity. When the "case" was loaded into the weapon, it deposited the 40 rounds into the "pre-flight" area, which held up to 100 rounds within the upper receiver of the weapon. The casing then was ejected from the other side in two pieces. Once the rounds were deposited in the pre-flight area magnetic "bands" contained in the rounds themselves lined up the rounds in four rows of five deep and two high. Should laser/electrical inspection by the weapon's onboard computer detect a problem, the sides of the preflight chamber were magnetized, pulling the rounds apart, and then demagnetized, dropping the rounds back into the pre-flight chamber. Once the round were arranged in the "pre-flight" chamber, they were loaded into the ready chamber. The entire process, from intake of "clip" to powering up of the chamber itself, including four "rearrangements" in the pre-flight section, took less than 0.31 seconds. Misifiring of the weapon was extremely rare, and usually a case of shoddy maintenance or sabotage. The built in scope was primarily intended for tripod/vehicle mounted weapons, but was also tied into the primary data cable to allow pilots to have a "weapon's view" window on their HUD. This allowed a SAMAS pilot to keep the crosshairs on an enemy while performing high-G maneuvers, look around corners or over/under/around obstacles without exposing themselves to fire, as well as use the weapon's scope for additional "triangulation of aiming points" that brought up a pilot's accuracy by up to 5%. The scope possesses passive and active nightvision, IR, UV, VIR, and 1X/3X/5X/10X magnification. In addition the scope's sight picture could be integrated into the BaTNI in its raw data form. Originally Colt Firearms wanted to put a hot-fusion "micropile" into the butt of the weapon, but this was cancelled after computer simulations showed that a hard impact to the stock would cause a catastrophic 236 kt explosion. Dual power conduits were built into the weapon, requiring the weapon to use an outside power source, but an emergency "energy magazine" system was built into the right side of the stock. By removing a plate on the stock, a closely pack 10 eclip wells were uncovered, in a 2x5 row, allowing the weapon user to slot standard energy weapon clips into the weapon to power it in case of emergency. Each clip was good for 5 shots. The weapon was usually mounted on an advanced tripod system, and the M2A2 was phased out of US military arms rooms within two months. Standard doctrine called for it to be added to vehicle ringmounts, increasing the firepower of a moving convoy by nearly 150X previous estimates. Every unit outside of a medical unit had at least 1 per platoon, and infantry companies routinely carried 3-5 per platoon. Standard doctrine called for a 4 man gunner team. One to carry the M-31 itself, one to carry the power pack and leads, a third to carry the tripod, and a fourth to carry the ammunition. Once the weapon was set up, the gunner and assistant gunner would operate the weapon while the other two provided additional fire. Most teams added two under-barrel grenade launchers for the additional fireteam members, and some infantry companies went as far as to add a missile launcher to the team, giving them heavy firepower usable in nearly all situations. During the Cataclysm this weapon was used in nearly every role, from a squad operated weapon, to a vehicle weapon mount, to being carried by cyborgs, Mastiff's, and Silver Eagles. During the Second Dark Ages, this weapon began being stripped down of "extra parts", usually with the BaTNI system going first, followed by the additional rails, then the "emergency energy system", and finally the "pre-flight bay". In 32 PA, the CS began work on the SAMAS and its weapon system. The CS version got rid of the BaTNI system, the emergency energy system, and removed 4 of the 8 rails. In addition they bypassed the "pre-flight" loading system, moving directly to "tubular" internal magazine that was rear loaded by the belt system. The CS also reduced the power to the magnetic barrel pressure system. The result was a stripped down version of the original M-31 that was still combat capable and had high battlefield endurance. The CS version is 25 lbs heavier (and is the one listed for weight) and has only 2/3rds of the range, and does less damage than the old M-31 system. However, the CS suffered a lack of orbital and lunar mining facilities, as well as high-tech manufacturing abilities that were present during the late 21st Century. The Apache Nation found one of the micro-fabricators, and have turned out the M-31's, BaTNI and all. The Black Market only ran off a few hundred of the M-31's until they could replace the M-31 schematics with the schematics of a C-40R. In addition ARCHIE-III still turns out M-31 versions when he so desires. Weight: 98 lbs [73 lbs] Length: 58" [55"] Caliber: 15mm Muzzle Velocity: 3525m/s [4525 m/s] Maximum Range: 2000m (6000 ft) [3000m (9000 ft)] Maximum Effective Range: 1400m (4200 ft) [2500m (7500 ft)] Typical Combat Range: 500m (450 ft) [1250 m (3650 ft)] Magazine Capacity: Belt Fed (Pre-flight chamber holds up to 100, usually 80 rounds, for 2 bursts and 20 single shots) Manufacturer's Cost: 35,000 Cr [15,000 Cr] Wholesale Cost: 70,000 Cr [50,000 Cr) Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 110,000 Cr [Not for resale] Black Market Price: 150,000 Cr Wilderness Price: 25,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:28
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NG 101 Rail Gun Northern Gun has long been secretive over where they acquired their advanced manufacturing facilities. As a company they began producing "modern" weaponry during the Second Dark Ages, and the Northern Gun armed convoys and the deals that the convoy masters made ensured that more than one settlement made it through the horrific years. The NG-101 was offered as far back as -33 PA to settlements. The weapon was heavy compared to the old M-31 Rail Gun Systems, but sold for cheaper, and often a caravan master would allow the trade of one M-31 rail guns for 2 NG-101 systems. Many believe that Northern Gun has a huge stockpile of old US M-31 railguns somewhere, but if they do, no trace of them has been seen. Made of first generation hyper-alloys, the NG-101 is bulky, heavy, and has a blocky, unfinished look. However, the weapon, while not as effective as the M-31/C-40R, is less ammunition and energy intensive. The barrel uses a single pair of magnetic accelerator rails, however, the NG-101 does not use the standard magnetic barrel pressure injection system, but rather uses a magnetic bolt system to thrust the rounds in. This leads to a shuddering roar when the weapon is fired, with heavy recoil, but as the weapon is designed to be used as a fixed weapon, or carried by a borg or power armor pilot, this drawback is largely ignored. The barrel shroud is made of non-magnetic hyper-alloy, usually neo-aluminum/vanadium mix, with a built in Faraday Cage to keep down EM leakage. In addition the end of the barrel has a "flash deflector" that disperses the ionized gases in the barrel, rendered to near plasma heat by the passage of the rail gun rounds, in order to cut down on muzzle flare caused by the weapon. The weapon does not use the M-31/C-40R cased round feed system, but rather a standard machinegun belt of individual rounds with "breakable links" that fly off the round as the round is pushed from between the belt links by the magnetic piston. This results in a hail of belt links showering from the left side of the weapon out of the ejection port. The weapon fires 20mm shells in 30 round bursts. The weapon has a single safety/semi/auto selector on the right hand side of the weapon that is more a lever than a selector switch. This occasionally jams in the auto mode after extended use. Heat transfer is a problem, with the barrel shroud reaching temperatures of 180 degrees Fahrenheit after a few minutes of fully automatic firing. If the weapon is fired for longer than 10 minutes, the barrel is usually swapped out by the assistant gunner and laid aside to cool. (A trained operator can swap out the barrels in 15 seconds, and it takes 4 minutes for the barrel to cool) Third party weaponsmiths often add in heat venting into the forward shroud to extend the barrel's endurance by more than 300%. The stock is made of armor-plast, with the standard recoil spring system, which does show signs of mechanical failure after several years of use, and which has to be replaced roughly every five years. However, like most parts for the NG-101, the parts can be manufactured locally and easily, and are not too expensive if bought from Northern Gun. The NG-101 has low muzzle velocity compared to other rail guns, only 2860 m/s, almost half that of the M-31/C-40R, but the ablative armor defeating method works quite well, as the NG-101 shows superior burst grouping than most railguns its size and weight. The weapon has three power conduit systems, allowing a secondary or tertiary powerpack to be added to the system. Unlike a lot of Black Market or independent weapons manufacturers, there has never been a problem with degradation of the power conduit leads or sockets. The NG-101 has remained exactly the same since it was first offered, with only wear on the weapon's mechanical systems showing the age of the weapon. It was not until 45 PA that Northern Gun actually started stamping serial numbers on the weapon. The weapon is a favorite of borgs and power armor soldiers, as the weapon can be directly plugged into their internal reactors. While heavy, the weapon is intimidating looking and highly effective. In 62 PA Northern Gun released several hundred of these weapons with Russian alphabet characters on the frame, but these were quickly recalled, with a 2 for 1 offer made to those who had "mistakenly" bought a series of weapons meant for use by "D-Bee's in South Texas." The weapon is virtually identical except for the Cyrillic lettering. The NG-101 does not come with a scope, relying on open sights, however it does have picatinny rails on the sides and top of the barrel, and on top of the upper receiver, allowing a user to add their own additional equipment to the weapon as they desire. Many sellers offer picatinny mating rails for free in hopes of making sales on expensive (and often useless) add ons. The NG-101 has a pintle mounting post on the bottom of the weapon, to allow it to be used with a tripod or on a vehicle ringmount, and many users alter the system by replacing the trigger assembly with more modern parts. Rumor has it that in 102 PA, Northern Gun plans on discontinuing all sales of the NG-101, although they will still sell parts for it. Weight: 128 lbs Length: 58" Caliber: 20mm Muzzle Velocity: 2860 m/s Maximum Range: 2000m (6000 ft) Maximum Effective Range: 1350m (2050 ft) Typical Combat Range: 500m (1500 ft) Magazine Capacity: Belt Fed Manufacturer's Cost: 14,000 Cr Wholesale Cost: 45,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 70,000 Cr Black Market Price: 80,000 Cr Wilderness Price: 22,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:30
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NG-202 Rail Gun Another old weapon, this rail gun is often found on the walls of settlements, on vehicle ring mounts, in the hands of borgs, and being wielded by power armor troops. When this weapon was initially offered in 5 PA, many thought that Northern Gun would be pulling the NG-101 off of the market. The NG-202 followed the same structural appearance of the NG-101, as well as used the same 20mm ammunition. The weapon appeared to be simply the NG-101 on a larger scale, but avid weaponeers noted that there were some subtle differences that could not easily be explained. First of all, the NG-202, like the NG-101, used a 440V system, once again it used a magnetically fired "bolt" to insert the rounds into the rail system at a speed of roughly 250 m/s, the belt used frangible links, the 20mm round was heavier than most rail guns, there was some circuitry inside the upper receiver, where it looked as if it should plug into a scope or other top mounted equipment, that showed the status of the weapon, including power consumption, barrel heat, chamber heat, and cyclic rate of fire, but the circuitry was connected to nothing. Finally, the weapon used first generation hyper-alloys, rather than the rather advanced alloys and polyceramics that the C-40R/M-31 used. Despite these discrepancies, the weapon sold like wildfire through the wilderness, often being mounted on the protective walls or towers or within the bunkers of the settlements perimeter defenses. When people brought up the differences, they were largely ignored. The weapon's barrel shroud and heat deflectors are more efficient than those on the NG-101, with the weapon able to be fired for more than 1 hour before the heat buildup requires the barrel to be swapped out. (15 seconds for a trained operator, 3 minutes of cooldown) The weapon uses a dual rail system, with the rails showing some wear after several million rounds having been fired through the weapon. (Most adventurers never have to replace the rails, and settlements in high threat areas might have to replace the rails every 10 years or so, as the rails are roughly twice the thickness of comparative rails) The firing mechanism consists of a mechanical system that feeds one round into the chamber, and electromagnetics are used the thrust the bolt forward to slam the 20mm round in between the rails. The mechanical firing system is prone to heat transfer problems after extended sustained firing (roughly 3 hours before misfires, including runaway gun syndrome, begin to affect the weapon) in combat situations. The mechanical feeding system also is prone to wear, needing replacement every 2-5 years, as heat stress and constant movement wears on the parts. The stock uses mechanical spring recoil absorption, and many purchasers acquire new springs made of higher tensile materials, as the springs failure rate after 6 months is an amazing 80%. Many third party distributors replace the spring before sale. (1200 Cr for the spring, +5,000 Cr if the mod is done by the seller) The weapon possesses safe, single, and full auto. Single shot tends to jam on occasion, requiring the operator to manually eject the round, as the round lands in the chamber at a slight angle and cannot be thrust in between the rails. The fire selector is the right side of the weapon only. Despite this weapon being used heavily by the Federation of Magic during their invasion of Chi-Town, Northern Gun was able to prove, through the serial numbers, that none of these weapons were purchased by Federation of Magic agents, but rather were stolen from their purchasers, often after the purchaser was murdered. This weapon is found all over the western territories, outside of CS territory, and is even found in small towns and settlements within CS territory. One reason that the CS allows this weapon in such heavy circulation is because rounds fired by the weapon leave a magnetic "pattern" on the rounds fired from the weapon due to magnetic bolt and magnetic round field intermix. These patterns are individual and never replicated by other weapons, allowing the CS the ability to prove whether or not a certian weapon was used in a crime or not. Weight: 198 lbs Length: 63" Caliber: 20mm Muzzle Velocity: 3284 m/s Maximum Range: 3000m (9,000 ft) Maximum Effective Range: 2000m (6,000 ft) Typical Combat Range: 1000m (3000 ft) Magazine Capacity: Belt Fed Manufacturer's Cost: 14,000 Cr Wholesale Cost: 45,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 70,000 Cr Black Market Price: 90,000 Cr Wilderness Price: 25,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:32
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Wilk's 457 Laser Pulse Rifle By 102 PA Wilk's Laser Industries was a household name. Every nation on North America and every mercenary group and even outlying farmers knew who Wilk's was. Nobody had really bothered to look just how much of the laser industry they really held. Most manufacturing companies looked at weapons sales, not the areas where Wilk's was making the majority of its money. Surgical, construction, and manufacturing, laser guidance systems, electronic suites, if it had optics or technical molycircs, there was an 80% chance that you'd find Wilks components in it. In 102 PA Wilk's Laser Industries released the 457 Laser Pulse Rifle, setting a new standard for state of the art weaponry. Many people considered the weapon the pinnacle of modern laser technology, and pointed at the Wilks 457 as proof that the post apocalyptic world had finally passed the Golden Age of man in the field of weaponry. The casing of the weapon is a flat black, with no picatinny rail systems or additions. Only the mounting screws for a standard scope mar the slick black casing. The weapon is extremely lightwieght, even for a Wilk's product, and is balanced perfectly. The lasing aperture is surrounded by six sets of two posts, and these posts remove the ionization from the lens to prevent particle saturation of the lens in prolonged combat. The lasing matrix is synthetic ruby cut in a hexagonal shape and has had all of the impurities and flaws removed via high energy manufacturing laser. The lasing matrix is wrapped in a aluminum/mylar sleeve to prevent any energy escape, and the matrix has been grown in such a way that the internal crystal structure "flows" from one end to the other. The pulse function adds a split second between high powered shots in order for the crystal matrix to clear and the ionized air around the barrel to lose its reflective status without collapsing back in on itself, as well as using the previous bolts along the flightpath to reduce particle debris in the air that normally attenuates a laser bolt. The internal molycircs are shock dampened, protected from emp pulse, and the lasing matrix is hardened against sonic shock and vibrations. From the ground up, this weapon has been designed for the Rifts Earth battlefield. However, detractors of the weapon point at the quantum leap in molycirc development, the intensive crystal manufacturing process, and the fact that there is file footage of Cataclysm Era troops using laser pulse weaponry, but most of these people are considered conspiracy theorists who insist that the Xiticix Killer is a product of Lone Star Labs. These theorists also point at the short length of the weapon, comparing it the M-4 Carbine, which is a chemical burner, or the M-160 rifle, of which only a few are found nowadays. The stock contains tools to open the case, to align or replace the laser emitter or crystal, 2 spare crystals, 1 spare emitter, one fire control unit, and a diagnostic scanner the size of a matchbook. The magazine well contains locking rockers for both standard and extended energy clips, however there is no feed port for an energy conduit, although one can be added at any reputable weaponsmith for the meager price of 2,500 Cr. Any addon's to the front of the weapon, ie: grenade launcher, illuminator, laser targeter, etc; will ruin the weapon's balance and make it less accurate. If the scope does not use the pre-drilled mounting holes, or is not properly balanced onto the weapon, it can ruin the weapon's balance also. Rumor has it that both Tolkeen and the Coalition States were offered this rifle to arm their militaries, with guarantees of sole purchasing rights, but both sides of the upcoming conflict turned it down. Weight: 6 lbs Length: 33" Caliber: 2.5 cm Maximum Range: 1000m (3000 ft) Maximum Effective Range: 700m (2100 ft) Typical Combat Range: 300m (900 ft) Magazine Capacity: 20 shots from a standard energy magazine, 40 shots from an extended magazine. A belt-pack will power it for 167 shots. Manufacturer's Cost: 12,500 Cr Wholesale Cost: 30,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 40,000 Cr Black Market Price: 45,000+ Cr Wilderness Price: 20,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:33
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NG-E4 Northern Gun Plasma Ejector First debuting in -20 PA, the NG-E Plasma Ejector was sold all around the scattered settlements. From the fledgling Chi-Town to the shores of the Dinosaur Swamp, this weapon was peddled everywhere a Northern Gun trading caravan went. The initial plasma weapon sold was a bare bones systems, heavily unbalanced and quickly draining an energy clip of power. The frame was made of first generation hyper-alloys, with the only plastic part being the pistol grip and trigger guard. The frame was built for punishment, able to handle the rigors of supernatural and enhanced combat without being damaged in the fray. The NG-E series functions by ionizing the air within the chamber, and then magnetically compressing the ionized gas (ie: plasma) until compression massively heats up the ionized gas, usually to temperatures in excess of 4000 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the gas is ionized, heated, and compressed, electrons are added to the gas, positively charging the atoms, which are already in a state of flux, and making the plasma more effectively affected by magnetic fluxes. Once that occurs, the weapon uses a shortened set of rail gun rails as a linear accelerator to fire the ball of semi-solid gas at the target. Once the ball of superheated ionized charged matter (commonly referred to as plasma) strikes an object, the massive transfer of heat and electrons results in most solid matter turning to liquid, liquids vaporizing, and gas being torn into its component atoms. The original NG-E did not contain a scope, nor a forward heat shroud, and the weapon featured a 14" stock to help with recoil when the linear accelerator "fired" the plasma. The weapon was known to have heat issues, and an internal clip kept the firing rate down to one plasma round every 3 seconds to avoid overheating. However, a few moments with the case open an a micro-pick to adjust the dip-switches, and the weapon had an unlimited firing mode. Still, the weapon easily overheated, and if the audible alarm was ignored, there was a chance the weapon would explode in the user's hands. 22 PA saw the emergence of the NG-E1, which featured better thermal systems, allowing the weapon to be fired up to once per second without overheating problems. It also replaced the stock with the shortened version seen in the illustration. However, there were problems with the linear accelerator that often caused the plasma round to be affected by gravity and crash into the ground as little as 100m from the firer. A set of new rails could be purchased and installed (200 Cr for the rails, 500 Cr for the installation, 1000 Cr for both) that would fix the problem. In 54 PA the NG-E2 was released, which had removed the magazine well and offered only power conduit feed. This version is popular with borgs and power armor troops, and is still offered today, despite its lack of a scope or forward heat shroud. In 83 PA the NG-E3 was released, which was essentially the same weapon as the NG-E1, but the linear accelerator problem had been beaten, and a forward heat shroud was added and upgraded in order to allow the weapon to cool faster. Complaints of the weapon actually melting polyceramic armor and then getting stuck when the armor cooled around the barrel had finally been addressed after nearly a century. In 102 PA the NG-E4 was released, which added a standard optical scope to the weapon. However, the scope features no additional features besides 2X magnification, and is often replaced by more high-tech scopes by mercenaries and security agents. Weight: 20 lbs Length: 25" Caliber: 18mm Minimum Safe Distance: 10m Maximum Range: 700m (2100 ft) Maximum Effective Range: 600m (1800 ft) Typical Combat Range: 200m (600 ft) Magazine Capacity: 10 shots from a standard energy clip, 20 shots from an extended clip. Manufacturer's Cost: 4,500 Cr Wholesale Cost: 16,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 30,000 Cr Black Market Price: 35,000+ Cr Wilderness Price: 8,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:34
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CV-212/CV-213 Laser Rifle When comparing weapons from the Golden Age of Man to modern times, many point at the Coalition States CV-212 variable frequency laser rifle as proof that technology has advanced beyond what the Ancients were capable of fielding. The CV-21X series is a 1.5cm laser in the red visible range, with short range and burst setting. However, the real technological innovation is often said to be the molycircs that allow the weapon to analyze the refraction of the previous laser beams off of laser reflective armor in order to overcome the laser resistant properties of said armor by finding a vulnerable frequency. However, students of military weaponry will recognize not only the ability, but the molycirc pattern as having been adapted from the JA-9 laser rifle, modified, and then rebuilt in order to remove any easily spotted trace. However, the circuitry pattern of chips AE-B3 as well as the linear molycapicators at the F9 position is a dead giveaway, but is only visible when examining molecular circuitry module M3E9 of both weapon's. However, rather than relying on a trained operator to manually adjust the frequency, the CV-21X system uses a microchip and computer program to do the adjusting for the operator, an obvious evolution of the JA-9's abilities. Some believe that the CV-21X system is actually the long missing JA-10, rebuilt from the legendary cache of pre-Rifts technology that the Coalition States possess, but most of these people believe that Northern Gun is hoarding pre-Rifts weaponry themselves. The casing is made out of neo-tungsten hyperalloy mated with the traditional, and now signature, black macroplast of the Coalition States. The CV-212 contains a scope, while the CV-213 merely possesses a front analyser lens. The CV-212 scope has passive nightvision and laser targeting capability (provided by a built in underslung laser targeting system), while the CV-213 has neither. The casing is post-production darkened via flash-bonding macroplast powder onto the weaponry. The system uses an octogonal synthetic quartz crystal for the lasing matrix, which needs replaced roughly every 100,000 shots. A small indicator LED will light up in the upper right corner of the scope's sight picture when the crystal begins to show degredation that can affect fire. While the majority of the system contains the standard shock dampening mechanisms common in weaponry, the circuitry connecting the computer to the forward analyzer lens is easily knocked from its housing to rattle around the compartment, often causing the laser to warble through frequencies. Most unit level armorers fix this with a small retaining pin, and third party armorers can apply the same fix for the weapon for a meager fee of 250 Cr. The CV-213 has no stock, instead the weapon stops right after the lasing mechanism and the handgrip, and this version is considered the version given to the new Coalition States robotic sentries. The CV-212 has a standard stock, complete with buttkit containing tools to clean the barrel, open the casing, run diagnostics on the system, replace the crystal lasing array, or the emitter. The CV-21X system has not seen much combat, but already the famous Ross Underhill has ordered his infantry divisions to turn in their C-12 laser rifles and be issued CV-212, fueling rumors that General Underhill may be leading the upcoming assault on Tolkeen. (Editor's Note: Well, we all know that didn't happen, didn't we?) Strangely enough, in roughly 0.13% of the time, a robotic sentry armed with a CV-213 will go on a rampage shooting the robots around him and then putting the barrel of the rifle under his own chin and blowing his head off. Never with any other weapon, just the CV-213. Coalition authorities deny this happens, but video was captured in 4 separate instances. We are currently offering a reward of 150,000 Cr for the weapon used in any of these instances, along with documentation proving that the weapon was in fact the one used in one of these cases. Weight: 8 lbs Length: 39"/22" Caliber: 1.5cm Maximum Range: 1000m (3000 ft) Maximum Effective Range: 700m (2100 ft) Typical Combat Range: 250m (750m) Magazine Capacity: 20 shots from a standard magazine, 30 shots from an extended magazine, 30 shots from a canister. Manufacturer's Cost: 2,500 Cr Wholesale Cost: 15,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 50,000 Cr Black Market Price: 50,000+ Cr Wilderness Price: 5,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:35
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TX-500 Rail Gun As recently as 57 PA weapons from the industrial giant Triax began appearing in the North American eastern seaboard and around the Great Lakes area. A German company that supposedly survived the fall of Man and the Great Cataclysm, Triax weaponry is considered to be superior to most "local" weapons, regardless of their real abilities, and Triax capitalizes on this viewpoint. Unknown to most of the population of North America, Triax is locked in war with an empire of supernatural creatures, and so uses the Great Lakes area and North America in general as a "field testing" ground for weaponry, so that any problems in the design show up in the field testing rather than when one of their soldier's has a demon bearing down on him. Additionally, the North American market allows Triax to get rid of a lot of the stored and out of date weaponry that no longer sells in Europe. Introduced in 99 PA, the TX-500 rail gun is actually a departure from the traditional railgun. Normally two or more magnetic rails run the length of the barrel, but for the Triax-500, the rails are roughly 1/3 of the barrel length, and magnetic "pressure" is used to fire the round. The weapon's case is of brushed durasteel, with the stock made of macroplast, rather than the more common duraplast. The weapon is well machined, with the tolerance being less than 1000th of a micron in variance in over 100 weapons randomly selected for examination. At the same time, the weapon can handle up to 1.5 microns variance in parts, allowing for extended field wear on moving parts or parts subject to friction. The two magnetic rails are 50% thicker than normal, and covered with magnetic plastic that passes magnetic and electrical currents quite easily, and has almost no friction despite intense heat generated within the the barrel of the weapon. Both rails can be quickly and easily pulled from the weapon and replaced in under 10 seconds by a trained operator while under fire. The forward handgrip is made of deformable plastics, to allow a solid grip by even armored fingers covered with liquid, prevented field slippage or loose grip aiming errors under rapid fire. The top mounted scope is not built in, but rather is fit to a low picatinny rail system, allowing the scope to be swapped out for one that the end buyer prefers. Some more unscrupulous weapons dealers remove the scope and sell the railgun without it, selling the scope separately for up to 1000 Cr. The power conduit receptor is located underneath the weapon, several inches forward of the trigger guard, and has a locking ring to accept locking cables, or the Triax TX-500PU micro-fusion reactor, which provides over 300KW steadily, and is easily able to last up to 5 years before needing refueling. (5,000 Credits, needs 500 Cr worth the fuel. Most dealers swap the micro-reactors out with a 2,500 Cr exchange cost and just refuel it later, or trade it to Triax, who takes old reactors for 1,000 Cr toward a new reactor (which they charge 1,500 Cr for) regularly.) The reactor is far smaller than anything found on the North American continent, and more than a few traders have made a living off of selling the 400KW fusion generators to settlements, and only offering the rifle with a reactor conduit cable. Beneath the standard firing barrel is a gas vent tube, allowing compressed gasses pushed forward by the accelerating rounds to be bled off into the tube in order to prevent muzzle velocity loss due to air compression in the barrel. However, the weapon is still effective if the tube is cracked, broken off, or dented, just with 25% less range and slightly less damage. The trigger assembly differs from most North American rail gun systems as it is designed for the whole hand, rather than the index finger. The grip is built in such a way that it can accommodate cyborg hands, power armor gloves, or environmental body armor gloves. The trigger requires a 15 lb pull to fire the weapon, making accidental discharges less likely. However, after a year or two of steady use, the trigger begins to lose about 1 lb per 3-6 months, until it only requires a 5 lbs pull, or like many borgs say: "It's as smooth as butter." The rounds are fed into the chamber on a frangible link belt, where the separated sections of the belt are thrown from the left side. Once the round hits the chamber, magnetic chamber pressure of a much higher rate than other weapons, pushes the round into the rails at over 2,570 m/s, nearly reaching the speeds other weapons have for muzzle velocity. The weapon also has extensive shock dampening, recoil compensation, and magnetic saturation protection elements, preventing over saturation of the chamber with magnetic fields from lowering the weapon's cyclic firing speed, or from reducing barrel pressure. In addition, the belt feed port has a locking mechanism to allow special magazines, sold virtually everywhere Triax equipment is sold, to be used in case a belt is damaged or runs out. Many cyborgs prefer the magazines, sold in sizes up to 5 bursts, to the belts, which foes like Juicers and Crazies target in order to deprive the operator of the weapon ammunition. The solid stock contains a buttkit, within are tools to take apart the weapon, a wrench to remove stuck cables or power packs, tools to remove a jammed shell, a demagnetizer/deguasser for use on the rails or the chamber, a diagnostic scanner the size of a thumbnail, and a small instruction booklet on the proper maintenance of the weapon and proper use of the tools and scanner. Weight: 80 lbs Length: 48" Caliber: 18mm Muzzle Velocity: 6,432 m/s Maximum Range: 2000m (6000 ft) Maximum Effective Range: 1500m (4500 ft) Typical Combat Range: 700m (2100 ft) Magazine Capacity: Belt Fed, however mini-clips are available in 90 round ,120 round, and 150 round sizes Manufacturer's Cost: 22,000 Cr Wholesale Cost: 55,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 85,000 Cr Black Market Price: 125,000+ Cr Wilderness Price: 35,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:36
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TX-30 Ion Pulse Rifle This weapon made its debut in winter of 101 PA, the TX-30 has rapidly gained popularity. Appearing on the market just a scant few months before the Wilk's 457 pulse laser rifle, many people lined up to get their hands on an ion blaster that had the damage capability of a modern rail gun. High energy profiling has show conclusively that the TX-30 and the TX-500 rail gun have same energy release upon impact with armor plating, although the rail gun shows superior penetration against soft cover, which does not effect kinetic hits but can often prematurely detonate laser, ion, plasma, and particle beams. The TX-30 actually is of use in a battlefield with heavy undergrowth or airborne debris, as the first packet of ravening ions actually clears the path for the second and third packets, which only degrades the performance by 1/3 (33.34%) in situations where the way is cleared by the first ion pulse. Using an advanced injection system the TX-30 is able to fire a packet of positively charged ions by stripping electrons from air molecules as they are being injected into the chamber using positively charged plastics in the injection feed, and using magnetic barrel pressure to "fire" the packet of ions toward a target. The impact of this ion "bolt" would cause the electrons in the outer shells of the targeted materials to violently strip away as the ions within the charge tried to balance their electron valence bands. This caused the struck material to slough off with a loud, explosive noise as the molecular stabilization failed. This proved particularly useful against molecularly bonded armor as the molecular bonds failed when the atomic structure became unstable. With the injected gas already being partially ionized, the rifle can fire an ion packet at a maximum cyclic rate of 950 packets a minute if the weapon has been modified for fully automatic fire. (This causes the rifle to fail completely within 5 minutes, and is not recommended, and most weapon smiths will not modify the weapon for fully automatic fire.) The rifle's chamber is fed by six small injectors, which pressurize the chamber with ionized gas. The air injectors are not easily replaced or cleaned when fouled, due to their small location, fragile design, and the addition of electron permeable duraplast "air injection tubes" wrapped with superconductor to allow the passage of electrons from the superconductor through the plastic, and to charge the passing air. It takes roughly five minutes and specialized tools to open the case, and even a trained operator cannot swap out the injectors in less than 90 seconds. The weapon's chassis is made of non-magnetic duraplast and molecularly bonded alloys that are electron valence stable, making the addition of stray electrons taken from the weapon's frame more unlikely, and giving the alloy a longer combat life. The weapon uses a forward sliding energy magazine, which is merely the magazine well being turned against the pistol grip and trigger guard, and running conduits up to the molycircs. Hailed as an "innovation" this is little more than creative wiring, and the specialized magazines required for the weapon are an innovative marketing tool and little else. The weapon lacks a standard stock, merely a rear pistol grip, cutting down on the weapon's accuracy and stability, as the weapon cannot be "socketed" into the firer's shoulder. In addition the weapon features open air sights and no mounting screws or picatinny rails for a scope to be mounted, nor can a stock be added without serious modification to the frame. (The addition of the stock makes the weapon far more accurate, allows the use of a scope, and costs roughly 2,500 credits if done by a weaponsmith, or 250 Cr worth the parts, proper tools, and about 8 hours of work by a qualified weaponsmith) The injection system allows for longer battlefield endurance, increasing the amount of shots available from the Triax propiatary energy magazines, nearly double the amount than most competitors. However, the specialized forward sliding magazines are sold only by Triax, and for approximately 20% more than standard North American energy magazines. Investigation has shown that standard North American energy magazines can be modified to the fit the weapon by the addition of a "mating clip" that is becoming more and more widely available from most arms dealers. The mating clip slips over standard North American magazines on the forward side, and allows the magazine to be used in an FSEM weapon. In addition, many armorers are offering conversions to the magazine well to allow NASEM use. (North American Stadard Energy Magazine) Despite claims by Triax and the weapon's fans, the TX-30 ion pulse rifle is innovative only in the air injection system, which still suffers failure at an alarming rate after 6 months of work due to ionized gas acting as a corrosive on the injector system. The frame is well built, but ill-designed, and the weapon suffers from being fairly ineffective in ranged/accurate combat. Weight: 7 lbs Length: 33" Caliber: 3cm Maximum Range: 800m (2400 ft) Maximum Effective Range: 700m (2100 ft) Typical Combat Range: 200m (600 ft) Magazine Capacity: 40 shots from a standard "Forward sliding energy magazine" and 50 shots from an extended FSEM. Manufacturer's Cost: 4,500 Cr Wholesale Cost: 11,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 25,000 Cr Black Market Price: 45,000+ Cr Wilderness Price: 15,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:37
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TX-11 Laser Sniper Rifle Triax has long claimed to be the originator of the JA series of rifles, and the announcement of the release of a laser sniper rifle by the same company that produced the astounding JA series of rifles was looked forward to by most weapons enthusiasts. When the weapon was released in early 102 PA, every weapon's developer and enthusiast ran right out to get their hands on several to examine the inner workings. The weapon's casing is made of molecularly bonded duraluminum with gray powder coating flash bonded to the metal. The forward handgrip located halfway down the barrel is made of deformable black plastic to allow ease of use by armored firers. The pistol grip is made entirely of black duraplast with a durafoam grip to allow the operator to easily mold the grip to their individual grip style. The bstock is a single, foldable minimal wire stock made from duraplast rather than the more durable and reliable macroplast. The magazine well is loaded within the pistol grip, and the weapon was designed to handle standard NASEM or extended magazines. The mounted scope is a standard passive infrared scope with 1X/3X/5X/10X magnification. The weapon's lasing matrix uses a narrow focus lasing aperture, and an artificially grown tubular quartz crystal lazing matrix. The weapon uses a barrel length tubular crystal, with an artificially grown forward lattice to allow the laser beam to travel easily forward. The lasing aperture can be removed by unscrewing the rear housing and withdrawing it from the weapon. However, despite the weapon's hype and aggressive advertising campaign, the weapon is an inferior snipers weapon, and suffers from some serious flaws. The trigger is a simple pushbutton trigger, engaging at less than a 1/2 ounce of pressure. In addition, the trigger guard is too small to easily fit environmental body armored fingers, much less cyborg or power armored fingers. The stock breaks under field use, with the simple screw hinge connecting it to the body of the weapon often failing after the stock is deployed a few dozen times, requiring the replacement of the entire stock. In more than 70% of field tests, an augmented human would shatter the stock when pulling the weapon tight to their shoulders. The scope is often misaligned, and requires serious work by a dedicated shootist to realign, often over 2 hours of firing and sighting. In addition, the scope uses inferior electronic magnification molycircs, resulting in a grainy picture at the 5X setting, and the 10X setting to be little more than a blur. Finally, the passive infrared is standard red-shift sight picture and has no flash compensation circuitry, allowing the infrared scope to be overloaded by something as simple as the target lighting an infrared signal flare. In one instance, the scope was permanently blinded when someone activated an infrared chem-light in order to give the test operator infrared light to get the weapon ready. The infrared chemlight was slightly behind (0.25m) and to the right (1.2m) of the scope at the time. The crystal lasing matrix uses old age technology of tubular smoothed crystals, and has shorter range than cheaper Wilk's and Northern Gun laser weapons, and even standard Coalition C-12 laser rifles show longer range and higher accuracy. The lazing aperture and matrix are substandard parts at best, and offer suffer from misalignment should the weapon be treated roughly. A sharp knock on the rear withdrawal screw has shattered the aperture lenses and the crystal matrix in over 60% of tests. In addition, the quartz crystal has no shock dampening mechanisms surrounding it, resulting in the crystal shattering 40% of the time if dropped from waist height onto a concrete floor, and 55% of the time when dropped from shoulder height to a concrete floor, and 100% of the time if thrown against a wall at a 3m distance by an unaugmented human. Laser output is extremely short ranged for a "sniper" rifle, and does slightly less damage in both laboratory and field tests than the Wilk's 457 Pulse Rifle on single round setting, and is comparable in damage to the NG-L5 Laser Rifle, which has better range and is much studier. Most professionals avoid the TX-11 Laser "Sniper" Rifle, preferring Wilk', Northern Gun, or even stolen Coalition equipment to this obviously substandard weapon. Many consider it the sign of an easily conned "wannabe" if a person is carrying it. None of the innovations shown in the JA series of rifles, in modern or Golden Age sniper weapons, are present in the TX-11. This fact alone has shown that if Triax did invent the JA series of rifles, they seem to have forgotten how to build sniper rifles, or at least are not exporting any sniper weapons of note to the North American continent. Weight: 3 lbs Length: 28", 32" with stock deployed Caliber: 2.25cm Maximum Range: 650m (1950 ft) Maximum Effective Range: 550m (1650 ft) Typical Combat Range: 250m (750 ft) Magazine Capacity: 10 shots from a NASEM, or 20 shots from an extended magazine Manufacturer's Cost: 1,250 Cr Wholesale Cost: 15,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 20,000 Cr Black Market Price: Will try for 25,000 Cr, but will settle for 16,000 Cr Wilderness Price: 3,000-9,000 Cr, depending on if the buyer believes the hype of the advertising campaign.
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Sep 28, 2014 06:38
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TX-16 Pump Rifle In July of 101 PA the Triax Pump rifle was started to be offered in the Great Lakes area, and by March of 102 PA it was available from the Pecos Badlands to the Dakotas to the Dinosaur Swamp, and all places in between. Ammunition availability has been excellent, with the ammunition costing either 650 Cr per round, with 100 Credits for an empty speed loader strip or 2000 Cr for a speed loader strip with 8 of the rounds attached to it. The weapon is marked as being made in Bonn and Neurenburg Germany, and the molycircs are hardened against EMP. The weapon is usually brought by ship to the Great Lakes ports and offered there, with Triax authorized subsidiaries taking it from there and offering it in other places. The frame is made of advanced non-magnetic hyperalloys and molecularly bonded macroplast. The weapon's frame breaks down into several parts. The upper receiver, which is the barrel and the internal magazine, the lower section is the cocking mechanism and the pump-activated energy rails, the handgrip, and the forward handguard. The trigger is button activated, requiring 3 lbs of pressure to activate it, and the trigger well is large enough to fit most cyborg fingers, power armor gloves, and environmental armor gloves. The forward handgrip is lightly pebbled to provide excellent grip even under damp conditions, and the pistol grip has malleable plastic grips that deform to the operator's hand to allow a tight grip. The forward handguard is made of duraluminum, with the rotating screw housing remaining in excellent shape even after the handguard has beeen rotated several thousand time. The handguard can stand up to more punishment than expected, as it has been used more than once to punch an opponent without damage to the handguard, and some operators have taken to mounting spikes on the handguard after locking the handguard into place and adding on another wire stock. Many enhanced warriors distrust the fragile appearing dualuminum handguard/wire stock, choosing to replace it with a thicker foldable stock. The weapon uses open sights, with the front sight post being mounted on the forward part of the barrel. The handgrip on the top of the weapon has a sight that operates in an unconventional manner. The sight uses a laser distancer that allows the user to know the range to the target, as well as passive nightvision systems. However, rather relying solely on a targeting pip, the sight lines up with the forward aiming post on the end of the barrel, allowing for greater accuracy. The internally mounted scope can be used with either passive nightvision, or unenhanced sight. The scope does not have telescopic ability, although some users have the sight modified to allow telescopic sighting, after having the front post removed. The grenades are stored in an internal magazine, and are loaded one at a time through the port located on the right side of the weapon, and moved back to the rotating storage magazine by pumping the forward slide. The rounds are fired via magnetic chamber pressure, which propels the round through a rifled barrel to impart a spin on the round. Once the round leaves the barrel small micro-fins deploy to impart even further stabilization on the round. The shotgun shell appearance is to contain the micro-HEAP round. The round operates by the forward edge of the round striking a solid object, detonating the explosive at the rear of the shotgun appearing round. The detonation of the micro-explosive causes the copper convex plate to invert into a small lance of molten copper surrounded by plasma. The pinpoint lance penetrates armor, liquifying the armor it contacts. If the the explosively forged penetrator does not penetrate the armor, the heat transfer and infiltration of the liquid copper causes a "divot" to pop free, leaving a weakened part of the armor behind. To the inexperienced eye, however, the round appears to be a micro-grenade that does not have a normal damage radius. The damage radius is not from the grenade itself, but from armor fragments that are blasted from the armor by heat transfer shock. The weapon packs a devastating punch, holds up well under combat, and has a well thought out design, with the internal magazine being heavily shock dampened, and easy for the operator to get to in case on internal jam. A trained operator can open the weapon in less that 10 seconds, access the internal clip in another 15 seconds, clear the jam in roughly 5 second, and reassemble the weapon in another 10 seconds. The weapon generates the needed energy by high powered generators located at the end of the pump bar. When the weapon is pumped, the dragging of the grip down the bar activates the generators, generating electricity that is stored in a built in capacitance gel storage cell. The energy lasts for several days if not immediately used by firing the weapon. The energy is used to create the magnetic barrel pressure that fires the round. Despite the misnomer by the public that this weapon is a grenade launcher (Triax has made no such claims) this weapon is actually a high powered shotgun that uses innovative and highly advanced shells. The primary evidence, that should be obvious to everyone, is that this weapon is not an indirect fire weapon, but rather a point to point weapon with a fairly flat ballistic arc. While the weapon is forward heavy, a stock is available from Triax and other weapons dealers that make the weapon excellently balanced, as well as carrying a buttkit that includes tools as well as a diagnostic scanner. Weight: 21 lbs Length: 28" Caliber: 15mm Muzzle Velocity: 935 m/s Minimum Range: 10m (30 ft) Maximum Range: 650m (1950 ft) Maximum Effective Range: 550m (1650 ft) Typical Combat Range: 250m (750 ft) Magazine Capacity: 16 Manufacturer's Cost: 4,500 Cr Wholesale Cost: 23,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 37,000 Cr Black Market Price: 14,000 Cr Wilderness Price: 9,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:40
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TX-5 Pump Pistol Debuting at the same time as the TX-11 Pump Rifle, this weapon has proved highly popular with the "Old West" style of gunman found out in the western territories as a hold out weapon usually tucked into a boot or carried in an ankle holster. Purchasers are usually offered shoulder holsters, lower back hide-out holsters, and ankle holsters by Triax distributors. The pistol fires the same micro-HEAP munitions as the TX-11 Pump Rifle, the ammunition working in either weapon. The power generation is the same, created through the pump action system and stored in a small capacitance gel energy cell inside the handgrip. The frame is made of density enhanced endosteel, with molecularly bonded macroplast used for the pistol grip and the pump action grip. Both grips also are coated with deformable pebbled plastic that deforms to the user's hands to allow a tighter grip on the weapon or the action. The action moves the pump action grip forward of the weapon, extending two inches past the barrel of the weapon. Due to the shortness of the generation rail, it requires both the forward and back action to energize the weapon well enough to create the magnetic barrel pressure needed to fire the shell down the rifled barrel. The weapon has a four round internal magazine, with one kept in the chamber, for a total of five rounds, and a trained operator can reload the weapon in less than 5 seconds from loose shells, and just under three seconds from a box. The trigger guard is not removable, but is wide enough to allow power armor and environmental armor gloved fingers, as well as cyborg fingers. The trigger only has a half pound of pressure before it fires the weapon. The weapon uses open air iron sights, and no scope mounting is available. The addition of a scope is often performed by users. Weight: 5 lbs Length: 9" Caliber: 15mm Muzzle Velocity: 650 m/s Minimum Range: 5m (15 ft) Maximum Range: 350m (950 ft) Maximum Effective Range: 275m (825 ft) Typical Combat Range: 15m (45 ft) Magazine Capacity: 4, with one in the chamber Manufacturer's Cost: 1,350 Cr Wholesale Cost: 7,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 13,000 Cr Black Market Price: 15,000 Cr (As high as 30,000 Cr in the Western Territories) Wilderness Price: 5,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:40
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EBA-130 Body Armor The origin of modern body armor lies in the space race. With orbital facilities becoming a reality in 2033, the Mars landing of 2019, and the advanced space projects going on by various mega-corporations and the governments of a multitude of nations, the standard "soft" spacesuit was showing a larger and larger percentage of failure under the harsh conditions of space and the dangerous rigors of extraplanetary work. In 2026 Virgin Spaceways unveiled their new "harsh environmental protective armor" which provided protection from typical hazards, and could actually resist conventional, 20th Century weaponry. It could even protect the wearer from single shots of the M-31 Rail Gun! This suit was quickly labeled "Space Armor" by the press, and Virgin found itself besieged by requests for the suits for use in the orbital workyards and by security firms from around the world. The race between armor systems and armor defeating munitions was back with a vengeance, with improvements in munitions outpacing armor which then outpaced the munitions, and so on. In 2095 the NEMA Future Warfighter Program held armor trials for personnel environmental body armor, with the advances in hyperalloys and synthetic plastics of the last decade promising to make lighter, more mobile, and stronger suits of environmental body armor available to NEMA troops. At the end of the 2095 trails, the Dragonhide Armor LLC was chosen, not only for its superior protection values, but for its internal systems, which consistently outperformed the competition. The armor was manufactured in their Dayton OH plant, with the electronics being provided by Litton/Intel computer manufacturing, and many other parts being subcontracted to a whole slew of companies. The armor was assembled in Detroit Michigan, Butte South Dakota, and 50 miles northwest of Reno Nevada. In addition, Dragonhide Armor LLC provided NEMA with 8 micro-fabrication units that promptly vanished. Dragonhide Armor LLC offered a revolutionary flexi-plate system that protected the abdomen and offered full abdominal mobility without sacrificing armor protection, finally solving the problem of the abdomen being the most vulnerable part of environmental body armor. It had long been known that the sniper sweet spot was no longer the nape of the neck, or the armpit, but rather the center line of the body armor, where there was nearly no armor protection. As NEMA and UN forces often came under sniper attack during peace-keeper missions, the Dragonhide "Soldier Mobility System" promised to reduce fatalities and injuries even further. The underarm, neck, back of the knee, elbow, ankle, and wrist were protected by a modification of the SMS, making shots to those areas ineffective, protecting the soldier from sniper attacks even further. This was a major concern with the appearance of the mysterious JA-9 and JA-11 rifles. The armor itself featured light polyceramic plating, molecularly bonded to resist high energy particles. The plating could easily handle kinetic impacts up to 5000 foot pounds of energy without damage (For comparison, the venerable .50 Cal M2A2 GPHMG has 3000 fp) or even surface marring. In addition to armor plating, the suit had tiny solar power collectors no bigger than the head of a pin scattered through the suit to absorb power for the armor from the sun. In the event of an energy weapon hit, the micro-fuses blew to keep the energy imparted to the armor from effecting the suits power storage systems. Total armor thickness, including all sub-layers and internal system layers is a remarkably thin 1.75 inches. Beneath the plating is a layer of molecular circuitry that kept track of the integrity of the armor and was tied into the suit's computer, as well as a layer of piezo-electric crystals that generated energy for the suit via the wearer's movement, including breathing. The next layer was a nanofluidic gel that helped disperse the kinetic energy from heavy duty strikes, namely the new GR-65 14.1mm rail gun released on the market by the Ugandan weapon manufacturers, and the 15mm rail gun released by Iranian weapon manufacturers. This gel was manufactured in the Virgin Orbital Industries zero-G "exotic materials" manufacturing plant, and shipped back to Dragonhide LLC. The next layer was another layer of armor, only half the thickness of the primary armor layer, designed to protect the wearer if the first armor layer was breached. This layer was also molecularly bonded and engineered to resist radiation. The layer beneath that was an armor lattice that allowed components to be added to the armor to enhance its combat effectiveness. The next layer contained neoprene padding, to keep the armor from chafing the user. The neoprene transferred liquid in only one direction, away from the wearer, collected it, and used the pressure of the wearer walking to operate manual pumps to force the sweat through a water purifier. The now-purified sweat was placed in an emergency container for secondary, emergency, drinking water. There was also a food paste dispenser, with the storage area located just above the right collarbone of the wearer. The wearer could pull nutrient paste through the tube and into their mouth by sucking on the tube, so that a wearer could eat while wearing the suit in a hostile environment. The paste is nasty tasting, thick, and coats the mouth with a greasy, foul aftertaste, but it is nutritious and will keep the wearer fed with the necessary vitamins, nutrients, calories, and carbohydrates to fulfill the battlefield requirements of nutrition for up to 72 hours. The wearer attached the waste removal system to their body upon donning the waist section, allowing the user to wear the body armor for up to 72 hours if necessary. Waste collection discs can be removed and replaced by the wearer without breaching the suit's environmental seal. It will take the wearer approximately five minutes to swap out the waste collection discs, but a second person can do it in less than a minute, due to the angle. The back of the armor had six modular rails, to allow the attachment of mission specific equipment, standard load carrying devices, or the addition of up to six air supply tanks to the back of the armor. (Each tank weighs 10 lbs and contains 5 hours of air) The US military had plenty of modular combat equipment that could be added to the back of the armor, from high powered battlefield communication/network hubs, to 66mm mortars, to heavy weapon energy packs, making this an important part of the armor. The communications antenna array is built into the armor along the biceps and shoulders of the armor, meshed into the molycirc layer and having "external receptors" the size of a pinhead replacing every other solar collector. This antenna array is tied into the helmet surface antenna and the armor's communication system. Integration of the communications broadcast/reception array with the armor itself kept the communications system from being targeted by snipers, and ensuring that a minor mishap would not put a wearer out of communication. (The crash of the Hopi Hovercarrier in Oman during the 2054 Oman/Yemen War, where a NEMA Omni-Team was put out of communication due to their communication arrays being damaged was a painful lesson to learn) An 80 decibel loudspeaker system is built into the upper right shoulder, and is normally kept within the armor to avoid damage. However, the loudspeaker can be deployed in less than 10 seconds via internal systems, and does not significantly lower the armor's protection. The speaker can either be used by the wearer, or used to broadcast verbal input from the radio communications. The upper left shoulder has a built in optical link the size of a small box of matches. (Note: Research into cameras have shown they can be as small as a quarter with excellent detail) The camera is shock dampened and contains passive and active nightvision molycircs. The camera burst feeds the information gathered every 5-20 seconds, the compressed burst containing the video footage of the entire time. This usually returns to a mobile command post, for overview by gathered officers, mission commanders, and allows instant advice, mission objective alterations, or commands to be fed to the troops in the field. However, since signal triangulation is a big part of the digital battlefield (some missiles can home in on continuous radio signals) the feature can be disabled, and the information be gathered afterwards from the built in Battle-ROM storage WORM (Write Once-Read Many) crystal storage array. In addition, the wearer of the armor can use the feed from the camera, displayed on the HUD instead of the view through the visor, if the visor has been coated by an impenetrable material. The visor contains embedded active and passive nightvision circuitry, the suits internal battle computer can clear dust, snow, ash and other airborne debris from the wearer's vision. In addition, it can outline threats, show video feeds from other devices in small windows at the top of the HUD. The internal environmental charge is showed as a percentage in the upper right, the armor's intergrity is shown in the lower left as an overlay with color coding. The information data window is on the left side of the screen, and is often used to show the Rules of Engagement, the local customs, local laws, ID profiles of targets or important people. The BaTN map is often shown in a window on the right side of the visor. The internal headset can translate Spanish, English, Russian, German, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, French, Portugease, Swahili, Afrikaan, Farsi, and Finnish with 80% accuracy to any of the other listed languages, allowing the NEMA soldier to communicate with local authorities and population. With cybernetics becoming safer and more common, NEMA plans on having cybernetic data-jacks become standard issue to all personnel in 2099, to allow data to be directly downloaded to wearers, as well as improve battlefield operations. Currently, datajacks are only pre-required by power armor pilots, but the benefits are too great to be ignored, and limited field tests have shown that datajack equipped troops are less likely to develop information overload, or psychological issues based on the desire to have a multitude of information available from developing. The wearer can operate on filtered air indefinitely, or upon internal environmental systems for up to five hours. The internal environment is controlled by the armor's computer system, which engages the internal systems automatically if the surrounding atmosphere contains non-filterable hazards or if the armor's filters have suffered 60% or more degredation. The computer monitors the wearer's biometric data, and increases available oxygen to the wearer in order to ensure that the wearer has enough oxygen even during high exertion. Air pressure within the suit is increased during high activity to help prevent the psychological feeling of suffocation that environmental systems can bring. The armor normally brings in fresh air to help ease the wearer psychologically, and state of the art NBCR (Nuclear/Biological/Chemical/Radiation) detectors will automatically seal the suit and switch over to full environmental protection. However, the filters can handle most of the more common chemical weapons, as well as fallout and most of the larger biological agents, including weaponized smallpox, anthrax spores, and the like, meaning the suit just uses its filtering system and alerts the wearer to the biological or chemical hazard. The suit is insulated and temperature controlled, allowing the wearer to ignore such environmental hazards as fire, smoke, and freezing temperatures. The computer system can humidify the air in dry climates to provide comfort for the wearer. When the suit is fully assembled and the wearer activates it, the neoprene lining inflates slightly to ensure the armor is a perfect fit and that the wearer is able to be cushioned from impacts by the armor's systems. Built into the right chest is an IRMMS kit to provide emergency medical care for wearer's who sustain injury due to fall, massive kinetic energy hit, or other serious injury. Despite the suits many features, it cannot protect the wearer from extensive falls farther than 50 feet, and a 200 foot fall is almost always lethal. The computer system of the armor is tied into the Battlefield Tactical Network, allowing the wearer to make updates, access new information, and send/receive orders over the tactical net. The left index finger contains a laser target designator/laser communications emitter, to allow the wearer to either laze in guided munitions or use the laser communications device to make it more difficult for the enemy to locate and triangulate on radio emissions or listen in to the battlenet. With the constant advances of the digital battlefield, the suit also has to have a low thermal/energy profile, and be able to provide EC(C)M systems to the wearer. The ECM package allows the wearer to spoof most sensor systems and targeting systems, and the ECCM package enables the radio to break through enemy radio ECM. In case of emergency, the wearer can open the air system filters and shut down all energy systems on the armor in order to move "full stealth" and have zero energy and almost no thermal signature. The Battlefield Tactical Network Interface is built into the helmet, and into the left forearm (or right forearm if the wearer is left handed) of the armor. In addition, many of the suits have a helmet dataplug allowing wearers fitted with a cybernetic datalink to use the systems "hands-free" during wear. The biceps of both arms contain three "dataplugs" allowing weapons or modular armor components to be integrated into the suit's combat computer system. The suits IFF beacon is a queriable beacon, responding only when it receives the correct ID heading on the query signal, to avoid enemy forces from homing in on a constantly broadcasting beacon. The beacon has its own power supply, kept constantly charged, that is good for up to 14 days before it will lack the power to broadcast at least one return signal. During the Cataclysm, this armor saw extensive combat use. Some users fought at least twice every 72 hours for over 15 years. The armor's ability to have the plates replaced individually instead of the entire armor having to be replaced made it an invaluable asset on the Cataclysm theater. By year five the nanofluidic gel was out, and the armor's wearer got banged around a bit more than usual, but the armor held up. The fact that the nanofluidic gel could not be manufactured in a gravity well prevented more from being manufactured during the Cataclysm Years. During the Second Dark Ages, these suits were literally used till destruction, until not a single piece of it was left. Even so, every now and then scavengers and prospectors would find the odd suit cached in the ruins or in the middle of nowhere. Rifts-Earth time this armor is considered a legacy item. The few suits that remain are either in museums, held by families who use it as proof of their family lineage, or keep it as a showpiece. Those armors are never repaired, the damage they've taken left as a mute testament to the wearer's brutal struggle for survival. General Ross Underhill has a suit in his personal collection that has iridescent patterning on it from energy strikes fusing the coating of volcanic ash to the armor plating. The breastplate and across the back reads "UNDERHILL, F." and the armor has NEMA Major rank on it and in the onboard IFF beacon. Recently, someone dumped almost three hundred of these armors, in pristine condition, on the Black Market. The CS is intensely interested in who might have found that much armor and weaponry from NEMA times. Weight: 12 lbs Available Sizes: 5' to 6' 4" Mobility: Good Availability: Exclusive to NEMA Manufacturer's Cost: 22,000 Cr Wholesale Cost: 50,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: Not for Sale Black Market Price: 75,000+ Cr Wilderness Price: 20,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:42
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Plastic Man Body Armor By 2026 multiple orbital yards were in place around Earth. Everything from exotic material manufacturing to shipbuilding yards for the Mars race, to satellite repair yards to massive orbital stations all sat in zero gravity with hundreds of personnel living and working at the facilities. In 2025 alone, over 40 people were killed, despite armored suits, when micro-meteorites, orbiting dust, or even small screws and nuts dropped by other crews, holed the suits. In every case, massive lawsuits emerged, often costing the parent company more than the facility itself would in the long run. Space was rapidly becoming unprofitable to companies, who found themselves with dozens of lawsuits every year concerning things they could not prevent or influence. In 2026 Virgin Spaceways unveiled the Harsh Environmental Protective Armor for use by their orbital and lunar work crews. This armor could withstand micrometeorites, debris impacts, cosmic radiation, had life support for 6 hours without additional environmental packs added, and could withstand hits from misfired construction equipment. The armor consisted of lightweight, molecularly bonded synthetic neoplastics. The molecular bonded helped interlock the atomic valence bands, increased the density of the plastic without adversely affecting weight through advanced processes, which prevented radiation from penetrating the thin armor. The next layer is thin layer of molycircs that monitors the armor's integrity, as well as radiation levels so that it can warn the wearer of an increase of radiation that might herald an incoming solar flare radiation surge. Next is close fitting neoprene that slightly inflates to keep the person inside comfortably snug within the armor. The first run of this armor suffered from perspiration pooling, with the feet having as much as 4 liters of water in the feet and lower legs. This was solved with uni-directional water transfer where the water was collected, purified, and returned to the drinking water reservoir. The bodily functions equipment are attached when the wearer dons the waist pieces, and bodily waste is stored in a small compartment on the right hip. This waste collection system can be changed out in a vacuum without danger to the wearer, and each collection cube can store up to 8 hours of waste. In addition, each segment could "auto-tourniquet" to prevent a hole in the hand from completely depressurizing the suit. A hit to the inner thigh would result in hip tourniquet, preventing loss of life even though the leg was exposed to vacuum. The tourniquet prevented blood loss through "vacuum boiling" and kept a wearer alive. In one case, a worker lost his leg from the knee down, and was still able to keep his thigh and his life. The helmet has a wide area of vision, a video feed on the left side, an illumination lamp on the right side, and is capable of passive or active nightvision as well as displaying the time left on environmental, the integrity of the armor, and the status of the electromagnetic tie. The communications system is built into the helmet and is a 150 channel capable system with a broadcast range of 1 miles in space or 5 miles in atmosphere. (Radiation in space degrades the radio signal significantly) with the communications array antenna deployable from behind the right shoulder. The internal environmental system is computer controlled, and keeps the wearer cooled despite the close fitting neoprene sleeve. The oversize hip sections also contain cooling fins that bleeds off the heat from the environmental tubing running through the neoprene, to keep the armor from overheating in space when the wearer has to work directly exposed to the suns rays. In addition, the hips contain the heater units to keep the tubing running through the neoprene sleeve warm when the wearer is working in the shade. An electromagnetic tie can be plugged into the suit on the abdominal section, in order to keep a worker safely tethered. The right forearm plate contains programming controls to allow effective use of CAD controlled manufacturing equipment, as well as programming a thruster pack. A popup joystick can be used to perform careful maneuvers or instructions to CAD equipment or a thruster pack. In 2045 Virgin Spaceways upgraded the armor to provide nearly double the protection of the first suit, as well as upgrading glove articulation to allow for careful work under harsh conditions. The radiation shielding was increased to further protect the wearer, as well as keeping the suit from becoming radioactive itself. In 2047 the nation of Russia purchased several hundred of these suits in order to allow workers to enter the Chernobyl site to clean up the area, clear away radioactive debris, and tear apart the reactor safely so that the area could be reclaimed. Out of over 500 workers, not a single one was ever exposed to more than normal background radiation, despite working in the core itself for a brief time to remove the fuel elements. In 2055, when North America started refitting the aging Interstates, highways, and freeways, Virgin Spaceways sold thousands of these suits to the NAA Department of Transportation. These suits had the heating/cooling fins removed, as well as lowered radiation shielding. The suits prevented lost man hours from injuries, as well as saving the NAA taxpayer millions in disability payments and pensions. In several cases, when bridges being repaired collapsed, workers were uninjured despite tons on concrete collapsing on them. Workers assigned to bridges over water, dams, or other work sites where submersion was a danger, a mechanical gill system was applied to the armor to prevent drowning. The NAA Department of Transportation version had orange paint on the chest and back, as well as better gripping soles on the soles of the boots. The sight of this armor on road construction sights became common, and by 2060 nobody even really made the connection between DoT protective gear (Department of Transportation Individual Protective Equipment) and military body armor being fielded by UN and NEMA peacekeepers. In 2078 when the NAA civil defense programs were reactivated, Virgin Spaceways produced over one hundred microfabricators for the armor, which promptly disappeared. Civil defense planning called for survivors of a massive disaster, housed in one of the large underground facilities, to have access to this armor for exploration of the world after a massive disaster. During the Cataclysm, the armor was handed out as often as possible to important civilians, including non-military trained politicians. This armor saved people's lives more than once. However, the volcanic ash often overloaded the suit's filters, forcing the wearer to go helmetless. During the Second Dark Ages, many of the microfabricators were found, and this armor was briefly produced by short lived companies that ran the microfabricators until they were out of materials, sold all the armors, and folded. Despite the low protection offered by this armor, most settlements decided it was better than nothing. In Rifts-Earth, the armor is considered the bare minimum of protection for militia or explorers, but is most popular in hot climates, as the armor has superior heat dissipation. Some arctic condition settlements consider the plastic man to be superior to armors that provide more armor protection, as the suit can handle sub-zero temperatures without armor degradation or the wearer becoming uncomfortable. Weight:13 lbs Available Sizes: Child to adult (2' to 7') Mobility: Fair Availability: Excellent Manufacturer's Cost: Often free or 3,400 Cr Wholesale Cost: 9,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 18,000 Cr Black Market Price: 15,000 Cr Wilderness Price: 10,000 C
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Sep 28, 2014 06:44
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Huntsman Armor This lightweight and fairly popular armor is manufactured by several small armor companies around the Great Lakes area, as well as a company in Southern Texas, a company in North Dakota, a plant in central Mexico, and another small plant in Ohio. The armor is considered minimal protection by most mercenaries and settlement militia, but the armor is priced right for those settlements suffering from a poor economy, and repair costs are very low. The Huntsman series of armor was initially an early version of SWAT armor, invented prior to the North American Alliance Pact of 2035, produced mainly for New York, Los Angles, Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago, and other large metroplexes. Due to the rising prices of fossil fuels at the time, it was actually cheaper for Huntsman Inc to build factories in the industrial districts of the cities central to the locations purchasing the armors than to truck in the materials and supplies, manufacture the equipment, and then ship it to the end consumer. By 2035 the rising price of fossil fuels had more and more groups predicting a total collapse of western civilization, and Huntsman Inc found themselves selling thousands of their body armors a month to civilians, militias, and paramilitary groups. In 2039, Dow/Exxon produced the first synthetic gasoline, including fuel that could be used in high performance aircraft. This gasoline had actually more energy potential than normal gasoline, allowing more efficiency per gallon. Exxon used the fuel to leverage the other gasoline and oil companies out of business, with its parent company Dow Chemicals sucking up the loss in order to allow the executives of Exxon to wreak vengeance upon the other corporations which had bankrupted it and facilitated a hostile takeover of Exxon by Dow Chemicals. Once the synthetic fuel was out, produced cheaper and sold cheaper than regular fossil fuels (Fossil Fuel Gasoline, 87 Octane sold for $26.93/gallon in North America, while Exxon NuFuel at 87 Octane sold at $0.78/gallon) it once again became cheaper to move materials around and have a zero-inventory supply system than it was to warehouse materials and have everything built in one place. This also calmed the "End is Coming!" factions, and Huntsman Inc began suffering serious sales issues, with declining profit margins and unhappy stockholders. When the great "Miami Shootout" of 2041 took place, with the gunmen wearing Huntsman armor, it spelled the end for the armor company. Thousands of people had been injured in the six hour running gunfight, and every one of them leveled a multimillion credit lawsuit on Huntsman Inc, claiming that their lack of background checks or concern over who they were selling the body armor too directly led to the deaths and injuries. When the dust settled, Huntsman Inc was totally bankrupt. They no longer owned the factories that produced the armor, and the ordered liquidation of the factories by the court never proceeded, as more than 2,000 of the litigants filed motions to have the factories turned over to those who won the lawsuit that were willing to pay part of their settlement for it. By the time the Cataclysm rolled around, the factories were still there, gathering dust, stockpiled with production materials. Most of the factories survived the coming of the Cataclysm, and sat forgotten for decades until one after another they were discovered by explorers. Now, the factories often serve as the center of a small settlement. The armor itself is a lightweight molecularly bonded kevlar/polyceramic layered ablative armor. Lightweight and somewhat flexible, the armor uses articulated joints like those found on ancient platemail. The armor is resistant to electricity and laser weapons, as well as absorbing kinetic shocks quite well. However, some versions of the Huntsman armor have a tendency to catch fire when hit by plasma, as the plasma melted armor plating vaporizes into a flammable gas that fuels the fire, which in turn melts more armor, in a cyclic action that eventually consumes the armor plating. Armor with this problem is identifiable by the "North Dakota Freemen" logo on the right forearm. In addition, the armor has "hard plate" inserts beneath it of molecularly bonded neoaluminum, to help resist the kinetic damage from rail guns, autocannons, etc. The plate is easy to replace, should it be shattered or penetrated, or damaged too badly to use. Simply open the side, remove the hard plate, and reinsert another one. However, the leg and arm portions are made up of thick duraplast laminates, and must be replaced in their entirety should they be damaged. Beneath the armor is a neoprene sleeve with environmental tubing running through it. This tubing keeps the wearer warm or cool, depending on the outside temperature, but the suit does not possess any power generating circuitry, forcing the wearer who wishes to activate the heating and cooling system to slot a NASEM into a port on the right thigh. The energy magazine will last approximately 2 weeks, however. When powered, this suit merely has a computer that decides if the wearer's body temperature is high or low, if it is hot outside or cold outside, and either heats the liquid in the tubing or cools it to try to bring the wearer to a comfortable temperature. Most of the time, this chip has to be removed and one with better environmental control is installed, as the built in chip is rather stupid. The armor is not environmentally sealed, does not possess a helmet, and is not radiation shielded. However, a few version are fully radiation shielded, and possess a helmet (not pictured) that has a detachable locking collar to protect the neck, a polarizing face shield, and a detachable lower face gas mask/respirator. One thing that does make this armor excellent is its non-existent EM profile, lack of thermal signature, and total absence of energy readings, allowing the armor to be overlooked by most sensor systems. For this reason, the armor has seen a resurgence in popularity by Crazies and Juicers now that the digital battlefield looks as if it will make a reappearance on Rifts Earth. During the Cataclysm, many militia groups clad in this body armor tried valiantly to defend local citizens, but its inferior protection and out of date armor materials in the end came to no avail, and the groups were wiped out. During the Second Dark Ages, many factories were found and either restarted, or were broken down and rebuilt in areas that were more habitable. Thousands of these suits were churned out with the intent of protecting the citizens of settlements, or to provide settlement militias with at least a small measure of protection. On Rifts Earth, hundreds of these suits are sold a year, not counting the replacement hardplates and arm/leg pieces. Their often worn by light recon forces, police with a beat in a dangerous but urban area where heavy weapons are unlikely, and money strapped explorers/adventurers. The Coalition States views this armor as a life-preserving necessity, and rarely makes an issue of it. Weight: 16 lbs Available Sizes: small, medium, and large (4' to 7') Mobility: Fair Availability: Excellent Manufacturer's Cost: Free to 3,500 Cr Wholesale Cost: 10,000-15,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 15,000 Cr to 20,000 Cr Black Market Price: 18,000 Cr Wilderness Price: 7,500 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:47
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Juicer Assassins Plate With the appearance of the JA-9 Assassin's Rifle, additional equipment was found on the scene, including an advanced helmet mounted HUD and cybernetics that took advantage of the Juicer's ability to process large amounts of data at computer speeds. The Juicer Assassins Plate armor was worn by nearly every assailant armed with a JA-9 and possessing the Mark I Juicer Conversion. The 2075 incident in Africa led to literally dozens of these suits of armor being available for NEMA and NAAP think tanks to examine. The armor consisted of lightweight polyceramic plates, coated with advanced stealth shielding, making the wearer virtually invisible to scanning systems of the day. In fact, the stealth shielding was so effective, that power armor pilots discovered that they'd have to reaquire their target roughly every 10-15 seconds, more if for some reason the wearer of the armor managed to hide for a few split seconds. The armor contained absolutely no electronics, no ECM or ECCM systems, not even the common "spoofing" electronics that most combat environmental body armor contained. The suit's plates were designed to be radar defeating, be "slippery" to sensor systems, and allow the wearer full mobility under combat operations. The plating was highly advanced, but did not use any materials that normally were seen in military grade body armors. Technical analysis of the armor showed that the plating could be made by a small fabrication facility, easily concealed, that would not be the energy intensive manufacturing facilities currently in use by most civilized nations. One analyst team determined, and proved by replication, that the armor could be produced in an underground facility fitted with commonly available equipment. Tracing of the type of equipment that would be needed to produce Juicer's Assassin Plate proved to be impossible, as most of the equipment was freely available, and often shipped to emerging nations for use in modern construction. The 2085 version of the Juicer Assassin's Plate, captured in large numbers, show structural evidence of being designed for use exclusively by soldiers who had undergone the Juicer Enhancement Process (MK I and MK II). Certain irregularities between JAP and normal environmental body armors were as follows:
All of this led the analyst teams to conclude that the armor was built with those receiving the Juicer Enhancement System (MK I or MK II) in mind. While the polyceramic plating provided limited protection from military grade weaponry, a wearer could survive a solid hit from the SAMAS system rail gun, or a glancing blow from a Chromium Guardsman main weapon. This would allow the enhanced soldiers to get within range of the armors. There were no manufacturing labels on any of the armors recovered from various terrorist incidents and insurgent attacks between 2085 and 2090. Advanced forensics on the plating itself was inconclusive, as it appears that the armors were made in many different areas, including Canada, Mexico, Russia, China, the United States, the European Union, Great Britain, South Africa, South America, and several island nations. The advanced optics helmets were of little to no help either. Despite possessing advanced appearing systems, all of the systems were built with mass manufactured, readily available molycircs. Many molycirc blocks were actually taken from the PlayStation IX VR system, with coding available on VirtuaNet, and gave the analyst teams no clue as to the helmet's origins. The original 2085 helmet possessed the following:
Many intelligence organizations began suspecting something was brewing, but there were no leads. Those terrorist organizations that remained after the early 21st Century anti-terrorist wars were few and far between, and none had the infrastructure needed to create the Juicer Assassin Equipment. After the 2090 Sudan "Engagement" more suits were captured. All of them showed improvements, some suits even showing design enhancements theorized by several of the analysts groups. These 2090 suits were marked as the JAP Series II suits. These suits possessed advanced ECM/ECCM/Stealth systems, sensory spoofing electronics, and a highly innovative "body suit" that was worn under the armor. The electronic warfare suites could all be disengaged, and were frequency agile, allowing the wearer to change their electronic profile. The plating had taken advantage of recent breakthroughs in hyper-alloys and polyceramic technologies, and featured a stealth coating that was currently in testing by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The polycarbonate plating was under research and development by the Russian Advanced Synthetics Laboratory, for use in cyborg chassis, and the molycirc designs had been recently pioneered by Japanese electronics consortiums. This amalgamation of technologies showed penetration by an unknown agency or agencies at the highest levels of multiple government research operations. Once again the plating could easily be manufactured anywhere. One analyst group built the plating fabrication unit inside of a 2 story German home. The fabrication unit proved undetectable via satallite or mobile scanning equipment using conventional means. Only visual surveillance inside the converted dwelling showed any fabrication going on. The electronics, while highly advanced, were freely available. The Japanese molycirc design had been put in many holoviewers, video game systems, and even biomedical equipment. What conclusively proved a leak from the consortium's research and development division was the fact that the armor used molycirc designs that had been further refined before release to the public, meaning that someone had used the first generation of the design, rather than later generations, in over 10% of the suits. The armor featured the shock dampening and protection for the juicer injection system, as well as additional shielding of the juicer's implanted cybernetics and electronics. The body suit provided advanced cooling, thermal signature adaptation and diffusion, body excretion (sweat, breath) diffusion and camoflauge, as well as chimeric polyfibers that would adapt to the surrounding colors. The shoulder pads contained the advanced ECM/ECCM/Stealth packages. Fully engaged, the system was able to reduce sensor system accuracy by an astonishing 72% in field engagements. Guided missile systems usually lost lock on the Juicers, robot targeting systems often had trouble not only acquiring a target lock, but merely seeing the Juicer. In 2092 EU INTERPOL discovered not only a Juicer Enhancement facility, but an armor production facility in a section of the Bonn slums. The facility had obviously been abandoned for months, and produced the old style of armor, as well as the Juicer Mk I process. In 2094, a JAP manufacturing facility was found in the abandoned industrial section of Chicago. After a six hour firefight, during which NEMA High Threat Response Teams had to be mobilized, law enforcement agencies stormed the lab and managed to kill the combatants before they could demolish the laboratory and the manufacturing facilities. This facility was moved to the Fort Sam Houston Army Medical Center for examination. Between 2094 and 2098 more than thirty juicer processing facilities, armor production facilities, and juicer combat package fabrication facilities were discovered. Most nations moved these captured facilities into secure locations, unwilling to allow this technology to fall into the hands of nations that were rapidly beginning to be viewed as non-allied, if not outright hostile. Several times the Juicer Enhancement Process appeared in various areas of the VirtuaNet, complete diagnostic patterns, implantation procedures, and even "home conversion kits" kept appearing. As Juicer Enhancement is not that invasive, and could be done with existing consumer electronics, many Juicers appeared that were "Chop Shopped" in most areas suffering urban decay. The sheer amount of Juicer Assassin's Plate available on the black market, on VirtuaNet, and from arms dealers meant that tracking who had been modified by whatever organization was out there developing this stuff, and stuff that had been locally made or chop shopped, proved impossible for global law enforcement agencies. During the Cataclysm, many Juicers seemed to come out of the woodwork, assisting NEMA forces, and the forces of whatever nation they were residing in. Interviews with the Juicers never shed a light on why they were modified, or what plans they had been enacting before the Cataclysm. Many NEMA commanders believed that the Cataclysm interrupted what was going to be a global insurrection mere months or even days before it was set to begin. Many of the juicer research analyst teams turned to producing juicers from volunteers (some teams produced juicers from non-volunteers, using cortex bombs to ensure loyalty, but these operations often fell) in order to protect the research teams and the civilians. During the Second Dark Ages, many of the researched Juicer Production Facilities, including the six of them at the Fort Sam Houston Army Medical Center, were brought on line, and were resposible for the survival of those who took shelter in the area. In Rifts-Earth, Juicer technology is fairly simple, one of the simplest of the enhancement processes. Juicers are a fairly common sight, and not regarded as terrorists or insurgents as they were in the past. The juicer has moved from villain to hero, and the sight of the Juicer Assassin Plate armor has become a fairly standard occurrence. Weight: 18 lbs Available Sizes: Small to Extra-Large Mobility: Good to Superior Availability: Very Common Manufacturer's Cost: 2,000 Cr Wholesale Cost: 5,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 28,000 Cr Black Market Price: 30,000 Cr Wilderness Price: 3,500 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:51
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Urban Warrior Armor In 86 PA Titan Manufacturing released the Urban Warrior environmental body armor, and also sold the plans for the armor to Northern Gun and Bandito Arms. Both of these manufacturing concerns quickly released an identical version of the para-military armor, finding it cheap and easy to produce, as well as looking sharp and performing well in the field. The armor is made with standard polyceramic plates for kinetic and energy resistance, advanced polymers for shock absorption and kinetic diffusion, and articulated joints to allow full protection to joint. The armor is lightweight, providing adequate protection The internal layer contains nano-fluidic gel bladders designed to quickly disperse energy, both high energy particle transfer and kinetic energy transfers, which sits between two thin layers designed to act as self sealing bladders. Next is the environmental tubing systems designed to maintain the internal temperatures. Once again standard nano-fluidic coolant of the same type as used to keep SAMAS thrusters cool, as well as keep the high velocity fans from supercooling. This keeps the wearer cool in temperatures as high as 800 degrees Fahrenheit, far superior to most armors. and appears to be a redesign and modernization of the Plastic Man armor series internal environmental control system. The system can also keep the wearer comfortable in temperatures as low as -115 degrees Fahrenheit, although this had to be tested in controlled laboratory conditions. In addition, this suit contains an environmental umbilical port, allowing the wearer to plug into outside environmental systems to extend the endurance of the armor. Below that is a thin layer of armor designed to provide advanced protection against radiation threats. In laboratory designs, wearers were kept safe for over 72 hours in high radiation environments, including reactor maintenance, nuclear reactor fuel exchange, simulated cosmic radiation fields, and other high energy environments. In addition, this layer of armor also contains a nano-fluidic layer designed to seal the radiation proofing and act as emergency measures to keep the environmental system intact in case of suit breach. The internal self-sealing layer can keep environmental seal when armor integrity has been reduced to below 83%, making it one of the most environmentally sound armors out there. Below that is the electronic systems of the armor, including the environmental control system, internal HUD management, radio, and several features not found in modern armors. The internal electronic systems provides the following:
The armor's advanced electronic suites, all using existing technologies at the time, in merely innovative ways, led to the suits being purchased by mercenary companies, police forces, and explorers. The CS purchased thousands of these suits for the Iron Heart Defense League, and copied the system as well as enhanced it, for the 99 PA Dead Boy series. The armor's waste collection system is highly effective, and contain ports to attach the suit to an outside system, such as those found in the better robotic power armors and power armor suits. A wearer can go for over six days before the waste disks need removed, and waste disks can be cleaned in the field if necessary. The internal air supply extracts oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide from exhalation, as well as from outside, in order to provide a safe air mixture. The air supply consists of four circular tanks, and can last up to 32 hours. The system can also filter most chemical weapons, larger biological hazards, as well as contaminated air, in order to provide fresh air for the occupant. In addition, for a small additional fee of 2,500 Credits, mechanical gills can be purchased, that are built into the armor and provide air for submerged wearers. The suit can handle an astounding depth of 1,750 feet, as well as keep the wearer self in vacuum. Additionally, unlike many armors, the Urban Warrior has high altitude environmental controls, providing additional air intake to allow the wearer to operate with ease and comfort in a low pressure/oxygen environment. The helmet's visor will automatically polarize if the wearer is exposed to excess levels of light, and it does provide limited flare compensation, although it can be upgraded to provide full flare compensation, an option often purchased by Juicers and M.O.M. enhanced warriors. The armor is manufactured in over 22 locations, including a major factory located in the Chi-Town Burbs operated by the same company that produces late model Dead Boy armor for Coalition States soldiers and ISS troops. Northern Gun caravans are known to carry extensive supplies of this armor. Weight: 11 lbs Available Sizes: extra small to extra extra extra large. Specially ordered suits are available from Bandito Arms, Northern Gun, and American Armors (located in Fort El Dorado) Mobility: Good Availability: Excellent Manufacturer's Cost: 12,000 Cr Wholesale Cost: 24,500 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 35,000 Cr Black Market Price: 30,000-45,000 Cr Wilderness Price: 15,000 Cr Note: Early versions, or versions with the stealth and ECM/ECCM systems are offered by Bandito Arms, but run in the 40,000 Cr range.
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Sep 28, 2014 06:53
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The Crusader In 69 PA Northern Gun Industries released the Crusader fully environmental body armor for sale on it's trade convoys. The suit, tailored to resemble the suits of armor of knights of old, proved to be a hot seller, and the design was quickly copied by Bandito Arms and several smaller armor manufacturing companies. The fact that the armor design was copied and put on the market by 74 PA led to the little known "Corporate War" of 81 PA that took place mostly off the radar of most people, when Bandito Arms and Northern Gun mobilized military assets, covert operations assets, and hired mercenaries for corporate espionage. Several smaller companies were absorbed or destroyed in the 2 year long shadow war, but neither Bandito Arms nor Northern Gun were able to gain the upper hand. The armor is the standard modern multi-layer composite laminate, with additional protection provided by a neo-Kevlar polymeric fiber skirt protecting the groin and thighs of the wearer. The suit also possesses electronic suites, environmental capability, is highly mobile, and provides enough protection to enable the wearer to survive a point blank shot with a SAMAS rail gun. The outer armor is a simple chain-mail looking affair, sitting on top of a ballistic gel impregnated kinetic dispersion layer. While the armor appears to be standard chainmail, there are no gaps in the environmental sealing provided by the chain-mail appearing covering. The armor is stable at high temperatures, and provides some limited protection from thermite plasma detonations. The environmental system protects the wearer from high temperatures, however the fiber laminate of the armor has proved to become brittle at extremely low temperatures, normally only replicatable in laboratory conditions. The system is computer controlled, and can be overridden via manual instruction from the wearer from the wrist console. The suit possesses two high-pressure oxygen canisters, designed to provide a sealed environment in hostile conditions for up to six hours. The life support systems provide air circulation within the suit, as well as uses coolant tubing inside the inner armor layers. The suit can also self-purge is the presence of airborne contaminates or fumes are detected within the armor itself, flushing out the internal air system. However, the system is high pressure, despite the fact it can take up to 4.9 seconds to flush the suit, and some wearer's have gotten nosebleeds, ear-aches, or suffered headaches from the pressure of the environmental flush. In addition, the radiation shielding is adequate to allow the wearer to explore areas with moderate radioactivity. However, it cannot stand up to high radiation areas without the armor itself becoming contaminated. The radiation shielding is minimal at best, and does degrade over time, becoming nearly worthless after roughly three years. The radio within the suit is single frequency tunable, with a decent range in the FM bands, directional or omnidirectional use, and the antenna is placed within the high "guards" of the medieval appearing helmet. The radio is well shielded, preventing energy weapons discharges from interfering with broadcasts, allowing excellent battlefield communication. The radio can also store up to 25 minutes worth the incoming radio messages, providing the message has a preprogrammed header code. The header code is easy to program in with a standard armor diagnostic tool, as well as easy to apply to outgoing messages. The helmet does not contain a full HUD, although small LED's are embedded around the auto-tinting visor. One set tracks armor status, with blue (100-90%), green (90-75%), yellow(75%-50%), orange (25%-50%), and red (25%-0%) to report armor integrity status. A blue LED blinks for incoming transmission, and a blue/red LED to state whether or not the armor is on internal life support or not. One place this armor excels is in providing wearer mobility. The extremely flexible design allows covert operations troops and para-military forces nearly full mobility, and is often worn by Juicers, M.O.M. enhanced, or otherwise "super-human" warriors. The armor's "shield" is based off of old high threat reaction law enforcement riot shields, and provides slightly more protection that a the breastplate of the Juicer Assassin's Plate. The shield weighs 11 pounds, and enhanced warriors have been recorded parrying railgun bursts, energy weapon strikes, and even bolts of mystical energy. Another advantage this suit possesses is the ability to be repaired in the field. The fibers are easily cut away if the suit is soaked in the proper chemicals for 2 hours, and can have patches rebonded within 20 minutes. The suit is then soaked for another hour, and the patch is "set" by allowing it to dry for 3 hours. All told, a suit can be repaired, in the field, within six hours, even if the suit was nearly breached. Northern Gun sells the proper equipment for repairing the armor for a paltry 5,000 Cr for single packs (allowing the armor to be completely repaired from scratch three times), or 250,000 Cr for a 100 kit pack, allowing small settlement militia's the ability to repair the armor for several months, or even years. Most repair shops repair Crusader body armor for less than 25% of normal armor repair costs, making this armor a good choice for cash strapped para-military or militia forces. One strange thing noticed about the armor, is that vibro-weapons do significantly reduced damage to the armor, and laboratory tests have shown that it has something to do with the energy dispersal patterns of the chain-mail style covering. A person can remove the armor completely in less than 15 seconds, thanks to emergency extraction links, as well as dress in the armor in less than a minute. The suit's ion-lithium battery can be recharged quickly and easily via power conduit, which can be hooked into any standard power source. The battery can be charged within an hour on fast charge, or six hours on trickle charge, and possesses enough energy storage to allow the armor to run at full capacity for up to 480 hours before the internal electronics can no longer be powered. An adapter to allow the armor's battery pack to be recharged by power armor nuclear packs costs a meager 75 Credits from Northern Gun. Weight: 11 lbs Available Sizes: extra small through extra extra extra large Mobility: Full Availability: Average Manufacturer's Cost: 11,000 Cr Wholesale Cost: 29,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 40,000 Cr Black Market Price: 42,000 Cr Wilderness Price: 25,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:54
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Bushman Body Armor In 2054, UN Peacekeepers, backed by a NEMA quick reaction force, came under attack by terrorists at the recently refurbished Panama Canal. The terrorist front, arguably an ecological terrorist organization with heavy funding, possessed two Ugandan Hyena class power armors, smuggled in on a cargo ship passing through the canal locks. The power armors were supported by an infantry platoon possessing anti-aircraft rockets and anti-tank rockets, as well as Congolese Mkuki railguns (A knockoff of the M-31 SAMAS rail gun). SAMAS armors possessed by the NEMA QRF took heavy casualties from the anti-aircraft missiles, which were all shoulder fired. After a four hour fire fight, during which the UN Peacekeepers took heavy casualties, the Hyenas were destroyed, as were the Earth Warriors terrorists, and the post battlefield analysis was performed. The UN Peacekeepers had been devastated by heavy, long range fire, which shredded their body armor, as well as sniper fire from chemical explosive weapons, which were used to target exposed body parts. The UN badly needed an upgrade, and NEMA was asked to hold an armor test in Crete in the summer of 2055. A Spanish military production company produced a highly effected armor called Cáscara Tortuga (Later nicknamed White Turtle) that performed with excellent effectiveness, and in 2056 the armor began being mass produced at the company's facilities in Spain, Angola, Mali, Lithuania, Canada, the United States, Great Britian, Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico. For the less industrialized nations, Sistemas Integrados De la Armadura (Integrated Armor Systems LLC) received grants and low interest loans to build factories in those nations to further improve the nation's economy. In 2057 the Bushman armor series (Then known as the White Turtle, or the BAS-21) was delivered to UN armories, and UN Peacekeepers were issued this armor. The armored performed with excellence for nearly 30 years before IAS went under after a major scandal, and the UN switched to a different armor. The armor is hard shelled, designed to prevent foliage and debris from catching on the armor and hindering the wearer, as well as providing superior protection from rail gun rounds, APDS munitions, and AP rockets. The armor has slight mobility issues, making it somewhat awkward to bend at the waist, but the joints are well built, allowing excellent protection at normally weak joints. However, between 2065 and 2068 there was a problem with the elbow joints leaking the nanofluidic ballistic gel, reducing the protection to the elbows, which would definitely degrade and cause the joint polymers to become brittle after a few months in storage. The hard shell is designed to be laser ablative, providing protection from the massive energy transfer by allowing small sections and thin layers of the armor to shatter away when struck by energy weapons, as well as deflect kinetic energy strikes. The armor's outer layer is impregnated with tiny solar power collectors no bigger than the head of a pin scattered through the suit to absorb power for the armor from the sun. In the event of an energy weapon hit, the micro-fuses blew to keep the energy imparted to the armor from effecting the suits power storage systems. Beneath the hard polyceramic shell lies a nano-fluidic ballistic gel, designed to absorb and redirect kinetic energy that penetrates the ballistic shell. The nano-fluidic layer is held beneath a flexible mesh-impregnated soft plastic, which makes up the joint protection system. Below the nanofluidic layer is another hard laminate plate system, a shock dampening layer, the environmental layer, an electronics layer sandwiched between a pair of anti-kinetic transfer nano-fluidic layer, then the internal pressure sleeve. The armor's internal environmental systems regulate the internal oxygen content by monitoring the wearer's blood O2 saturation, as well as other biometric measurements. Unlike many armors of the time, the Bushman/Turtle armor always kept a sealed environment, only permitting filtered air-flow to the occupant, in order to maximize protection of the wearer from environmental hazards. The internal environmental systems (produced by KLS on subcontract to IAS) will immediately flush the armor if any NBCR danger is detected, and the detection system is extremely sensitive. In some cases, heavy synthetic fuel fumes will cause the armor to alert the wearer that a chemical attack is underway and seal the suit. The suit uses multiple high pressure canisters to store 14 hours of air within the suit, and the filtration system is able to filter out most chemical weapons (with the exception of the caustic anti-filtration agents), as well as most biological hazards. The waste collection disks last up to 5 days, 3 days if the wearer is suffering from intestinal disorders such as dysentery, and the disks can be cleaned in the field by trained personnel. In addition, the filtering system filters can be replaced quickly and easily by a trained operator. Emergency filter replacement can be accomplished by twisting and removing the two helmet filters, and can be accomplished in less than 25 seconds by a trained operator, allowing the wearer to conduct extended operations in an chemical or biological hazard area. The suit is rated for extreme arctic conditions, as well as desert operations, showing little to no degradation in system performance or protection in temperatures between -75 F and 450 F (-60C to 232 C), showing only nanofluidic temperature degradation for roughly 25 degrees either way above those limits. Additionally the suits are equipped with mechanical gills, as well as underwater maneuvering systems, allowing the armor to dive to a depth of 1,150 feet safely (some tests showed as high as 1,750 feet, but wearer survival is somewhat unreliable) and operate for up to 72 hours underwater without degradation of armor systems. Additionally the armor's HUD automatically compensates for underwater operations, heat distortion, or up to severe weather conditions, thanks to advanced visual spectrum enhancement algorithms. The boots have excellent grip, as well as built in, retractable, ice/climbing treads, allowing the wearer to climb up poles, trees, and keep their footing on normally treacherous surfaces. The gloves have retractable climbing spikes (less than 0.25" long) to further enable the wearer to climb quickly and easily. The suit possesses both active and passive electronic battlefield defense systems. The polyceramic plating is design to deflect and scatter radar pulses, and even overcome millimetric phased radar array signals. While a radar operator may know something is out there, they will be unable to lock in on the wearer. The armor's environmental system mixes waste gases with ambient local gasses in order to prevent chemical signature targeting, and in addition the system produces no chemical signature when under full internal environmental lockdown. Additionally the white surfacing used by UN Peacekeepers was a flat color, rather than glossy, preventing glare reflection. Active systems consist of ECM systems designed to disrupt target system sensor, missile locks, and radar jamming, with an effective ECCM suite built by the Korean electronics manufacturer Futuretek, that was often able to overcome inferior enemy ECM. The environmental tubing was double walled, providing self-sealing ability to the internal heating cooling systems. The internal neoprene sleeve is designed to protect the wearer from high G shocks, as well as weapon impacts, and to keep the suit snug around the wearer, and prevent chafing, as well as "wicking" away of skin excretions (read: sweat), so that the could be filtered and put into the internal water supply. The suit also possesses umbilical connectors to allow the suit to be attached to outside environmental/waste processing equipment, as well data-jack ports to allow VR control on advanced combat vehicles. The internal water supply, which also gathers the moisture from the surrounding air as well as purifying liquid waste, can last for up to 14 days without external moisture collection, and near-unlimited water in average humidity areas. Additionally, the suit contains nutrient paste for the wearer to eat, as well as vitamin injections, allowing the wearer to survive up to 45 days inside the suit using only the nutrient paste and vitamin injections without suffering from malnutrition or gastro-intestinal atrophy. Across the abdomen is the bio-medical system, providing emergency battlefield medical aid to the wearer. The computer monitors the wearer's biometric data, and there are two IRMMS kits within the system, as well as an RMK and an advanced medical computer. The computer can diagnose broken bones, burns, bruising, internal injuries, and the like, immediately overseeing RMK and nanite medical attention. Should the wearer suffer a spinal injury, the suit will automatically go into "traction mode" which extends the arms and legs into a rough X, that flattens the spine and protects it. In addition to standard medical procedures, restricted codes can be typed into the forearm data plate in order to inject the wearer with drugs such as painkillers, amphetamines, and the like. However, these codes were only possessed by covert operations forces or medical personnel. Finally, trained medical personnel could interface with the nantire and microbot medical systems in order to perform operations beyond the scope of the medical computer without removing the wearer from the armor. The nanite cradle can be "recharged" by application of new nanites by medical personnel. Across the shoulders are the tactical battlefield network system electronics, the advanced environmental systems, and the EC(C)M system. This allows the soldier to "tag" friendly, neutral, civilian, and enemy units on their HUD map, as well as transmit data across the BaTN, accept incoming data, and utilize interlocking EC(C)M data between multiple suits, often allowing several suits to overcome enemy ECM/ECCM systems that were stronger signal than the suits. Along the forearms and biceps are two picatinny rails, allowing mission essential equipment to be attached to the armor's arms, and there are 8 rails across the back to allow the addition of electronic combat suites, backpack weapon systems, etc. On the outer thighs is another set of rails, allowing for further equipment attachment. This rail system allows the wearer to be issued mission oriented equipment, and allows the armor to be modified for covert operations or heavy infantry roles. The forearms also have data-ports, allowing weapon data-systems to be interlinked with the suits internal combat computer. The system has standard small arms dataplugs as well as vehicle and robot combat data links ports. A 75 decibel loudspeaker system is built into the upper right shoulder pad, and is normally kept within the armor to avoid damage. However, the loudspeaker can be deployed in less than 15 seconds via internal systems, and does not significantly lower the armor's protection. The speaker can either be used by the wearer, or used to broadcast verbal input from the radio communications. The upper left shoulder has a built in optical link the size of a small box of matches that is normally recessed into the shoulder. It can be deployed in approximately 20 seconds to allow the armor's wearer to look behind them, to the side, ect. The camera is shock dampened and contains passive and active nightvision molycircs. The camera burst feeds the information gathered every 5-20 seconds, the compressed burst containing the video footage of the entire time. This usually returns to a mobile command post, for overview by gathered officers, mission commanders, and allows instant advice, mission objective alterations, or commands to be fed to the troops in the field. However, since signal triangulation is a big part of the digital battlefield (some missiles can home in on continuous radio signals) the feature can be disabled, and the information be gathered afterwards from the built in Battle-ROM storage WORM (Write Once-Read Many) crystal storage array located in the left rear shoulder area of the back. The crystal storage matrix can be pulled from armor in less than a minute, allowing retrieval of battlefield data. However inputting incorrect codes into the armor's secruity system results in the data in the crystal matrix being scrambled and partially erased, making data recovery difficult. In addition, the wearer of the armor can use the feed from the camera, displayed on the HUD instead of the view through the helmet's camera systems, if the external camera systems have been disabled somehow. The visual images are gathered by the two helmet cameras, which use thermographic, IR, UV, VIR, standard visual range, passive and active nightvision systems. This information can be shown on the HUD in a singular mode, or as a multiple mode composite image. If the wearer possess an ultrasonic or magnetic anomaly detection system or advanced radar system mounted onto the armor's equipment rails, data from these systems can be displayed or integrated to the composite image. The HUD provides the wearer with the following information:
The communications antenna array is built into the armor along the biceps and shoulders of the armor, meshed into the molycirc layer and having "external receptors" the size of a pinhead replacing every other solar collector. This antenna array is tied into the helmet surface antenna and the armor's communication system. Integration of the communications broadcast/reception array with the armor itself kept the communications system from being targeted by snipers, and ensuring that a minor mishap would not put a wearer out of communication. The internal headset can translate Spanish, English, Russian, German, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, French, Portuguese, Swahili, Afrikaan, Farsi, and Finnish with 80% accuracy to any of the other listed languages, allowing the UN Peacekeeper to communicate with local authorities and population. On the inside of the left forearm is the battlefield tactical network interface, as well as the armor systems interface. This allows the wearer to control the armor's internal systems (advanced users can override internal systems standard operating systems) as well as collect, recieve and transmit data to the battlefield tactical network. The suit's IFF is a queriable transmitter, meaning it can be changed from constant transmission to "stealth" mode which allows the wearer to avoid broadcasting unless a specific coded transmission is detected, after which the IFF will broadcast a quick directional pulse to the transmitter. During the Cataclysm, all NATO/UN troops who could be issued this armor were, meaning that the armor saw extensive use during the early, deadly days of the Cataclysm. However, the production facilities were lost in the disasters. During the Second Dark Ages, the factory located in Kansas was discovered by a Northern Gun trading caravan. While the facility had been severely damaged, and the majority of the advanced fabrication facilities were destroyed, the Bushman production line was almost intact, and the computers containing the manufacturing schematics and instructions were intact and recoverable. While it appeared that only data was recoverable, and that the armor production facility was destroyed, Northern Gun attempted to recover as much as possible. While most figured only the computers, data-cores, and schematics were recoverable due to the thick ash deposits and weathering, the Northern Gun "Artifact Recovery Team" was able to move the Bushman production facility to Northern Gun's primary fabrication area. This suit was sold to high-end clients by Northern Gun, as well as used by the company's guards and military forces. In 15 PA most of the battlefield tactical network systems, many of which relied on satellite communication ability, were stripped out, as well as the ECM/ECCM systems, as ECM was a lost art. In 22 PA a disgruntled employee from Northern Gun sold the manufacturing and design specifications to the armor to the highest bidders, selling it to Northern Gun's competitors, as well as the Coalition States, Lazlo, and Tolkeen. Tolkeen began locally producing the suits in 34 PA, and Bandito Arms began producing the armors in 54 PA. In 79 PA, the suit was offered in two different styles: Stripped down, which removes a lot of the advanced features, and the full suit, which has all of the advanced features found in the pre- Cataclysm suits. On Rifts Earth, the suit is highly popular, with both versions selling well. However, only Northern Gun and Wilk's Armor subsidiaries offer the advanced sets of armor. Weight: 11 lbs (9 lbs for the stripped down version) Available Sizes: Small to Extra Large Mobility: Good Availability: Excellent (Special Order for the advanced version) Manufacturer's Cost: 8,500 Cr. (19,000 Cr for advanced) Wholesale Cost: 22,000 Cr. (32,500 Cr for advanced) Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 32,000 Cr (58,000+ Cr for advanced) Black Market Price: 35,000 Cr (70,000+ Cr for advanced) Wilderness Price: 20,000 Cr (30,000-40,000 Cr for advanced)
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Sep 28, 2014 06:56
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The Explorer In 55 PA Wilk's Industries moved into the armor production field with the unveiling of the Explorer Heavy Body Armor. Based off of several years of study of available armors, the Explorer was developed from the ground up for the hostile environment of Rifts Earth. The armor is a hardshell polyceramic laminate, with underlying nanofluidic carbon molylattice gel, neo-Kevlar layering, with a neoprene undersuit. The suit's designers did away with "extraneous" systems that were considered legacy components of golden age armors. The armor relies on passive protection systems, mainly heavy shock dampening systems, expensive and advanced ballistic gel layering, and high tensile ablative polyceramic armor plating. The ballistic gel, upon receiving a heavy kinetic shock, causes the manufactured carbon molecules to form a "lattice" that forces the kinetic energy to shatter the instantly created lattice to transfer kinetic energy, resulting a serious upgrading of ballistic gel layering. It had taken Wilk's Industries over a decade to replicate the nano-engineering feat involving the carbon "dumbells" that formed the lattice, but they'd finally done it without the advantage of zero-G environment. Gelpack replacement is needed every six months, or after sustained combat use. Gel replacement costs 2,500 Credits, and can be performed at most armor maintenance facilities. The environmental system keeps the operator cool and dry in temperatures between -50 F to 350 F, with a five hour internal oxygen supply. The suit can detect Rifts Earth common biological and chemical hazards, switching to internal environment and purging the internal air. The waste disks only hold 14 hours of waste, and cannot be reused or cleaned. The armor's helmet possesses a short antenna array, with an FM, VHF, and UHF radio. The radio is only single channel broadcast/receivable, without encryption software or ability. It only has a 1 mile range, and is omnidirectional. It contains no IFF beacon. It has a built in Wilk's Universal Translator that is able to translate Elven, Dragonese, Gobbledy, American, Spanish, Wolfen, and can be programmed with an additional 10 other languages. (150 Credits per language) The internal powerpack is e-clip run, although an eclip will last over 45 days for a standard eclip and 75 days for an extended eclip. It cannot be tied onto an external power supply or an ecanister/beltpack. The suit can be operated even if the internal power supply is depleted, as a hard shell armor with no additional support (including environmental) by simply opening the vents located in the forward part of the helmet under the mouthguard. This ability has made the armor popular with those who have difficulty charging environmental armor's energy supplies in order to use "useless features" out in the wilderness. The armor features no stealth systems, no ECM/ECCM, nor any advanced combat systems. The HUD merely shows estimated armor integrity levels, amount of O2 left for internal environment, and an internal compass. The suit has a biohazard, chemical, or radiation hazard icon, but uses the same icon for all three. The suit has a 50 decibel loudspeaker, the visor possesses no nightvision or other type of vision enhancement, although the visor will reflectively darken when exposed to bright light. The radiation shielding is admittedly minor, requiring a 5,000 Cr upgrade for sufficient shielding to allow a wearer to be fully protected when refueling a power armor reactor. The shielding is mainly involved for exploring old ruins, which may or may not have taken nuclear hits, or a nuclear powerplant having melted down. Reducing the internal systems allowed Wilks to add additional armor without making the suit more bulky. However, the armor is known to be fairly heavy for the protection offered. The addition of two equipment rails on the back of the armor allows the mounting of a jetpack or backpack mortar system. The suit suffers from joint stiffness, as rapid movements have a tendency to cause the ballistic gel to form lattice strings that break easily. Early runs of the armor had a problem of joint stiffening over time, until the joint was locked in place. Roughly 0.035% of the time, a direct railgun hit will cause what is known as a cascading reverberation effect, where the entire nano-fluidic gel forms a full body lattice, paralyzing the wearer inside a suddenly stiffened suit. This effect can last from 15 seconds to nearly an hour. In 97PA the armor came with an optional ECM package, allowing the armor to attempt to avoid missile guidance systems and armor targeting systems. However, the ECM wavelength proved to attract Xiticix warriors as well as driving them into a frenzy. This had led to a massive sales slump in the Xiticix hive borderlands. In 99 PA, a new ECM package was offered that ran on a different frequency and jamming algorithm. While the suit initially sold for roughly 18,000 Credits, steadily increasing popularity over the years has caused the price to rise quite a bit over the years. The suit primarily sells due to the Wilk's brand name, and that often a discount is given to purchasers of laser weaponry when purchasing this armor. Coalition troops do not view this armor as a military suit, but rather a practical item suitable for civilian use. As it lacks military grade optics, electronic or stealth systems, the suit has been classified by the ISS as allowable civilian protective gear. Weight: 20 lbs Available Sizes: small to extra-large Mobility: Fair Availability: Common Manufacturer's Cost: 2,500 Cr Wholesale Cost: 30,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 45,000 Cr Black Market Price: 22,000 Cr Wilderness Price: 7,500 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 06:57
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Coalition States Light Infantry Armor The Coalition States, whether people like it or not, are the inheritors of NEMA and the old United States of America. During the Great Cataclysm, the forces of NEMA and remnants of the US military moved to the ancient American city of Chicago in order to conduct relief operations. With NORAD I and NORAD II offline, NEMA forces had to create a central command location. Some historians insist that the sheer amount of ley lines and nexuses within Chicago itself is what forced the military and civilians to relocate to what eventually became Chi-Town, but others insist that patrols from the Chicago Emergency Command Center had located something desperately needed by the beleaguered forces. These historians insist that the NEMA, the US military, and the civilians relocated to something called the "Mid-West Emergency Command Center", which was part of the almost mythical Continuity of Government Program, and was the primary base of USNORCOM, whatever that may have been. While history does not explain why MW-ECC was not activated until NEMA forces moved in in the early years of the Cataclysm, theories suggest an alien virus killed everyone, or an accident killed them all, or that they were rifted somewhere else. Other historians claim that something called the "Four Demon Plagues" ultimately destroyed the NEMA forces, and the relocation to the Chi-Town area was by refugees fleeing the slaughter of NEMA forces by the 'Demon Plagues' who got lucky and found a megacorporate Archology for Turner/Icherio Industries, and discovered the armor manufacturing facilities below the Arcology. The Final theory, barring the outlandish, is that the Arcology sat undisturbed for decades, having never truly been brought online, until it was discovered by refugees fleeing demonic forces in the late Dark Ages. The huge arcology, designed to house thousands of workers and centralize Turner Communications/Icherio Heavy Industrial Manufacturing manufacturing facilities, was a turnkey operation that required little more than the refugees firing up the factories and watching as material rolled off the robotic assembly lines. Despite requests from this body, the Coalition States has refused to allow this body to investigate the lower levels of Chi-Town to determine the truth of the origin of the mighty Chi-Town. However, for this work, the commonly accepted Coalition States 'historical facts' will be used, whether or not the truth is something different. EBA-130 was built by more than just Chi-Town, however, as the scattered remnants of the NEMA forces and the North American government were moved to Continuity of Government shelters that could be located and reached, many of these facilities had small, short lived assembly lines for the armor, and the ability to manufacture them made these locations critical. However, raw materials and preprocessed materials soon began running low. No matter what the truth is, through the Cataclysm, the forces of the Chi-Town Defense Force, and the Canadian East Coast Command Forces, fielded EBA-130 Body Armor. The two nations, Chi-Town and Free Quebec, produced these armors by the thousands, as the Dark Ages wore on, and both cities came under constant attack by extra-dimensional forces. By Year Five after the Great Cataclysm, the EBA-130 lost it's advanced nano-fluidic layer, as they no longer had access to zero-G manufacturing. The nano-fluidic layer that was fielded relied on compression dispersion. Chi-Town and Free Quebec could not produce kinetic dampening nano-fluid until Free Quebec managed to make a breakthrough in the middle of the Dark Ages, manufacturing a nano-fluid which worked by the compression of a kinetic energy hit causing the fluid to become thicker, which required more energy to thicken it further, and so on, until the kinetic force was overcome, at which time the gel would thin back out. However, this method had the disadvantage of causing gel crystallization, which depleted the protection that the nano-fluidic layer provided. Still, having the nano-fluidic layer return to the armor meant that the wearer would not suffer shock damage from explosives. Sometime during the Dark Ages, the EBA-130 lost its ECM/ECCM package, as the forces of Chi-Town and Free Quebec rarely encountered forces capable of engaging in electronic warfare. However, the suits still retained the ability to have the ECM/ECCM module reinstalled. Those suits not equipped with the electronic warfare module usually had the space normally containing the module just contain packing material. Due to manufacturing limitations, the modular plating sections of the EBA-130 had to be replaced by hard shell plate-mail like sections. This reduced maneuverability, slightly increased the weight, and made it necessary to replace an entire section rather than just a plate. However, with the scarcity of resources during the Dark Ages, this move was very necessary for the two besieged nations. As old weapons wore out, were destroyed, or were lost, the ability to plug into weapon systems via the data-plugs became somewhat unnecessary, as the weapon integration system consumed resources that Free Quebec and Chi-Town desperately needed. By -25 PA, the armor had been recolored black, and the modular rails on the armor had been removed. The production of mission oriented modular equipment had fallen by the wayside during the two nations brutal struggle for survival. The Bloody Campaign caused the loss of the majority of the legacy armors from the days of the Cataclysm. While the Federation could not have known it, the war cost the CS an important asset, the hundreds of suits of legacy armor they possessed, as well as a bombing on the primary production facility in Chi-Town itself by saboteurs resulted in the armor production facilities having to be rebuilt. This seriously set back the Chi-Town Defense Force in military terms, as they had to rely on armor purchased from the nation of Iron Heart. To further complicate things, Free Quebec's manufacturing facilities suffered a massive blow when a containment failure caused the nuclear power plant production facility and the EBA-130 production facility to be contaminated beyond recovery. This was a brutal blow to Free Quebec, who could still produce Chromium Guardsmen and their variants, but could no longer manufacture the high energy output reactors that these armor's required, nor could they produce the standard body armor issued to their infantry troops. Free Quebec was also forced to turn to Iron Heart for infantry body armor, vastly enriching the small independent nation and allowing it to grow rapidly in terms of wealth and power. Iron Heart requested, and was granted, the design specifications for the EBA-130, and soon realized that with the loss of those two critical manufacturing facilities, there was no way they could possibly replicate the ancient armor. Nowhere on Rifts Earth was there the facilities to create the molycircs, the nanofluidic gel, or the hyperalloys. To create a temporary stopgap, Iron Heart armored the Chi-Town Defense Force and the Free Quebec Infantry Divisions with armor produced from the Bushman Body Armor production line, modified to look differently. In 31 PA, when the Coalition States was proposed, and representative from Chi-Town brought Chairman Prosek's vision for the appearance of the Coalition States armor to the Iron Heart manufacturing companies. The skull-like helmet was designed to provide a psychological edge to the proposed Coalition forces. During the next two years, the nation of Iron Heart designed the initial Dead Boy armors, delivering thousands of them to Chi-Town, Missouri, Iowa, and the Illinois Contingent. The unveiling of the new look of the "Coalition" military coincided with Chairman Prosek of Chi-Town being inaugurated as the Chairman of the Coalition States. Marshall Cabot and Lucius Underhill, as well as Joseph Prosek, had all designed the armor, based on their years of combat experience. Marshall Cabot was a master of strategy and tactics, Lucius Underhill had served for over 15 years in the Chi-Town Defense Force military intelligence division, and knew how critical the electronic battlefield had been to their narrow victory over the Federation of Magic, and Jospeh Prosek possessed years of experience as a commanding officer, both in combat and in peace time. Jospeh Prosek had a grasp of logistics and supply, that when combined with his two friends, made the three of them one of the most effective teams in the Coalition States military. They had designed the specifications of the suit, telling the technicians at Iron Heart what they wanted, what they expected, and then stepping out of the way and letting the Iron Heart technicians do their work. As a show of faith in Iron Heart, Chairman Prosek allowed Iron Heart scientists access to the Chi-Town Library Data-cores. (Later known as the Chi-Town Library of the Ages) The designers of the armor incorporated Underhill, Cabot, and Prosek's design desires, focusing on allowing the wearer of the armor the ability to fully utilize the digital battlefield. The CA-1 Body Armor was revolutionary in design, in some ways surpassing the EBA-130 armor. Chi-Town poured tens of millions of credits into the research and manufacturing of the armor, and it showed. The CA-1 consisted of an interlocking series of plates, modeled after the EBA-130, but thicker and laced with carbon nano-tubes to increase the strength of the plates. The plates were designed to be ablative to both energy weapons and kinetic weapons, shattering to disperse energy transferred to the plates. The carbon nanotubes would shatter on the affected layer, but would help the next layers keep their shape. The joints were protected by armor based off the old plate mail of medieval Europe, preventing sniper attacks from having the full effect that they had during the Bloody Campaign. The next layer consisted of a polymer fiber "suit" that helped absorb kinetic energy transfer, as well as allowed the environmental tubing to be woven into the suit. Additionally, strength enhancing artificial muscle fibers were interwoven into the polymer fibers, allowing the wearer to carry and lift three times their normal weight limit. Instead of a layer of molecular circuitry, critical circuitry was embedded in the polymer fiber suit, with the superconductor filaments connecting the suits electronics encased in carbon nano-tube to protect the filaments from damage. Rather than depend on an internal sleeve, and a gas atmosphere in the suit, the CA-1 used the liquid oxygen system found in deep pressure suits and the more advanced power armors. The design for the liquid oxygen system was found in the SAMAS power armor design (See SAMAS Power Armor for more information), and integrated into the system. This system not only protected the wearer from shock damage from a massive kinetic hit, but also fully protected the wearer from biological or chemical hazards. While this system took some getting used to, as for the first few seconds the wearer felt as if they were drowning, it proved much more effective than standard circulating atmosphere systems. The waste system was redesigned, making it easier to use, and not as humiliating. Rather than use catheters through the uretha and into the rectum, the system used a collection cup that would adhere to between the buttocks, or onto the genitals. This improved wearer comfort, and reduced the amount of hesitation toward the armor and lessened the amount of time it took for a wearer to fully get into the armor. While the Chi-Town Defense Force and the Free Quebec forces had once abandoned the ECM/ECCM systems found in the EBA-130, Marshall Cabot insisted that ECM/ECCM be returned, as the Federation of Magic hunter killer teams, armed with guided missiles, had ambushed and killed a lot of soldiers. The ECM/ECCM systems were designed, not to avoid the highly sensitive recon equipment fielded by the ancients, but rather power armor, robot combat vehicle, and opposing environmental combat armor sensor system. In the center of the lower back was located an IRMMS kit, which injected the nanites into the liquid atmosphere, allowing them quick and easy access to the wearer. The suit retained its traction mode, and a sedative robotic unit was built into the neck of the suit to put badly injured soldiers to sleep if they were badly injured, or a trained medical personnel keyed it into the data-unit on the left forearm. The Battlefield Tactical Network Interface was improved, with the ability to display leylines and nexuses, as well as estimations of supernatural creatures capabilities. This required an almost complete reprogramming of the Battlefield Tactical software, but Lucius Underhill felt it would be well worth it. The helmet for the infantry contained a combat computer capable of determining indirect fire angles, tracking targets, weapon interlink status, tracking battlefield data, and and identifying friendly and enemy equipment, including known weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The HUD displayed the status of the liquid atmosphere, armor integrity, weapon status, voice to text display of incoming messages or data, target tagging, identification and tracking on the mini-map of friendly, enemy, and neutral units. The radio for the standard infantry helmet is pre-set frequency agile (on the algorithm determined by officers or intelligence specialists), broadcasting only on the tactical frequency, the BATNI frequency, the emergency channel and able to receive the command frequencies. The range on the infantry radio is only 500 meters (1500 feet), unless the wearer is using the emergency channel, which has a range of 3 miles. The eye-pieces are video cameras that can receive normal visual spectrum, passive or active nightvision, UV, IR, or VIR spectrum. Platoon Leader helmets contain additional hardware for data analysis, as well as an enhanced radio system. The data analysis hardware displays information received from the Platoon Leaders soldiers, allowing him to view whatever the individual soldier sees in a window, as well speak to each soldier individually. The radio has a range of 5 miles, gives the platoon leader the ability to broadcast on the lower command channels, individual troop channels, the emergency channel, and the command tactical channel. Additionally, the platoon leader can upload sections of the battlefield tactical data to individual soldiers, or superior officers. The officer helmet contains additional radio power, as well as ECCM circuitry to allow the officer to compensate for ECM when broadcasting a message. Additionally, the officer can upload ECCM algorithms to other soldiers to allow them to breach enemy ECM without taking out the ECM generator. Robot Pilot helmets contain integration software, allowing the robot pilot crewmembers to act with better effectiveness at their stations. Additionally, the helmet possesses the ability to activate a powerful "pulse" beacon for when they are ejected from their robot vehicle. This pulse is able to be picked up to 20 miles away by grunts and platoon leaders. Psi-Stalker helmets denote what is a separate suit of armor. Rather than having a liquid atmosphere, which psi-stalkers cannot stand, the Psi-Stalker armor uses a gas environment like normal armors, which is capable of providing the psi-stalker with up to 5 hours of air for fully contained environmental. Additionally, the helmet does not posses a HUD, but rather a few icons at the edge of the eyes, to display armor status, incoming radio messages, and weapon status. The eyes of the psi-stalker helmet are clear macroplast, rather than cameras, giving the psi-stalker a better view, as psi-stalkers tend to avoid cameras. Sky cycle pilot helmets are designed for areodymanics, as well as has a cybernetic datalink to allow the sky cycle pilot to be cybernetically linked to the sky cycle. Additionally, the wearer has access to inter-squad radio channels, and in the case of platoon leaders, access to command channels.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:05
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CA-1 Light Infantry Armor The CS Light "Dead Boy" Armor made its debut in 33 PA, the design specifications laid down and followed to the best of Iron Heart's ability. The armor required several weeks of training to be used effectively, as the liquid atmosphere caused the wearer to panic the first few moments for those unaccustomed to the system. Use of the liquid oxygen system was touted as an effective and acceptable way to deal with the high pressure impact of kinetic weaponry. Without the liquid atmosphere system or an advanced pressure sleeve, the kinetic shock of being struck could kill a wearer through kinetic energy transfer. In 42 PA, the Military Oversight Committee, which was staffed mainly by elected officials and industry leaders, decided that the current Dead Boy Light Armor was too expensive to manufacture. With each suit costing 150,000 Credits to produce, the MOC decided that the time had come to look toward making the armor more "budgetary effective." The inclusion of Iron Heart into the Coalition States had not reduced the cost of the infantry armor, as the Military Board of Procurement had hoped, and this fact was touted as the reasoning that the EBA system had to be overhauled. Research by this body suggests that the MOC may be operating with an outside influence, as if a group with knowledge of advanced materials was deliberately trying to downgrade the Coalition States technology edge. (GM Note: The MOC board, the 15 members, can be heavily infiltrated by the Republics from Sourcebook One Revised, and maybe even a Naurani human agent or two. Undoubtedly the Kittani/Atlantis have at least one mole near the MOC.) After a 3 year examination, during which the Battle of Red Wing was showcased repeatedly, it was decided by "independent experts" (Many of whom had never seen combat, and were more concerned about the bottom line of their companies, and the kickbacks they could gain) that the money and resource intensive protective systems built into the CA-1 had to be "retrofitted for the modern battlefield." The CA-1A was released in the summer of 46 PA, and no longer possessed the liquid atmosphere system. The removal of this system would save untold credits according to the Military Board of Procurement and the Military Oversight Committee. The reasons cited were as follows: Removing the liquid atmosphere would reduce soldier hesitation regarding "suiting up", reduce the amount of training that a soldier must go through before he is armor rated, liquid atmosphere would allow a thinning of supply lines, preventing the enemy from contaminating a liquid atmosphere supply and killing thousands of troops, and other reasons. The new environmental system moved away from the comfortable vacuum attachments, and back to the invasive catheter design of other armors, with pair of catheters inserted into the urethra and rectum, an unpopular move among the troops. The system moved to air circulation within the helmet and a pressurized sleeve. The environmental system went back to the tubing design, and the armor's temperature rating dropped from 500 C (932 F) down to 204 C (400 F), with a low end of -45 C (-50 F) with the armor temperature changing 1 degree from it's 73 F baseline for every 3 degrees the outside temperature changed. (If the temperature the armor is subjected to is -80 F, the internal suit temperature would be 63 F. The environment system recognized most Rifts Earth biological and chemical hazards, as well as radiation threats, and sealed the suit to run off its internal system. This internal system could provide completely enclosed atmosphere for up to 6 hours. Despite the urging of many analysts, atmospheric scrubbers, which could have given the suit a much extended endurance, were not used in the armor. The waste disks were moved to a dual disk system, one for liquids, one for solids, and could only handle 36 hours of waste. In addition, while the disks were able to be field cleaned, cleaning tools were not included, and it took nearly 20 minutes per disk to clean them. In the spring of 47 PA, the armor was again redesigned, this time removing the interlocking plate system, and the carbon nano-filament systems, and instead went back to hard shell sections, much like high tech platemail. The reasons cited was cost, as carbon nano-tubing was expensive to create and process. This reduced the protection provided by the suit by a startling 50%, and soon afterwards problems began showing up in the microcircuitry layer. As the superconductor filaments were no longer protected by carbon nanotubing, but rather a shielded cabling much like the venerable coaxial cable, they because subject to failure due to "vibration stress and fatigue", resulting in electronic components going offline during combat, or during extended wear. The most commonly affected equipment was the environmental system and the radio communications systems. The environmental internal sensors would often malfunction, making the armor uncomfortable to wear, while the radio would become static filled, and often go offline completely. The new armor was heavier by 3 pounds, provided less freedom of movement, and the new armor plating did not feature passive stealth systems, and the thermal baffling proved to be problematic. While reports from the field insisted that the CA-1B's thermal baffling actually increased a wearer's thermal signature, the company producing the system proved in "laboratory tests simulating proper conditions" that the system was reliable, and it had to be misuse in the field. Another system that was removed, was the strength enhancement system, along with the piezo-electric "motion generators" that powered the suit. Instead, the suit possessed a capacitance gel storage system good for 48 hours of use, that could be charged by an outside source, or by e-clips in an emergency. A fully depleted suit could be recharged by four standard e-clips or three extended. In 51 PA, when Free Quebec joined the Coalition States, the state of Iron Heart was eagerly awaiting the contracts to produce the official body armor for the newest state. However, behind their backs, the system had been redesigned again, and a fabrication facility built in Free Quebec produced the armor for the newest state locally. Additionally, Chi-Town itself began producing the armor, using a new fabrication facility that had been built without Iron Heart's knowledge. This lead to the three states producing their own armor. The CA-1C featured "improvements" over the old system. The ECM/ECCM system was removed, despite Lucius Underhill and Marshall Cabot's protests. The Military Oversight Committee proved that ECM was only encountered in less than 10% of military operations, and ECM from the Coalition side would be wasted, as most of the opponents were low tech, relying on supernatural abilities or civilian grade systems. The passive stealth systems were removed, again over the objections of the Chiefs of Staff, as being too expensive and of questionable value. The Federation of Magic attacked again in 65 PA, this time a massive hacker attacker was integrated into the attacks, which successfully scrambled the battlefield tactical network. While many military analysts insisted that the flaw in the BaTN lay, not in the system itself, but rather in the fact that the algorithms had not been changed in over a decade, and the security surrounding the system had grown lax. Regardless of what the true fault was, in 66 PA, the Battlefield Tactical Network Interface was removed from the armor, and soldier's were no longer trained in the system. Additionally, the internal battlefield mini-map was removed from enlisted, lower NCO HUD systems, and officers and platoon leaders were only allowed to view the map, not make changes or updates to it. This reduced the weight of the helmet by 11 ounces. The officer helmet also had the broadcast range reduced to a mere 3 miles, with the frequency agile ability of all the radios disabled and eventually removed. When Lone Star was discovered, the debate on whether or not to return to the old armor systems raged for nearly six months. The vast manufacturing and research facility had the facilities to simulate zero-G environment to produce nano-fluid. It was agreed to rebuild the armor, but politics and corporate representation shifted what was supposed to be improvements in the armor to an even further reduction of the armor's capabilities. Despite the Military Oversight Committees demand, Doctor Desmond Bradford, undisputed overload of the Lone Star Facility, refused to allow the armor manufacturing lines at Lone Star to be disassembled, instead building manufacturing lines on a mostly empty section of one of the levels. Lucius Underhill resisted many of the changes proposed by so called experts, setting back the new armor design over and over again, as he went over the head of the the Military Oversight Committee time and time again, directly to his old friend and comrade Joseph Prosek. When Lucius Underhill died of natural causes in 69 PA, the Oversight Committee ordered the armor to be returned to the drawing board, hoping that they would be able to redesign the armor to their vision, rather than the vision of a "trio of dinosaurs" In 70 PA, Chairman Prosek is assassinated, and Marshall Cabot is placed as interm head of the Coalition States. At the same time, the new armor is released to field troops. The CA-1D barely resembles the innovative and high tech armor first designed over 50 years ago. The plating had been reduced from a highly advanced passive and active stealth system, to just protective plating. The piezoelectric generation system had been replaced by a capacitance gel storage system that had to be recharged every 12 hours, and could not accept e-clips for in the field charging. The environmental system had gone from a revolutionary system to standard environmental systems found in most environmental armor. The CA-1D no longer possessed the internal medical systems, the removal of the RMK and IRMMS systems reduced the price of the armor even further. Additionally, the composite view, allowing the wearer to mesh together IR, UV, visual light, and nightvision in whatever combination they chose, was removed, along with computer enhancement. The helmets went to striaght passive nightvision and normal visual spectrum. Additionally the camera was removed from the shoulder, and the traction mode was removed from the armor. In 72 PA, Karl Prosek was convinced, despite his doubts, that the removal of the targeting system would not only save money, but reduce reliance on technology which could be tricked and fooled by supernatural elements. However, the targeting system was not the only part removed, but the entire weapon integration system was removed from the armor. This reduced training time, as well as the armor having to be synched to individual users, but reduced the accuracy of the individual troops weapon's fire. The CA-1E no longer featured advanced targeting and combat system, relying instead on the users individual skills. 83 PA saw the release of the the CA-1Fa, the CA-1Fb, and the CA-2 series. The CA-1 was designated light body armor, and the CA-2 series was listed as the heavy armor. The CA-1Fa was designed for standard infantry, while the CA-1Fb was designed for officers and military specialists. The two armors, while identical in basic nomenclature, were different enough to practically be two different sets of armor. While initial tests were of solid plates, Emperor Prosek stepped in, on the insistence of Marshal Cabot, and forced the designers to listen to the venerable old general. The Military Oversight Committee, which had gotten used to decades of bribes, kickbacks, and favors, at first thought that Marshal Cabot would be easy to handle and fool, and that the Committee itself outranked him. However, Cabot was armed with his new appointment of Military Counsel to the Emperor, which put him at the top of the military chain of command, second only to the Emperor himself. Cabot pulled experienced line troops, consulted with the Emperor repeatedly about his vision for not only the military, but regarding education of soldiers and civilians alike. He also consulted Doctor Desmond Bradford, examining the Pre-Rifts manufacturing lines for what could be replicated, and what would be too costly, too difficult, or flat out impossible. Marshal Cabot came up with many new designs, working with a hand picked staff, and while he had to settle for a lesser design, the original plans he developed for armor were never completely tossed. In the end, Cabot's "State Advanced Research Project" team came up with the CS-1Fa, the CS-1Fb, and the CS-1Fc, in addition to creating new uniforms, starting new weapon research projects, and overhauling military doctrine. Despite the protests of the Military Oversight Committee, a wholly civilian body, SARP was never deactivated, and did not answer to anyone but Marshall Cabot or the Emperor. The CA-1Fa featured a completely new look. (The standard look that is so well known) The CA-1Fa was redesigned from the ground up for infantry enlisted and NCO use, simplified so that increasingly illiterate and ignorant troop could use it without training in "dangerous" fields of study. The armor was designed to by psychologically intimidating, as well as battlefield effective. Knuckle spikes were added to give a soldier's punches more damage capability, and a backhand from a soldier clad in CA-1Fa could very well tear part of the face off of the victim. The left shoulder was spiked, and hand to hand combat taught the soldier to drop his left shoulder and crash into an opponent, using the brutal spikes to further brutalize an opponent. The knee spikes were added to provide even more punishment in a hand to hand fight. Special Forces suits (CA-1FaSF) saw the return of the "vibro-fingers" to allow climbing, but also the circuitry was incorporated into the spikes, to allow a special forces soldier to do damage to military grade armor or supernatural foes with those very spikes. The initial plating was jet black ablative plating, featuring the return of the carbon nano-tube reenforcement mesh. The plating is made up of interlocking plates that allow almost complete freedom of mobility. The CA-1FaSF has full mobility, but lacks the armor extension over the right shoulder, as well as the joints being slightly less armored. The armor features radar scattering covering that also acts as a solar receptor to recharge the armor's internal energy storage. A mere 3 hours of normal sunlight, or 30 minutes of high intensity UV exposure, will recharge the entire suit. Additionally, the suit can be recharged by power armor conduit, robotic combat vehicle conduit, and other such outside power sources. The armor can be recharged with e-clips, or, in the case of emergency, the wearer can do situps for several minutes, allowing the piezo-electric crystals to charge the armor enough for systems to come back online. The next layer was nano-fluidic kinetic diffusion, the nano-fluid being manufactured at Lone Star alone. Rather than use the nano-lattice current in use, the CS nano-fluidic design relied on stiff carbon filaments suspended in the gel. The carbon filaments bend easily at low pressures, but the higher the pressure, the more pressure is required to bend the tubes. Once the energy is used to bend the tubing, the tubing relaxes. This allows the wearer to retain mobility, but be protected from high-energy kinetic impacts. However, a natural fall will injure a wearer at 50 feet, and a 200 foot fall is almost invariably lethal. Another thin layer of plating provides almost total radiation resistance, and is an adaptation of the Plastic Man radiation shielding. Despite the fact that nuclear weapons had not been used since the Great Cataclysm, the possibility of a nuclear battlefield was still a reality, so radiation shielding to allow the soldier to fight on the nuclear battlefield was included. Beneath that layer is a thin layer of molycirc, providing completely automated control of the suit's systems. Emperor Prosek insisted on the suit being able to do the majority of the work, citing the lower education of the Coalition States compared the Pre-Cataclysm America. The suit automatically engages the environmental system upon orders across the command channel, when an environmental threat is detected, or if the wearer verbally requests it. Additionally, the onboard computer systems keeps track of the armor and nanofluid integrity, merely displaying a human body outline with colors for the condition of an armor section. Blue for undamaged, green for light damage, yellow for moderate damage, red for serious damage, and black for comprimization. The final layer is a snug pressure sleeve. Soldier's wearing the CA-1Fa usually wear a set of digital camoflauge uniform, based off of the old Pre-Cataclysm uniform. The DCU's have no buttons that might injure a soldier exposed to serious kinetic shock. The pressure sleeve also monitors the soldiers biometric data, as well as wicks away sweat. The waste system moved back to the vacuum "cup" systems, to the relief of field soldiers. The waste system could contain up to 72 hours of waste, and the three disk system consisted not only of water reclamation and solid waste compression systems, but had the cleaning tools embedded in the system. Water is refined and purified, flavored slightly with artificial lemon, and returned to the drinking water supply. A vibro-knife sheathe was placed on the outside of the calf, with the soldier being able to choose which calf the knife is located on. The sheathes automatically charge the vibro-knives, as well as using the motion of the wearer's legs to charge the weapon. The CA-1FaSF has sheathes on both calves. On the right shoulder of the CA-1Fa is an additional armor plating, designed to allow the wearer to take a chop from a bladed weapon or a supernatural claw on the shoulder-plate, which is quickly and easily replaceable. The environmental system was reworked, with the liquid atmosphere being only available to the CA-1FaSF version. The system was rated at 300 C (572 F) to -75 C (-103 F) with only a 1 degree per 5 degree creep for exceeding temperatures. The suit could flush the internal environment totally within 3 second, and before going to internal environment, the system auto-flushes. Additionally, an order for an internal flush can come across the command channel, allowing commanders to have their troops move to internal environment with a single order. The internal environmental system can provide up to 12 hours of internal air supply, as well as filter the majority of the chemical and biological hazards. Most soldiers are issued a humidity extractor (pictured on the CS Grunt Main Book illustration as the black canister on the waist belt with the tubing running behind the soldier) that extracts water from the ambient humidity to provide the soldier with additional water supply. Tubing runs from the rear emergency oxygen supplies to the back of the helmet, and an additional drinking tube runs to the back of the armor in case the initial water supply is depleted. The standard grunt helmet possesses an internal squad communication radio with a range of 500 meters, that allows squad members to speak with one another. The encryption was moved from 32 bit to 128 bit encryption, along with security protocols to ensure a code wasn't used too long. Additionally, the grunt has access to the command channel, in order to make reports to superiors, as well as the emergency channel, and several other channels. The radio is frequency agile, with multi-frequency broadcasting and burst transmission. These systems are always on, and most soldiers think that the slight lag for burst compression and decompression is part of the radio system. The helmet also provides thermographic, passive nightvision, ambient light, IR, and UV composites, with nightvision being used in low light areas, and ambient light being used in daylight. The HUD possesses icons for whether or not the suit is on internal systems, an icon for the status on the waste disks, icon for whether or not the suit is being painted by laser or scanned by radar. When radar takes place, the suit automatically engages the ECM systems. Another icon will appear if the suit is under ECM attack, and the ECCM system automatically engages. Officers helmets saw the return of the battlefield mini-map, and officers became able to designate positions and personnel/equipment in the field as friendly, neutral, and hostile. Additionally, the system auto-designates any neutral who displays weapons fire at friendly units as hostile, and updates the platoon maps for the grunts. Officers can also designate way-points on the battlemap, and the icon will appear in the platoon's HUD on the compass bar. The officer can also switch ECM/ECCM algorithms if the ones in use are proving ineffective. Psi-Stalker helmets have the majority of the mini-battle-map software removed, usually replaced by an internal mapping system allowing 'Burbs psi-stalkers the ability to use maps of the 'Burbs to coordinate their psi-hound troops. The Psi-Stalkers have only normal visual, and passive nightvision built into their helmets, along with a built in compass. The CA-1Fb is designed for officers and military specialists, as well as the designated armor for robot elite soldiers to wear outside of their robot armor. (The suit shown in the Military Specialist illustration is heavy dead boy) The CA-1Fb has enhanced data-analysis software, as well as a built in loudspeaker capable of up to 120 decibels. Additionally, the CA-1Fb can allow the wearer to enter a VR-Tank, that shows the wearer the battlefield or other designated area, allowing the officer to better coordinate their forces. The CA-1Fc is designed for robot vehicle pilots, and features umbilicals to allow the wearer to plug into the robot instrumentation as well as the robot vehicle's life support system. In addition, the robot pilot's helmet contains only the emergency channel, and has a more powerful queriable rescue beacon. CA-1Fc also possesses more advanced passive stealth systems to allow the pilots to evade capture more easily, as well as strength augmentation to allow them to manually reload the robot's ammunition bays if necessary. (A wearer can lift up to 1,500 lbs, and carry up to 1,000 lbs, but the system sucks down immense amounts of energy, making it only useful if the wearer is plugged into the robot's power supply) In 85 PA General Cabot, involved heavily in plans for the expansion of the Texas and Arkansaw terroritories, lost a fight with the Military Oversight Committee, and the armor had the liquid environmental system removed yet again. Again, the savings in training time and expense was cited repeatedly, and the system moved to pressurized helmet atmosphere. The new environmental systems contained less biological, chemical, and radiation scrubbers, reducing the total protection for the individual soldier who may be engage on the NBC field of battle. However, the suit did move to a positive pressure system, which even worked when the suit had been breached in multiple areas. This allows the suit to remain somewhat environmentally sealed, as the suit had a higher internal air pressure than the outside environment, making it nearly impossible for gas transfer to occur into the suit. However, the internal oxygen supply, no longer able to use advanced oxygen replenishers and carbon dioxide scrubbers that went hand in hand with a liquid environmental system, was only good for 6 hours of internal life support. The MOC delivered "studies" that "proved" that the average combat time was less than an hour (they handily ignored the Battle of Red Wing, which they had so heavily leaned on in the past) and thus any field soldier could expect to be evacuated from the "mythical" NBC battlefield. In 89 PA much of the radiation shielding was removed, making it so the soldier was vulnerable to massive bursts of gamma and alpha radiation, but the MOC insisted that the levels of radiation required to breach the shielding could only be found in tactical nuclear weapons, and as of yet, very few enemies of the State could field nuclear weapons. In 93 PA a bitter fight occurred, that required the intervention of the Emperor himself, as the MOC attempted to remove the electronics suites and ECM/ECCM systems, and replace them with drastically less effective electronics. Cabot himself was struck at by assassins no less than five times, and his long time friend General March Peterson was killed in one of the attacks. Over 15 members of the Military Oversight Committee were assassinated, nine were arrested for high treason, and another 20 vanished completely during the brutal struggle. The Emperor decreed that the electronics would remain, but the ECM/ECCM systems would be removed, and the suit would rely on passive stealth systems only. The Military Oversight Committee was nearly dissolved, but several of the high ranking members knew where the bodies were buried and the secrets were held, and so the MOC remained, and would remain, shaping military policy, until the middle of the Tolkeen War, when they would be removed. (But that's another story) In 98 PA terrorists bombed the Iron Heart production facility that produced the advanced radio systems, completely destroying it. In addition, the bomb had been wrapped with an enriched strontium jacket, making the area highly radioactive and dangerous. A hacker attack coincided with the physical attack, destroying much of the data on the radio and communication systems. In 99 PA, the Coalition States was forced to go to single channel broadcast, omnidirectional, non-agile radios for the armors, saving the more advanced radios for the officer corps. These radios had a 5 mile range, but were only capable of receiving on 3 channels, and broadcasting on a single channel. Additionally, battlefield communication net confusion was common, as the radios were limited to a mere 30 channels, which meant that communications often overlapped. Despite the armor's de-evolution, Marshall Cabot put his best men, the SARP team, and trusted researchers, to work at a crash program, located in a secure facility 50 miles outside of Chi-Town, to produce the next generation of armor. This armor would appear in 105 PA, featured an entirely new look, new materials, new systems, and will be covered later. Weight:14 lbs Available Sizes: Extra-Extra-small (for K9 troops) to XXX Large (For full conversion military cyborgs) Mobility: Excellent (5% penalty) Availability: Excellent Manufacturer's Cost: 9.500 Cr Wholesale Cost: 16,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 25,000 Cr Black Market Price: Depending on the model, and how many systems have been removed, between 12,000 for a stripped suit to as much as 54,000 Cr for a fully intact CS-1 original 33 PA version. Wilderness Price: 17,500 Cr and up
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Sep 28, 2014 07:08
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CA-2 Coalition State Heavy Body Armor For the most part, the CA-2 armor system is identical to the CA-1 system, featuring only heavier armor plating, increased kinetic shock protection, and more advanced electronic systems. The CA-2 is designed for heavy combat, high threat theaters, and other such situations where the individual soldier requires more protection that normal. The CA-2 is often worn by officers, infantry soldiers, special forces, and other persons that require more than standard protection. Many units responsible for keeping important persons safe keep several suits of this armor in storage to protect and camouflage the important person. The CA-2 features modular equipment rails, two on the back, one on each shoulder, one of each forearm, one on the outside of each thigh, and one on the outside of each calf. While the MOC scorned the addition of these systems, and vehemently protested the modular armor enhancements being manufactured, the modular system has allowed the armor to be mission oriented configured, rather than rely on specific armors being manufactured according to duties. The CA-2 uses passive stealth systems, radar refracting coating, thermal baffling, EM shielding, and warning systems when the wearer has been locked up by radar or painted by targeting laser. Built into the suit, between the primary plate system and the kinetic absorption shielding are strength enhancing micro-hydraulics, however, the actuators are not built into the suit, and must be added at Battalion or Brigade level, with the exception of CS-SOCOM operators. This allows the wearer of the suit to be outfitted with three different strength levels. Either high threat, which makes the wearer capable of making hand to hand capable of damaging combat rated plating (Robotic PS: 22), security rating, which allows the wearer to engage in limited combat engagements (PS: 16), and maintenance rating (Standard PS: 28), which allows the wearer to handle heavy weapons secondary components, reload ammunition in field conditions, or carry armored soldiers from combat engaged positions to the medical stations. In addition, the suit keeps track of wearer's biometric data, allowing field commanders to check on a soldier's physical state. The system also records all suit data collected on a WORM data system, and can burst transmit the data, or continuous broadcast to a command and control vehicle. The system can identify multiple armor, weapon, life forms, and vehicles for the wearer, as well as carat weak points, weapon systems, and other critical systems. The helmet contains a sophisticated inertial mapping, navigation, and digital battlefield system, tied into the HUD mapping system, that tracks not only landmarks, friendly units, neutral units, and hostile units, but also can track waypoints, allow the wearer to call in pinpoint artillery and missile strikes based on map locations, as well as transmit or receive "flash updates" allowing the entire digital map system to be suddenly upgraded or revamped. Software also can update based on supernatural or magical events that effects the terrain or battlefield area. The armor can be plugged into crew served weaponry, allowing the wearer to use the weapons more effectively, and tie the armor system into the weapons systems, increasing the effectiveness of the wearer. The armor can be plugged into crew served weaponry, allowing the wearer to use the weapons more effectively, and tie the armor system into the weapons systems, increasing the effectiveness of the wearer. The armor takes a slight bit of time (3 seconds) to fully integrate the armor's internal combat systems with the weapon's systems, but the fusion of combat packages is well worth it to heavy weapons gunners. Additionally, some units install servos to allow the heavy weapon gunners increased strength to more easily use the weaponry (Robotic PS of 19) they are assigned. The right and left forearms of the armor possessed three data-plugs each, allowing weapons to be plugged into the armor and integrated into the computer. The short lived C-13 Combat Rifle was issued with the armor, intending on replacing the (rumored) cursed C-10 rifle, but an accident at the plant in 84 PA stopped the rifle's production after less than 100,000 had been produced. However, the software and circuitry to enable the C-13's "reactive trigger" remained embedded in the armor's software and fire control circuitry. Many unit level armorers brought the circuitry back online, and adapted the C-10 laser rifle and other weapons to use the reactive trigger assembly. This allowed CS ground troops to engage enemies that had superhuman reflexes or speed with a modicum of success. In 87 PA the strength augmentation was completely removed, cited as being too expensive, and opening the door to the possibility of too much abuse. Despite field troops complaints, the CA-2A1 was released without strength augmentation circuitry, actuator sockets, or the increased structural components that allowed the suit to be used with enhanced strength. This resulted in the suit's protection being reduced by 20%, an unintended side effect that was not rectified. In addition, the liquid atmosphere was removed, once again cost, supply line vulnerability, and training time was described. However, the environmental system built into the CA-2A1 was inferior to the CA-1A1, with no positive pressure system, only 3 hours of internal environment available, and filters slow to react. The filter system often lagged as far as 30 seconds behind the detection of threats or the order for full environmental. In 92 PA the CA-2A2 was released, which featured the removal of the data-ports and the combat computer. While this reduced overall cost, and training time, once again the effectiveness of the individual CS soldier was decreased. The MOC argued that it was cheaper to build crew served weaponry and train crews than it was to produce the combat computer circuitry. In 95 PA the CA-2B was released, which had decreased waste disk system which could only handle 38 hours of waste and was not field clearable resulting in the disposal of the waste disks, the more invasive catheter system replacing the adherent suction cups, and the internal nutrient paste dispenser removed. This required a soldier to remove their helmet to eat. The humidity collector (featured in the picture) was added as a separate component, rather than built into the armor itself. While the humidity extractor was more prone to failure or improper installation, the MOC still defended the move away from a built in system. In 99 PA, Marshall Cabot, with the Emperor's authorization, had the production lines for the CA-2 series of armor shut down, with only replacement parts being built, rather than full suits. This has led to speculation that Marshall Cabot intends on replacing the venerable CA-2 High Threat Armor with something new. Despite the MOC's insistence that whatever Marshall Cabot has been authorized both military and civilian funds to oversee, the Emperor has refused to release the relative files. Weight: 19 lbs Available Sizes: XXXS to XXXL Mobility: Excellent (-5% to prowl) Availability: Excellent Manufacturer's Cost: 10,000 Cr Wholesale Cost: 22,000 Cr Manufacturer's Recommended Price: 30,000 Cr Black Market Price: 17,500 Cr Wilderness Price: 15,000 Cr
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Sep 28, 2014 07:09
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USA-G10 Laser Resistant Infantry Personnel Assault Suit Debuted in 2035, the US-G10 was manufactured by the KLS corporation. Developed by reverse engineering the materials and equipment used by a supervillian, and the theorems left behind by a rogue scientist who had faked his own death and destroyed a lab. While the theroums were first laid down in the late 20th Century, it took the KLS corporation nearly 2 decades to reengineer and understand the theories behind the molecularly bonded superdense armor and structural endosteel. When the fledgling NEMA military put out a call for new and advanced armors, the KLS corporation fielded the Glitter Boy/Chromium Guardsman power armor. Initially doubted due to its small size, the fact it had an indistinguishable visual profile, the USA-G10 armor soon proved its ability to function in a multitude of roles, and the "Boom Gun", despite its drawbacks, was seen as one of the more powerful weapons available, and the military purchased the Boom Gun for the prototype Powell class main battle tank. The USA-G10 suit featured advanced molecularly bonded chromium armor, formed into a interlocking molecular "chain" lattice, that made the armor plating incredibly tough and resilient. Additionally, it could refract the majority of laser weapons. Although original prototype Chromium Guardsman featured no weakness to specific laser frequencies, the fear of the suits being hijacked, reverse engineered, or stolen by hostile powers encouraged NEMA and the three nations to convince the KLS Corporation to make 10 different frequencies that the armor would be vulnerable to. This was in order to allow proper authorities to successfully combat the G10 should any fall into the hands of terrorist organizations or other enemies of NEMA. The secrets to USA-G10 manufacture was a closely guarded state secret by all three nations, and after lengthy debate, it was decided that there would be only one public manufacturing facility for the Chromium Guardsman. Tycho Base, on Luna. A secure sublunar surface wing was built, with the sole purpose of manufacturing Chromium Guardsman. The only other "known" facility for manufacturing USA-G10's was in the Central American nation of (It's in VIllians Unlimited, under a supervillian entry in the U section, I can't find it, and don't have access, so pardon if this is left unfinished temporarily.) However, at the demand of NEMA, KLS agreed to build an additional 12 sites, 6 in the United States of America, 3 in Mexico, and 3 in Canada. These sites were locked down, under constant guard, and we considered "Event Recovery Sites" with entire facilities built around them in case the unthinkable ever happened. In Canada, the plants and facilities were located in Quebec, Saskatchewan, and the Yukon Territory. In Mexico, they were located 20 miles west of La Paz, 15 miles southwest of Culiacan, and 12 miles southeast of Oaxaca. In the United States of America, they were located in the West Coast Emergency Command Center (location lost, but records point at Klamath Falls Oregon, or Vancouver Washington), the Mid-West Command Center (rumored to be near Omaha Nebreska, but firm evidence points at 45 miles east of Chicago), the East Coast Emergency Command Center (Aberdeen Proving Grounds), Fort Hood Texas, NORAD II (rumored to be somewhere in the Rocky Mountains), and at a secure facility that rumor places somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, possibly one of the many off limits islands possessed by the United States military. Recent data has surfaced showing that NATO managed to aquire permission from NEMA to house a USA-10G plant in the nation of Germany, and the plant was all but superficially complete by the coming of the Great Cataclysm. Rumor states that a nation in South America is in possession of a Pre-Rifts manufacturing facility, as is the nation of Japan, but there is no data confirming or denying this. The sites were stocked with zero-G manufactured equipment, including the foamed endosteel/titanium endoskeletons, the advanced Chromium armor, ammunition, laser-fusion reactors, and other important parts that would require time and raw materials that any post-apocalyptic government or survivors ensconced in the EVS's may have had difficulty acquiring, specifically zero-G manufactured materials, primarily the rail gun rails, which were only able to be manufactured in a zero-G environment. The USA-G10 was used to replace the aging main battle tank stocks of the United States military, the only organization among the three nations outside of NEMA that could afford the power armor, and many armored divisions moved straight to the USA-G10, the SAMAS suit, and other power armors by the year 2045. Canada quickly followed suit, replacing their old fashioned armor units by 2053, but Mexico lagged behind, not replacing all of their armored units by the time the Great Cataclysm occurred. Despite the armor systems advanced state and obvious power, many students of history and war material do not realize that the commonly found "Glitter Boy" of Rifts Earth is the USA-G10, not any of the following advancements and variants. Only Free Quebec possesses any of the G-10 series support vehicles, variants, and upgrade kits. While most nations consider the Free Quebec USA-G10's to be functionally identical to all other Glitter Boys out there, this is not the case, as this document will illustrate. The USA-G10 is an advanced power armor, featuring miniaturization not found in any other power armor or robotic vehicles outside of NEMA. The advance molycircs found in the Chromium Guardsman served as the basis for all other NEMA armors. It contains advanced, state of the art actuators, superdense molecular bonded armor, and capabilities unlike the world of 2035 had ever seen.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:11
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The Rise of Power Armor and "Amplified Weaponry" With the "Global Energy Crisis" in full swing, nations all over the earth were feeling the budget crunch of maintaining a large standing military. Military vehicles were more about offensive and defensive strength than fuel efficiency, and this was coming back around to bite the larger and more well equipped militaries. By 2035 the rising price of fossil fuels was devouring up to a whopping FIFTEEN percent of the larger nations military forces budgets. Something had to be done, and be done fast. With the bast Arabic oil fields mostly dry, the shale reserves slowly becoming tapped out, and acquiring oil becoming more and more difficult, gas prices were going up faster than ever. In order to calm the United States population about rising gas prices the US government made the decision to use the Strategic Oil Reserve to lower civilian costs of gasoline, even though military analysts pointed out that the loss of the reserve would seriously hamper military operations. Some vehicles were changed over to hydrogen or solar power, but this application never caught on for military use. Hydrogen cells explode when breached, hydrogen storage facilities were vulnerable to missile/rocket/mortar/suicide attacks, and equipment to extract hydrogen from the atmosphere rather than ship it via conventional supply lines produced a thermal, audio, visual, and electronic signature that just screamed for the attention of modern targeting systems. Capacitance gel was seen as a possible solution, when combined with solar cells, but the large solar cells needed to charge the capacitance systems of a main battle tank were obvious sniper targets, and a modern main battle tank could only operate off of their internet storage systems for a few hours. This meant that electrical storage systems were complete useless for modern military vehicles. By 2039, Dow/Exxon would produce the first synthetic gasoline, including fuel that could be used in high performance aircraft. This gasoline had actually more energy potential than normal gasoline, allowing more efficiency per gallon. Once the synthetic fuel was out, produced cheaper and sold cheaper than regular fossil fuels (Fossil Fuel Gasoline, 87 Octane sold for $26.93/gallon in North America, while Exxon NuFuel at 87 Octane sold at $0.78/gallon) and the military became testing the fuel's possibilities for military use. However, the very increased energy potential that was so exciting to car makers, aerospace designers, and civilian applications were a death sentence to military vehicles. It meant that there was more energy to be liberated by enemy damage, and any light vehicle would certainly explode if the fuel was ignited. This meant that once again, the military had the short end of the stick regarding energy, and it was rapidly becoming a problem. A problem that had exactly one solution, but that solution brought up a venerable boogey-man of public opinion. In 2030 Lightwell Energy Group, later to be folded into the massive laser systems industrial giant Wilks Energy Research Consortium, perfected and patented what became known as "pocket-reactors" or "micro-fission plants" that were scientifically impossible to turn into nuclear weapons, did not melt down, nor vented toxic or radioactive gasses. Tests held out at Groom Lake/Dreamland Facility showed that even a direct hit by a 105mm APDSDUFS anti-armor round did not cause any nuclear event, merely shattered the fission reactor into pieces of metal and plastics. It did not use weapons grade, or even power plant grade enriched uranium, but rather ran efficiently off sub-critical "partially enriched" uranium. "Sub-critical" nuclear reaction took place by application of plasma field, precise "laser flutter" (the beam flashed literally thousands of times a second), and magnetic "pinching" of the fuel. This caused the uranium to heat up, boiling the inert fluid, thus driving small micro-turbines (the basic design of which was based on the thrusters that had been formerly used in "micro"-UAV's to provide thrust) to produce electricity. The "pellet-ring" used by the system had an approximate "full engagement" use life of 20 years on the larger models, with 2-5 years on the "vest pocket" models. So the military was sitting on a source of energy it was using as backup power generators for military bases that was safe, dependable, and fairly inexpensive to manufacture. The radiation shielding, a byproduct of the aero-gel research, was not only highly effective, but simply and easy to replace, with any saturated shielding having industrial uses that were in high demand, meaning that a reactor actually made money in the long run. The problem was, public opinion and "knowledge" held any kind of nuclear fission or fusion as an evil that would destroy all of mankind. Despite the rolling blackouts in the mid-2020's that had led to dozens of nuclear power plants, Fukashima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Uganda were still the go-to incidents for anyone talking about nuclear power. Which meant there was no way in the Nine Hells that the US Military was going to get permission to strap nuclear power plants into their vehicles. Public pressure was already increasing monthly to remove the nuclear power plants from naval vessels by ecological groups that claimed that by just existing these power sources poisoned the oceans. It didn't help that in 2029 terrorists managed to storm the a Type-97 Jin-II Class nuclear submarine and cause a catastrophic meltdown of the reactor during a "Fleet Week" demonstration in the emerging nation of Vietnam, irradiating the harbor and the ships in the harbor. By 2030 there were already weapon tests were going on for new weapon systems to replace the aging "War on Terror" equipment. Everything from laser rifles to MRE's to computer network systems to ion weapons to body armor to rail gun systems were being demonstrated by companies hoping to secure lucrative military contracts. Capacitance gel was used to power most of the weapons, with heavy "capacitor rings" used to store the energy for railgun or plasma cannon shots in submitted armored vehicles. But that still didn't solve one of the major problems for anything that might replace conventional armored vehicles: How do we power the thing? By 2032 Lightwell was in trouble. Constant lawsuits were levelled against them to stop their research. From attempts to block the patent in hopes that Lightwell wouldn't continue research for fear of all their work becoming public domain, to lawsuits claiming environmental damage at the manufacturing plants, to lawsuits claiming that the mass production of small nuclear power plants was just "handing out suitcase nukes to anyone in the world with an industrial manufacturing business license). The billions of dollars that Lightwell had invested in energy research was pouring down the drain as the legal bills stacked up, and out of desperation they approached the Defense Advanced Research and Projects Association in hopes of interesting them in the tiny nuclear reactors. DARPA immediately saw the application uses and not only ordered dozens of the small nuclear reactors for testing, but also used their influence to shut down the lawsuits under the umbrella of "national security" and "because we said to." While the DARPA researchers knew that the idea of nuclear powered light vehicles would never go over with the civilians who oversaw the US military, as well as the civilian populace, they approached the public relations department of the Department of Defense and began researching what a nuclear powerplant would be acceptable in. One thing was repeated over and over. "Giant [CENSORED] Robots!" DARPA had been researching "man amplification exo-skeletons" since the early 1980's, but had mostly shelved their plans due to energy consumption problems. Most battlefield robotics ended up having a severe problem with extended operation, even with capacitance gel added in. While many military "experts" citing the short sharp engagements of the War on Terror, they willfully ignored the longer periodic engagements that the US military and UN forces had been forced to engage in. Robotics are all well and good until you want to use them for long then a couple of hours and further away from the generator than the extension cord reaches. However, the micro-fission plants answered the power problems neatly. With more resources, more research funds, and access to more testing areas, the US military and NASA managed to shrink the already small nuclear power plants by over 30% without compromising on safety, shielding, or power output. Advances in flat-ware motors, memory metals, and "pseudo-muscle" in the prosthetic field were examined closely. Everything from micro-actuators to the average life of a flatware motor and the durability of memory metals was examined and tested. Hidden away in black budgets were literally billions of dollars that DARPA burned through in the course of a few years. The new neu-plastics, hyper-alloys, and ceramics were examined for armor and exoskeleton properties, with the discovery that foamed vanadium/titanium alloy could be turned into a nearly indestructible chassis, despite being too heavy for armor. While it could only be produced in zero-G environments, the rapidly expanding space-race made sure that there was plenty of opportunities to not only build production facilities, but to then sell the resulting byproducts to the civilian space-race competitors. While DARPA worked on the mechanical side, the US government started a clever PR campaign. Military style first person shooters were still highly popular, even with the advent of VR systems. The latest "War-Front: Afghanistan" was a best seller, even though it was one of the most complex and immerse VR games out there, even being shown on television in competitive matches. PR took that fact and spent years using the Unreal 7 engine to create a "Future-Front" VR-FPS, where players got to use highly advanced mechs in combat against other players in wildly varying terrain. This allowed DARPA to test targeting algorithms, VR-Training sims, and other "infrastructure" computer programs. Despite reviewer complaints of the "complexity" of the system, it was a hit with VR-Gamers, and servers often say matches between hundreds of people in power armor. This allowed the PR department to see what types of armor were the most popular, and why. What caused irrational fear in players, anxiety, and performance loss. What armor seemed to inspire and encourage not only the player's comrades, but one another. With the addition of "Playable civilians" for refugee victims and other non-combatants (a widely criticized move that players loved), they were even able to gather further data about which armors visually reassured civilians and struck fear into insurgents. With the discovery of the very visually striking laser refraction armor, several suits were skinned with the armor, and the PR department was startled with the way it became widely popular despite the fact that it had massive concealment penalties. Thousands of hours of research into public perceptions were melded into practical engineering research, computer simulations, and testing out at Groom Lake. Things were coming together. "Future Front" was providing valuable feedback, the players totally unaware they were not only simulation testing experimental and theoretical hardware, but also refining and alpha/beta-testing combat software. On the electronics front the rapid minaturization of cell-phones, home computers (now reserved for high-end Home-VR-Gaming Rigs), the extension of battery life and the lowering of power consumption, and everything else that increased "ease of use" and "customer experience" was being critically watched by the various militaries of the world. Gone were the days of the military or government researching a technology and civilians using spin-off technology, now the constant competition of the market forced massive companies with billions of dollars research budgets to create cutting edge technology practically faster than the military could analyze and field test it. Most military electronics were 10-20 years behind civilian applications in many respects, although critical components seemed to be replaced monthly with new and improved models. While the first cybernetic eye had debuted in the 1990's, it had been largely ignored by everyone. However, the large influx of soldiers blinded during the War on Terror and the brushfire wars that followed had opened up a large market for companies involved in "advanced prosthetic research" and outfitting ex-soldiers via the Department of Veteran's Affairs bypassed that pesky law-suit business that civilians seemed to enjoy so much. A primary example was the artificial heart scandals of the 1980's where artificial heart producers were shut down not because the hearts had failed, but because they had the potential to fail. The 2023 "Eyegate" "scandal" where the new cybernetic eyes gave 10% of users motion sickness at periodic times had almost completely shut down the vision prosthetic research after the hundreds of millions of dollars were paid out during the class action lawsuits brought about by people who had the cybernetic eyes implanted, whether or not they had ever experienced any side effects merely because the could have. However, federal legislation made the Department of Veteran's Affairs immune to medical lawsuits, soldiers who had been blinded were grateful to get their sight back and didn't care about vertigo, blurred vision, or nausea, and the federal government had deep pockets. This revitalized the "advanced prosthetic" market, which pushed minaturization, low-heat electronics, long battery life, and low-energy use electronics to an all time high. Increased resolution was pushed just as much by the cyber-eye video hardware as it was by VR-Gaming hardware, until resolution bypassed what could be realized by the human eye. Advances in flat-ware motors, which were roughly the size of a quarter and could drive micro-screws or belt drives with enough force to simulate human muscle were advancing at a rapid pace. "Artificial nerves" were also in high demand, the quantum tunneling system used for high end consumer electronics, research super-computers, and medical systems were being used to replace damaged nerve sections, and much much more. All of this meant that the "infrastructure systems" of power armor, and yes, "Giant [CENSORED] Robots!!!" were being developed for civilian consumers at a fast enough rate that DARPA merely sat back and evaluated, rather than spend precious resources inventing the wheel again. This resulted in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and members of the Military Oversight Committee of both the House and the Senate being invited to a secure showing of "Project White Book" at the remote testing facilities of White Sands New Mexico. There the "Individual Amplification Program" got to showcase their new exo-skeletons, powered by micro-fission reactors. Everything from exo-skeletons that enabled a wearer to carry injured away from danger areas to robotic "mules" to carry equipment was shown off. While the "best for last" was two prototype armored vehicles and a nuclear powered interceptor combat jet, the two most important things that DARPA wanted their audience to see were buried in the middle of the presentation. The USA-XMG01A2 "Shockwave" Armored Assault Suit and the USA-XMT "Spanky" Mobile Assault Platform, both of the armors covered in a thin layer of the new chromium armor to make a definite impression. While the XMG01A2 was roughly the size of a man and packed a rotating magazine fed missile launcher as well as a plasma cannon, the "Spanky" was roughly 25 feet high and packed twin linear accelerator cannons as well as a pair of multi-launch rocket systems. As it was hoped, those in charge of the military remembered the chromium armored power armor and combat robot favorably and authorized classified budgets for development. The USA-XMG01A2 "Shockwave" eventually became the USA-G10 "Glitter Boy" AKA "Chromium Guardsman", the "Spanky" eventually became the Mastiff and Bulldog, and out of the turbine propulsion research came the "Silver Eagle" program that eventually produced the PA-04A US SAMAS. Nuclear power plants also became the primary energy source for main battle tanks, helicopter, military (and many civilian, although companies that produced those planes kept very quiet about it) planes, and other large vehicles. The higher energy output meant that takes could carry heavier armor loads, have high top speeds, and no longer have to rely on fuels that might explode due to battle damage. However, the release of the Chromium Guardsman and the Silver Eagle power armors represented a dynamic shift in battlefield tactics. Actually cheaper than a main battle tank, a Chromium Guardsman was actually more versatile. Military commanders were often tasked to send Chromium Guardsman and Silver Eagles into disaster areas to rescue civilians, work alongside emergency service personnel, and other high PR value operations. A suit of power armor is more mobile, often faster, and more agile than a traditional armored vehicle. Turrets rotate slowly to prevent major mechanical malfunctions, allowing a properly trained and alert pilot to "keep ahead of the bead" and avoid main gun attacks. They are more equipped to handle urban combat, as well as mountainous terrain (although boggy terrain still carries the traditional problems), and more than validate maintenance costs due their uses outside of the field of combat, where a main battle tank just sits there. This meant that the stockpiles of heavy tanks were instantly rendered useless. Advances in armor materials, hidden in advances in construction materials for many nations, meant that entire divisions of tanks had become virtually useless overnight. Advances in plasma, laser, and ion weaponry meant a tank that had been a fearsome opponent as little as ten years ago would now be a carbonized gutted wreck from some infantryman's sidearm. Many nations just built up-armored tanks, using the newer material and weaponry, as well as the micro-plants now being produced in such places as Peru, India, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and called it good. But for the old super-powers and the emerging ones, the fact that the United States had power armor meant that they all needed it. Espionage reached an all time high not seen since the end of the Cold War in the 2980's, with the Mastiff and Bulldog systems having been stolen by Uganda, Pakistan, the new Reunified Russian Republic (Triple-R), and the Chinese by 2055. This meant that "Man-Piloted Robotic Vehicles" and "Robotic Combat Platforms" were becoming more and more prevalent. A UN decree went out banning production of power armor and combat robots, but it was veto'd by the higher ranking members (most of whom already possessed power armor and robotic power armor) as well as many of the smaller nations (who had manufacturing bases devoted to producing the armors, or hoped to develop their own programs) that the authors of the bill had assumed would provide enough votes to over-ride a veto. In 2067 the "VR Blackout" occurred, with a super-virus tearing apart most of the civilian and even part of the military data-net. This spelled the death-knell for many Arab nations, as well as Venezuala and the wholly corporate owned Romania, when the world's economy took a major blow. Dubia, which was already in severe trouble, also suffered an earth-quake that ran in the 7.9 scale. UN and NEMA peace-keepers accompanied an emergency relief force, since the government of Dubia had allowed NEMA to hold a Joint Services Desert Training Operation. During the relief effort a force of NEMA Bulldogs and Mastiff's were attacked by "person's unknown" using late generation heavy tanks (investigators discovered these had been built in Rwanda but never delivered to the Triple-R, who had been financially strapped at the time and reneged on the contract). Despite being outnumbered sixteen to one, the four Bulldogs and two Mastiff's soundly defeated the tank battalion with minimal loss of life among the relief force. Without a doubt power-armor represented an entirely new paradigm in strategy and tactics, and the SAMAS meant that Air-Mobile had just taken another quantum leap forward. China, adept at penetrating American R&D systems were the first to get good schematics on the SAMAS and the Chromium Guardsman in 2072. In 2075 the "Congo Incident" occurred, swiftly followed by the "Panama Canal Incident". In 2089 the "Sudan Incident" occurred, showing that power armor and robot combat armor was becoming more and more prevelant, as was "cheap and dangerous" Man Amplification Technology. In was in this environment that the Mastiff, Bulldog, Chromium Guardsman, and Silver Eagle were produced. In December, 2089, the Time of Chaos occurred. During this time all the stops were pulled out. Variants that were kept secret, in final production, in final or intermediate testing were all put to use. Where did all these robots come from? To understand why there was such huge stockpiles and rapid deployment of power armor and robot combat armor, one must understand one simple line in the Rifts Core Book. "A Second Cold War" That's all I need to know. It goes like this: If the opponent has one tank, you should have three. If one of there tanks is as good as 4 of yours, you build 12. Up to 30% of your budget can go to military expansion, research, and equipping. You are at war and the guy who spends the least loses. With other nations starting to produce power armor, NEMA, and of course, the United States Military, would pull out all the stops to research better armor and weaponry, as well as tactical and battlefield control systems. As fast as it could be "test proven" it would go into production. Look at ARCHIE's capabilities. And he was a "Event Recovery System", not a full fledged fabrication unit. Even the fabrication plants in Quebec and Germany are the smaller plants. Those the self-sufficent plants that each military ensures they posses so that in case of war when their supply lines are disrupted they can still produce military equipment. The "peace-time" factories would be bringing in parts from dozens of other factories and assembling dozens or hundreds of units a month as the parts came in. A full HALF of these would go into what (During the First Cold War) was called "War Stocks", which was everything needed to fight the war if the already issued equipment was destroyed by enemy action. Additionally the War Stocks act as a reserve in case of interruption of supply lines or manufacturing. The rest is put into active military forces, given to reserve components, and sold/given to ally nations. A small percentage is put in "Deep Storage" which means that they are in bunkers built to withstand ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING so that the survivors have enough firepower to repel any type of invasion. If the enemy has one, you need three applies to "in service equipment" only. Now, for every suit of power armor or cyborg Russia or China built, the US and NEMA (separately) would build THREE for IN SERVICE! That means they'd build, in reality, Seven, with one for Deep Storage, Three for War Fighter, Three for Active, at a minimum. Yes, a LOT of the Robot Power Armor and Power Armor was destroyed during the Chaos Earth years. Bunkers collapsed, entire military bases vanished instantly, and much much more was destroyed in the long decades of combat, but not ALL of the stockpiles were destroyed. Some were found during the Dark Ages, others more recently, and even more are just sitting there, cold and dark, waiting to be found. Just ask the Coalition about Lone-Star. How fast you get shot in the back of the head is your answer. Where did the tanks and jets go? Tanks are slow. Sorry, tankers, but compared to the SAMAS and jets and even helicopters, tanks are slow. During the Chaos Years demons were just as fast or faster than powered armor and attacked in mass numbers. Any deployed tanks would be suffering from problems with the ash, and hover-tanks would be completely shot as volcanic dust sucked into turbines destroyed the engines. With the landscape being torn up so bad, all the ash, and problems moving, many tanks became static weapon emplacements (see the Iraqi tank defense attempt during the First Gulf War), and even those that didn't suffered the same fate, usually faster. One by one, each of them fell to the invading demons. Not to say that there wasn't any, but they were used until they were all destroyed, even the old M1 Abrams stocks held in depot yards and old IRR armories. Tanks could be put into service, and while much of America was reduced to snow-covered ashy mud, tanks were still useful, and put into service as fast as possible. Even museum pieces were reconfigued for use. This means that stuff as far back as the old Sherman tanks were put into service. Finding ANY 20th Century armored vehicles is a rarity, since any easy to find armored vehicles were used during the Cataclysm Years and eventually destroyed. Jets would have been a complete disaster. That fine volcanic ash sucked into jet engines would have destroyed them completely. They wouldn't have even gotten off the ground, and most pilots would have refused to try. (Remember, the Silver Eagles were largely grounded) Those jets that survived the initial cataclysm would have been scavenged for parts in the ensuing months. Their weapon systems, control systems, and even engines would have been taken for use by other military equipment. Even helicopters use air intakes, which meant they would have been grounded, and either destroyed or scavenged for parts. Tanks, jets, and helicopters couldn't cope one the Chaos Earth battlefield, and were stripped for parts and materials or destroyed. Very few of the advanced tanks would have made it, and those would actually take more resources to produce (more than likely requiring zero-G manufacturing) than a suit of power armor, which would be more effective against the supernatural threats released by the Rifts. The Zero-G manufacturing processes (made with near-earth orbital manufacturing facilities) being lost was the biggest reason that more modern tanks have not been tried. Despite the late generation tanks fielded by the CS military just prior to the Tolkeen War. All of this meant that nobody would have produced any to replace all of them that were destroyed.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:18
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The rough trail to the Glitter Boy In the mid to late 20th Century the limits of chemical firearms was reached. Bullets could only be so large, and there could only be so much propellant before the law of diminishing returns took effect. For the the Cold War embroiled nations this meant looking a little further. The Soviet Union, hampered by decades of mis-management in their scientific warfare department, got off to a later start, and mainly focused on directed energy and enhancements to standard conventional weapons. The United States, with its NATO partners, began research into "magnetically accelerated weapons". With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, most programs were put on the back-burner. However, the DARPA, with funding from the US Army and US Navy began to manage some breakthroughs. A "rail gun" for this discussion, means a linear accelerator that a projectile is moved down, rapidly gaining speed as it is magnetically propelled down a "barrel" by a rail system. This is done by having the magnetic force increase further down the "rails", "pulling" the projectile forward. This is opposed to the "magnetic accelerator", where there are "rings" of magnetics that switch on and off, pulling the round forward. However, these terms can be used interchangeably by the lay-man. At White Sands New Mexico, in 1993, was the first test-fire of what would come to be known as a "rail-gun". On March 2nd, 1993, at 1245 hours, the XM-1A1 was brought to full charge, and fired at a bunker a mile away. According to computer simulation and physics workups, the two foot long, 3 inch thick, tungsten steel rod should have hit the reenforced concrete with the equivalent force of 120mm APDSFSDU round at close range. However, the rod accelerated to speeds roughly three times what was projected, leaving the barrel with a sonic booms and a displacement shock that destroyed the acceleration frame and injured several soldiers. The effect on the bunker could not be denied, and it alone determined that the experiment was a success. In tests, a main 120mm cannon blast would cave in the front of the bunker at less than 40 feet. The rail-gun not only collapsed the front of the bunker, but the lime of the concrete caught on fire, the penetrator round liberated its energy completely, and the bunker vanished in a 1.2 kiloton blast. The plasma lance (that the tungsten converted into) then struck the hill behind the bunker, blowing a six foot deep, thirty foot radius divot in the hill in an explosion of dirt. It had proven its effectiveness. Now it just needed to be usable in a conflict and fired more than once. When the Force XXI Project wrapped up, the rail-gun system was determined to have passed the necessary tests to validate continuing research, and the Rail-Gun system went back to Fort Mead Maryland for further testing and enhancement under the Table-Scraps Project. While the project team knew what they needed was high-temperature superconductors, monopole magnets, and a high output steady small energy source, as well as improved structural materials, they had not reached that point, and began seeking ways to bypass the "wish list" requirement and deliver a functioning rail-gun to the US military. With budget cuts rampant in the mid-1990's, DARPA was forced to put the railgun in the "Applied Practical Energy Research" program and fund some of the development with Department of Energy funds. Despite keeping it out of general knowledge, the Congressional and Senate Armed Services Committees were kept appraised of the research, explaining that the "rail gun" was actually a "ballistic missile interdiction system" and part of the well sought after "ballistic missile defense system." In June of 1997 the second test firing took place. A new shock frame, rail system, and reinforcement were all used to make sure the frame survived initial firing. A loading system was put into place, since the goal was not only to fire it at a target, but then swivel the weapon and engage three other targets in rapid succession. The test was a complete success, despite some "warping" of the structural support elements. However, the weapon's size and energy requirements made it useless for the US Army, while the US Navy rapidly began adapting the existing DDX Destroyer plans to incorporate the rail-gun as a "kinetic kill weapon" that would enable the destroyer to kill ships its own size with one shot. In December of 2004, without much fan-fare, three DDX-LA (Linear Accelerator) ships were launched and quickly wrapped into Task Forces. Test firing at Bikini Atoll, home of the early atomic tests, showed that the XM-101LA was only limited by the curvature of the earth and targeting systems. The estimated range of the fully powered "war-shot" of the XM-101LA was around 20+ kilometers, and unlike the main gun systems of older models, this was a direct line attack rather than indirect fire, with significantly less "flight time" during the attack. In one test the USS Peabody struck the target ship five times in sixteen seconds, sinking the supercargo carrier when the other ship broke into three pieces. Additionally, the weapon could be used to direct attack shore emplacements. This meant it was great for the DDX Destroyers, which moved fast to get into range of the target, fired rapidly, and scooted away. Not so good for the Cruiser (Such as the Aegis Cruiser) type ships, which decided to forgo the rail-gun and stick with missile systems. One advantage the system had was in its ability to knock out incoming shells from other ships, since all three DDX-LA ships could sweep opponents indirect fire and missile fire from the air as soon as they were locked on with radar. The navy had their mid-range class weapon. In 2006 the "ring accelerator" system was tested on a 105mm cannon mount. Problems quickly surfaced with the fact that a tank could only hold enough power storage to fire the weapon three times before it ran out, with it taking up to an hour for the heavy-duty alternators on the engine to recharge the energy storage system. This meant it was useless in sustained combat or on extended operations. Once again, the US Army said "thanks, but no thanks". However, the USAF realized that it could be used in the same way the 105mm cannon of the A-10 was used, and began designing an airframe to wrap around the weapon and support it. In 2009 the first A-10A3-MAG was test fired. Capable of a sustained rate of fire of one round every two seconds for up to 275 rounds, two of the four jet engines had the sole duty of charging the electrical storage system. In 2010 the project was cancelled as it was decided that the current generation of A-10 Warthogs filled the same role and the A-10A3-MAG offered little in the way of increased battlefield superiority while adding thousands of work hours and maintenance to keep the plane airborne. During the Objective Force Land Warrior program, "ring-launchers" were examined closely as a way to increase the range on the 20mm launcher attached to the ill-fated OIWCS weapon system. However, it was discarded when the magnetic coils gave users headaches, attracted loose metal objects at high velocity toward the wielder, and were only good for one or two shots before the batteries ran out. The "man-portable" light weapon was discarded. In 2011 plans began being drawn up for the M1A3 Abrams Main Battle Tank, which tentatively planned on having a rail gun for the main cannon. Advances in room temperature superconductors, super-cooling systems, and battery charge made it appear as if the M1A3 would be the first US Army vehicle mounting a rail-gun. Fiscal Year 2011 ended up being a disappointment as far as the DARPA budget went, with most Senate and Congressional members feeling as if the "War on Terror" was over and there was no reason to continue research on "esoteric weaponry more suited to fight a super-power" and desired to use the money for other projects. The railgun system sat to the side, ignored except for the odd Air Force or Navy test out at the Groom Lake Testing Facility, until 2020, when the first rail-gun cannon was developed for the US Army and put into the all new M15 "Powell" main battle tank. Featuring a 90mm "gun" system, the weapon used a discarding sabot to act as the ferrous metal component, with the "penetrator" round being a fin stabilized depleted uranium round. Initial testing showed that a trained tank crew could spot, engage, and destroy a target from as far away as 15 miles, depending upon the terrain. At the insistence of the Joint Chiefs, the initial MACH 8.35 speed was dialed back to a non-orbit breaking speed of MACH 4.5, giving the round a 1 MACH variance in case of computer damage, battle damage, or "environmental charging." In 2022 a lightning strike on a M15A1 (with increased computer, ECM/ECCM, and Battle Tactical Network Interface, drone deployment, and indirect fire systems) caused the M-233 Electromagnetic Rail Gun System to rapid-fire the entire "magazine" in an overcharged capacity. War-shots hit as far as 70 miles away (ripping through the top of a skyscraper in Austin, Texas and blowing a massive hole in the structure, estimated t obe 32 million dollars in damage) This led to civilian outcry against "weapons of mass destruction" being used in tanks and attack jets. This lead to the M14A2 series being released, merely replacements for the fire control modules, and more safety cutouts on the M-233 main gun. China unveiled their "Tri-laser main battle tank cannon" in 2027. Three lasers, firing in conjunction, could tear through conventional armor in seconds, without the recoil or aiming problems that other systems were facing. Although US and Canadian and NATO military analysts stated that the laser system's actual battlefield reliability and that there was no known way to keep up that kind of power consumption with known power systems. However, those analysts were quietly hushed up, promoted to lucrative positions where they would be unlikely to rock the boat, and the US military told the Senate Armed Services Committee that with "a significant leap forward in warfare" unveiled by the Chinese made it mandate that the US research programs be refunded and given the "Skunkworks" approach. In 2028 the "Laser Protective Armor System" was mounted onto the M15A3 chassis, although this did not receive a new nomenclature, being considered much like the old "reactive armor system" of the Cold War. This armor was the KLS "laser reflective density enhanced chromium armor system" that was plated onto the new composite armor system. This required the tanks to undergo "SLEP" (Service Life Extension Program) for a cost of 1.2 million dollars apiece, as opposed to the 22.5 million dollar replacement pricetag that completely overhauling the tank divisions of the US Army and NATO. This initial armor has no weakness to any frequency. In 2030 the "NexGen Weapon and Armor Systems" study was taken. This included hundreds of corporations bringing their best prototypes to the field to be tested under rigorous conditions over a period of six months. The testing took nearly four years, and covered everything from small arms to artillery systems, to ballistic defense systems, to field rations, uniforms, body armor. While Colt Firearms took home the much sought after "small arms" contract, the tank main gun systems went to KLS Corporation, the same company that had designed the laser defeating armor for the M15 series tanks. With the Lightwell Compact Nuclear Fission System being used for all the power systems in the new tanks, KLS had no problems selling the US military on the M-10RL cannon. A 65mm linear accelerator cannon, that fired a projectile 65mm (roughly 2.5 inches) wide and 178mm (7 inches) long. Normally the round would be much longer, but the magnetic acceleration system did away with the propellant system. Remington Arms was handed the contract to develop ammunition types for the cannon, over KLS' protests, however Colt Firearms made it obvious they were willing to take over production of a magnetic acceleration system should KLS find its "contractual obligations too burdensome" as they'd already shown a main cannon that was nearly the equal of the Boom Gun. (Later tests showed that the Colt Linear Accelerator Cannon suffered serious design flaws that resulted in the weapon becoming less and less accurate with steadily decreasing range for each shot) In 2035 KLS released not only the RG-14 (The internal name) but the USA-G-10 power armor suit. It was initially designed to allow a single soldier to fire the RG-14, and was fielded as the center of a heavy weapons team. The initial release of the USA-G-10 was the M-29 Soldier Enhancement Suit and required the user to lay on the ground to fire the RG-14, renomenclatured as the M-10LA 65mm Electromagnetic Linear Accellerator Railgun. The M-10LA featured two superconductor rails made of high density magnetic plastic, powered by an external energy source, a plastic/non-ferrous loading system that was magazine fed. The initial M-10LA featured a mid-mounted tripod, with the firing mechanism in the rear (for mounted firing) or by a shoulder brace with a hand trigger in the case of armored troop use. The weapon was designed to by used as a fixed emplacement as well as being carried into battle by the power armor soldier. The rails were cooled by injection of nitrogen after each shot, and took approximately fifteen seconds for the nitrogen to vent and the rails come back "online" for us. However, under battlefield conditions the sensors that controlled when the rails came back online became fouled or misaligned, resulting in the weapon being unable to be fired. Within six-months a "local armorer fix" came available, replacing the entire sensor system and the injection system. While KLS assured the US military that a properly trained armorer could do it "quickly and easily, with no more than 20 minutes of work" in reality the weapon, which had often been fired dozens of times at the range, had shifted, expanded, and worn in ways that KLS could not have foreseen. Metal fatigue, ceramic cracking, and superconductor "stress line fractures" made it so the weapons were often severely damaged just by taking it apart. This resulted in KLS having to recall the weapons and fix them in 2036. It was at this time that approximately 200 of the M-10's were stolen from a freight shipping yard in Seattle by people unknown. Despite the CIA keeping a lookout for the weapons, they never surfaced. Later evidence showed that Canada had managed to acquire them and were busy reverse engineering them for their new main battle tank. The M-168 main battle tank cannon came under its first test under fire in 2037, when UN Peacekeepers in Darfur came under attack by warlords packing state of the art anti-tank weaponry imported from Romania. The tank crews found out that months of vibration inside the hull of the tank had damaged the weapons, many of them failing after the second or third shot. On two occasions the weapon exploded back into the crew compartment, killing the crew. KLS was in trouble, and they knew it. With Colt already showcasing the XM-31 railgun as the new squad operated weapon, KLS knew they had to do something, and do it fast. The military was already breathing down their necks, threatening to remove the contracts, which would drive KLS into bankruptcy. Already their stock was taking a major hit as rumors of weapon malfunctions spread as was the news of the lawsuit brought against KLS by the families of the killed and injured tank crews. In late 2037 KLS released the M-10A2LA and the M-168A1 weapons. (The M-10A1LA had problems with sonic baffling that would later become important to what would eventually become known as the Boom Gun) GM took the time to address some issues they knew existed in the M15 main battle tanks that had to be ignored in order for it to be brought into production in time, resulting in the M-15A1 being the platform the M-168A1 was mounted on. The M-10A2LA and the accompanying M-29A1 featured improvements over the original suit. First of all, the weapon could be fired from the shoulder, and used prone, standing, or kneeling. The M-10A2LA used a "submunition" approach, firing at 20mm x 75mm round in a three round burst. The suit used gyroscopic recoil compensation to handle the immense kickback of the weapon. However, this required the suit wearer to pause for up to 10 seconds before they were able to fire the weapon as the gyroscopes spun up to full strength. Gyroscopic malfunction resulting in the suit being thrown one way or another, and gyroscopes that moved out of synch became known as "The railgun shakes" as the harmonic made the whole suit vibrate to the point it could actually cause "shaken baby syndrome" in the users. On several occassions flaws in the manufacturing (KLS was using a Ugandan supplier for the gyroscopes at the time, as the emerging industrial economy of Uganda was a perfect place to put heavy manufacturing without worrying about the "Green Laws" the more developed nations adhered to) led to the gyroscopes literally exploding as they spun up to speed due to stress fractures and metal fatigue. In over two dozen different incidents in less than a year the wearer of the suit was killed or maimed by gyroscopic "malfunction". The M-10A2LA's linear accelerator was little better, microscopic cracks in the magnetic rails leading the rails failing during weapon firing. When this occurred more than a few times the submunition was fired through the side or top of the weapon, destroying the weapon and injuring the operator. In 2038 KLS added the "recoil compensation kit" that strapped on a pair of gyroscopes to the M-10A2LA itself. Supposedly this was to allow the firer to be able to move and fire without the weapon warm-up time previously required. Although KLS insisted that this improvement would improve the "move and fire" ability of the weapon handler, in practice the gyroscopes often kept the firer from making any sudden movements or reacting to any ambushes properly. In 2039 this lead to a UN Peacekeeper force coming under ambush and being unable to quickly take cover when RPG fire started. This lead to over a hundred deaths in a single month as "RPG sniping" became the standard tactic of the during the Nigerian Revolution. The US Army dropped the M-10A2LA system completely during their deployment during the humanitarian effort, reverting back to older weaponry until either the contract was awarded to someone else or KLS fixed the ongoing problems with the weapon system. The electromagnetic "surge" when the weapon fired disrupted the fledgeling BaTNI system, often crashing computers, disrupting communications, or even permanently damaging hardware. Unit armorers pointed at the substandard shielding in the M-10A2LA as the culprit. Alpha Company, 1/68th Armor, out of Fort Hood, stripped the shielded aerogel from shipping packaging of the BaTNI system and lined the inside of the weapon with it, replacing the "spun shielding" that KLS used, enabling the weapon to be used. However, KLS protested that the weapon was being used "out of specification and beyond recommendations" and threatened not to provide maintenance support. This led to the US Army forbidding all KLS personnel from the US Army bases and hiring former KLS employees to teach maintenance classes. KLS went to the Armed Services Committees as well as the Department of Defense Procurement Board to protest their treatment, citing that their orbital and under construction Lunar facilities showed that KLS was capable of handling large projects with slipping goals and "on-the-fly" adjustments. However, their testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee didn't quite go as planned, with Senator John Stacey remarking "If KLS showed as much care with their advanced weapon system development as they have with their space program, then perhaps many young men and women would be alive who were killed through KLS negligence." The Armed Services Committee demanded that KLS do something about the problems. In field testing, the weapon was perfectly serviceable and showed a lot of promise, but in actuality, it had a reputation for being a bigger menace to the operator than the enemy. Even when US Army units were being deployed to brushfire war areas in Africa and South America the units usually left the M-10A2LA behind, along with the M-29A1. Those units that did deploy with the weapons usually placed them in a fixed position for defense rather than depending on them for offensive capability. Even placed in a defensive position most unit commanders avoided even powering up the system, instead relying on older weapon systems, often tasking the US Marine Corps to use their heavy ion weaponry for defense. The M-168A1 was performing admirably in field conditions, including the 2038 "Syrian Occupation" where the UN, backed by NATO, faced off with the Syrian military on the NBC battlefield. The "upgrade kit" that increased the damage output of the main cannon. The "sonic disruption effect" of the M-168A1v2 was easily dampened by 89 tons of armored vehicle, but tank crews quickly learned to use it to break up infantry attacks, the sonic report leaving unprotected soldiers on the ground holding their ears. Tank commanders often fired "range shot", which was little more than a foil charge that was designed to get the weapon to fire while a laser designated whether or not the gunner's aim was good. The "range shot" caused the sonic boom effect, which worked quite well to break up mobs non-lethally. However the Human Rights Commission protested this action, citing the long term hearing damage, air compression cerebral contusions, and other health problems from a close range sonic boom. In a surprising move, Syrian civilians sued KLS in World Court, where KLS testified that the US Army had used the weapon "outside of operational intent", barely managing to avoid billions of dollars in damages. If it wasn't for KLS's space program, their Chromium Armor System, and a few other products, they would have been bankrupt following the Syrian Lawsuits. However, a breakthrough in foamed titanium alloy production gave them the lightweight exoskeleton needed for an armor design they had had for years. Combined with advances in aerogel shielding, quantum microcircuitry, and other areas, including the new Lightwell reactor, KLS was able to produce the first of the new armor systems. While the Chromium Guardsman went through almost fifteen reiterations before KLS was confident in showing it to the US military, the final version would be recognizable to anyone who had seen the venerable Glitter Boy power armor suits. In 2040 the M-29A3 was showcased for the fledgling NEMA, with the permission of the US Army, which was close to abandoning the KLS armor systems. The new weapon and armor system, which had been codenamed "Project Honey Rabbit" in KLS and US military internal documents, was a completely revolutionary system. This was a suit designed for long-term wear on the NBC battlefield, maximum mobility and speed (sticking with the US Army's "scoot and move" doctrine), the digital battlefield, and the modular weapon system design that the US Army had adopted in the 2020's. The initial M-29A3 was a stripped down version of the later models, lacking the refinements of 50 years of battle testing. The NEMA version of the M-29A3 was known as the USA-G10, reverting to its old name. It's the standard NEMA USA-G10 that is commonly known as the Legacy Glitter Boy on Rifts Earth.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:21
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RG-14/M-10LA "Boom Gun" In 2040 the initial M-10A3LA was released by KLS for the GL-10/M-20A2 Armor Systems. The RG-14 used for "rails" as well as the "ring acceleration" system. The rails were used for "flight stabilization" while the ring acceleration system was used to accelerate the projectile to a maximum MACH 12 speed. (The "Near Orbital Strike Package was only available to the US Army and the USAF, as well as the Canadian Air Force) The weapon had been designed for "in the field" maintenance, including by the suit wearer if the wearer was in a full NBC environment. A trained wearer could do a full launching mechanism replacement, without leaving the suit, within five minutes. The RG-14 was merely a cut-down sub-caliber version of the M-168 cannon used on tanks, with additional systems inside the RRG-14 that normally were inside the tank cupola. The M-10A3LA was heavily dialed back, with the velocity being only MACH 4.5, for the projectile that had finalized at 65mm (roughly 2.5 inches) wide and 178mm (7 inches) long for the power armor version instead of the heavy 105mm x 355mm projectile used by the tank cannon. For the version sold to the fledgeling NEMA the projectile velocity was dialed back even further to a meager MACH 2, slower than even 20th Century projectiles. The lower rate of speed would increase the life of the rail gun system for an unknown amount of time. Tests performed showed that the superconductor rail system held together for tens of thousands of rounds when the power was stepped down to MACH 2. While the NEMA version only fired at a maximum of MACH Two, the fire control circuitry contained over-rides to allow it to fire all the way to MACH 10. However, NEMA version were stored with the maximum velocity set to the standard for urban combat, MACH 1. The RG-14 had two settings for NEMA troops, MACH 2 for standard combat, MACH One for urban pacification. The urban setting was used with the tungsten steel flechette round, which had less of a chance of penetrating modern construction materials, or even the construction materials in less developed nations. Additionally, the flechette round only had a maximum effective range of a five hundred meters (roughly 1500 feet) with either power due to the flechettes spreading out. As NEMA wasn't expected to face front line units of modern militaries without the backing of the US, Canadian, or Mexican Armies, this was deemed plenty of firepower for the various UN missions. The initial RG-14 was a stable workhorse, without any of the frills that the modern militaries of America, Canada, and Mexico used, but that wasn't to say it wasn't without problems. The initial run used forced air compression into the barrel to clear it. In dusty areas that meant that the intake vents could become clogged on the first clearance. Since the weapon cleared the barrel before the round was fired rather than after (and risk the barrel being clogged between shots) this meant that the weapon could be rendered inoperative with a single shot. The belt fed mechanism had a tendency to jam under rapid fire conditions, however it could be corrected at operator level by simply removing the guide tray and bending it slightly. The laser targeting system had a tendency to become misaligned after several hours of travel, reducing the effective range even further. The lack of concealment was not a problem for NEMA, who stood by the adage that their mere presence would do more to deter violence. During field tests the RG-14 performed admirably, able to quickly and easily destroy 20th Century armored vehicles. They were also able to engage and destroy low flying aircraft and helicopters, however critics of the "low performance" pointed at that even 20th Century aircraft and helicopters could stay outside the range of the weapon and strike with impunity. Those critics were usually refuted by pointing at the chromium armor's ability to withstand any weaponry that an undeveloped nation could hope to field. It was also argued that the pilot could go to "Full battlefield power" and engage at ranges up to two miles. When it was pointed out that airfoil spread for the flechettes would render the round useless within a few hundred meters, that fact was just hand-waved away by pointing out that the NEMA suits could be quickly and easily armed with the war-shots of the United States, Canada, or Mexico. During the Groom Lake field trials in 2045 the RG-14 performed well enough the NEMA Procurement Board, a well meaning institution that knew less about the field of asymmetrical warfare than they did the politics of global conflict resolution. While a significant percentage of the sitting board members had military experiences, it was in limited to the brushfire wars of Africa and South America rather than any actual conflicts. This limited their experience to militaries fielding mid to late 20th century equipment, so the members of the board with military experience really had no grasp of "modern" combat. NEMA soldiers could expect to operate for long periods of time without the refit they could expect in one of the "First World" nations, so the RG-14 had to be durable, able to be "black boxed" in respect to maintenance, and easy to repair. This led to many of the features being disabled, since KLS found it easier to just turn off those features than to rebuild the entire line for the limitations of the RG-14. Meanwhile the Canadian, American, and Mexican military were pushing the absolute limits of the hardware. Design after redesign, full integration to the "mobile warfare" doctrine that the CMLL (Center for Military Lessons Learned) was rapidly hammering out to integrate power armor into the force structure. Overnight the M-29A3 had changed the face of warfare, and the three militaries in possession of the Glitter Boy began looking at every option and how it altered the traditional battlefield. In 2050 NEMA was officially formed and the "Chromium Guardsman" became not only the frontline unit of the para-military force but its icon. In 2051 NEMA got another brush-fire baptism when they came under fire in Turkey by forces unknown, carrying early 21st Century RPGs, during an earthquake relief and rescue effort. Each RG-14 fire dozens of rounds. While the two dozen armors withstood the task with only minor damage (mostly to auxilary systems), and the only pilot death a pilot that panicked and ejected while surrounded by a crowd with an inoperable weapon, in every single case the main gun failed. This prompted the US military, with forces stationed in a Turkish NATO base that had existed since post-World War Two to deploy M-29's (Nicknamed Harvesters) to back up the NEMA troops. Despite NEMA investigators initially deciding that the rail gun functioned well under the stresses of the chaotic urban combat, the US military and NATO sent in Canadian and German investigators and developed and in-depth report on the M-10A2LA and what went wrong. Despite public knowledge, the US Army had learned the hard way that stark uncomprimising analysis was better than a white-wash, and they fully intended on preventing NEMA from publishing their white-wash investigation into the failures of the GR-14. The report was published after two weeks of on-site battlefield forensics and six months of analysis. It highlighted several problems with the RG-14 that had so far gone unnoticed.
The report weighed in at over 1,600 pages, but as Senator Elizabeth Charleston put it to the rest of the Armed Services Committee: "Shouldn't an honest, proper report be longer than a LOLCat forward?" This resulted in the RG-14A1 being released. This one possessed magnetic acceleration deguassers, filtered air compression, but no change to the belt, as the NEMA Procurement Department deemed it too expensive to replace the ammunition stocks, and they had recently agreed to "purchase" the ammunition stocks of America, Canada, and Mexico. The US Army rejected the M-10A3LA offered and instead put forward the results of over two years of testing and feedback that KLS had not been invited on. KLS petitioned the Armed Services Committees to reject the US Department of Defense demands, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. The RG-14A1 had no deployed service between 2052 and 2063 that actually stressed the weapon. In 2063, August 19th, a NEMA patrol taking part in REFORGER 2063, to learn to operate in conjunction with the NATO militaries, came under attack by a force of Bosnian Anaconda robot power armor almost three times their number, supported by infantry clad in military body armor, artillery, and anti-tank teams. The "Bosnian" force had the correct encryption algorithms, ID codes, and were exactly where they were supposed to be, playing Opposing Forces Red Team to the NEMA Blue Team. Struck by surprise, with only token "Golden Eagle" support, and their radio traffic assumed to be part of the exercise, the NEMA forces found themselves pitted against what was marginally friendly forces in a ten minute firefight. During that 10 minute fight the NEMA forces expended 2,638 munitions against their opponents. Six Chromium Guardsman were badly damaged, and two were knocked out of the fight in the first 30 seconds. In the end the last four operational pilots closed to hand to hand range to defeat the last of their opponents. Once again NATO, NEMA, the US, Canada, and Mexico all published their fact finding missions after the battle. Once again, the NEMA after action report just spoke in glowing terms, glossing over what the Canadian military called "Unacceptable failures of primary weaponry." The reports and pressure from the NEMA member states on KLS pushed through the following changes to the RG-14, ushering in the RG14A2 with the following changes:
This weapon remained in service until the Panama Canal Incident, where again shortcomings in the NEMA version reared their ugly head again. However, this proved to be defects in the rail system manufacturing, rather than the weapon itself. However, the US Army and Canada demanded more changes which were barely put into service before the Cataclysm. Now, the NEMA version of the cannon, configured for urban warfare, is the "original" Boom Gun.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:22
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INTERLUDE "Lights." Hagan mumbled, sitting up in bed, breathing heavy and covered in cold sweat. He'd been dreaming of the Mechanoid Invasion again. Of burnt out lifeless towns, bodies torn into pieces, and weeks at a time locked inside a suit of power armor that quickly had begun to stink of sweat, body odor, and fear. The soft lights came on, illuminating his bedroom within the vast facility that made up the "body" of his best friend, the supercomputer known as Archie. He reached out, grabbing for the bottle of whiskey on the nightstand, and spun the top free with his thumb so he could take a long pull off of the bottle. The whiskey burned going down, but helped wake him up, helped push away the nightmare of that brutal war that most people in North America had no idea had ever happened. "Hagan, are you all right?" Archie's voice was low, worried sounding. "Your biometric readings show you to be under extreme stress, possibly engaged in combat, but my sensors show you alone." Hagan grimaced, that was one thing that was hard to get used to. Archie had access to all of his secrets, knew things about him that nobody else could merely through observation. "Just dreams, buddy, just dreams." Hagan answered, taking another long pull off the whiskey. It was a pre-Rifts brand, from Archie's private stock, from down in the deep vaults that Hagan had only visited a few times. Those vaults contained disassembled buildings, hospital equipment, fertilizer, building materials, vehicles, clothing, manufacturing equipment. All sitting in the cold and dark, silently waiting to be used. The few times Hagan had gone down there at Archie's insistence, as the supercomputer's sensors down there were sparse at best, Hagan had been able to feel the weight of centuries, the sense of loss and timelessness, and it made him nervous. "What did you dream about, Hagan? I find my dreams disturbing at times, what disturbs you?" Archie asked. "The Mechanoid War." Hagan answered honestly, another drink of whiskey going down. "Hagan, I can help you. I have extensive programming in trauma psychology, including specifics to help with combat post traumatic stress disorder." Archie said. "Your time spent fighting the Mechanoids has a 87% statistical chance of inflicting you with psychological trauma due to the short sharp nature of the conflict and your extended combat with little downtime." Hagan snorted and shook his head. "Short, Archie? It went on for weeks, months. Hundreds lost their lives. Entire towns were destroyed. The only larger conflict in recent history was the Tolkeen Siege last year and the Federation of Magic war several decades ago." "Limited engagements by small nation-states, Hagan. Although the participants have roughly the same statistical chance as you to suffer psychological trauma, plus or minus fifteen percent." Archie answered. Hagan frowned at Archie's dismissive tone. The Tolkeen Siege had involved hundreds of thousands of troops and lasted months, the largest war in history as far as Hagan knew. "Archie, mankind had been at peace for decades before the Coming of the Rifts. Erin Tan described it as a 'Golden Age of Mankind', full of cooperation and advances in all kinds of technology. There hadn't been a war in decades, so how can you call the Siege of Tolkeen a limited engagement?" Archie chuckled at that, and one of the monitors in Hagan's room lit up. "Hagan, my friend, mankind has never truly been at peace for any long period of time. There have always been what was once called 'brushfire wars' even when the major nations were at peace. What Erin Tarn speaks of is colored by her limited understanding of human history. Even during the so-called 'Golden Age' there were over three fields of conflict at any given time, from extermination pogroms to simple guerrilla warfare rebellions. According to my analysis, and the analysis of military experts at the time, even if the Rifts had not occurred, the world was poised at the edge of a major conflict that the likes of had not been seen since the mid-20th Century." On the monitor flashed grainy black and white footage of crude tanks and planes fighting, men fighting on the battlefield, and documentation of the aftermath of battles. "This is what was called World War Two, a conflict involving most of the industrialized nations of Earth at the time." Other images appeared, men fighting on a beach. Hagan flinched as a heavy cannon opened up and men were shattered into gobbets of meat. He stared, his eyes wide, as men, without armor, charged into machinegun fire, firing their own weapons. "This is what was known as D-Day, the Allied Forces landing on and establishing a beach-head in Europe. On D-Day, the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. The American forces landed numbered 73,000: 23,250 on Utah Beach, 34,250 on Omaha Beach, and 15,500 airborne troops. In the British and Canadian sector, 83,115 troops were landed (61,715 of them British): 24,970 on Gold Beach, 21,400 on Juno Beach, 28,845 on Sword Beach, and 7900 airborne troops. 11,590 aircraft were available to support the landings. On D-Day, Allied aircraft flew 14,674 sorties, and 127 were lost. In the airborne landings on both flanks of the beaches, 2395 aircraft and 867 gliders of the RAF and USAAF were used on D-Day. Operation Neptune involved huge naval forces, including 6939 vessels: 1213 naval combat ships, 4126 landing ships and landing craft, 736 ancillary craft and 864 merchant vessels. Some 195,700 personnel were assigned to Operation Neptune: 52,889 US, 112,824 British, and 4988 from other Allied countries. By the end of 11 June (D + 5), 326,547 troops, 54,186 vehicles and 104,428 tons of supplies had been landed on the beaches." There was a pause. "Casualty rates were estimated, for the Allies, who attacked entrenched, fortified positions, at roughly fifteen percent dead and twice as much wounded. However, they succeeded in establishing that beachhead in order to further the invasion of Europe." There was another long pause. "That was one operation in a larger war, Hagan, that lasted only a few days in war that went on for over six years." The monitor then showed a mushroom cloud blooming. "This is the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a city in the nation of Japan, one of the Axis nations. The Allied Forces dropped a crude atomic bomb upon the city, inflicting a death toll of between 150,000 and 210,000 in the first two atomic attacks in human history." Archie's voice turned slightly smug. "This is a prolonged sustained engagement, an actual 'war', Hagan." Hagan watched as the videos turned to color. "This is the Vietnam War, an American 'police action', something not even considered an actual war at the time." The next set of images showed sleeker, more modern tanks, troops wearing crude armor vests. "This is Desert Storm, another conflict. This one lasted less than 100 hours of ground combat and involved a total of almost three million troops. Thousands of tanks fought in nearly non-stop combat for over 72 hours." The picture shifted again, showing more desert combat, and Hagen noticed that the gear that the soldiers wore was better, more streamlined, and more in line with what he was used to wearing. "This was the War on Terror, a geopolitical conflict that lasted over a decade, where troops engaged in the war could come under fire every single day for over a year at a time." Hagan shook his head and took another drink. "What does this have to do with anything, Archie? Is it meant to show me that other people had it worse? I know that." Images of being minutes too late to stop the Mechanoids from killing even the children and infants in a small town by pulling them apart and throwing their body parts around in sadistic glee flooded his mind. "No, Hagan. It is to show you what kinds of conflict the human race has been involved in, and why the so called "Era of Peace" is easily misunderstood." Archie replied. New video cropped up, showing tanks fighting against crude power armor. "This is the Chad Uranium Field Occupation of 2047. It involved over 650,000 Allied Troops, of which 130,000 were direct combat troops. The Arab Union fielded over one point five million troops, of which five hundred thousand were combat troops. The conflict lasted twenty-two months, eighteen days, and destroyed six cities, displaced over thirteen million people and killed nearly two million civilians." Images of Glitterboys, an unfamiliair design to Hagan, appeared on the screen, fighting bulky half-finished looking robot combat armors. "This is the Brazillian Lockout Conflict of 2055, when NATO and NEMA forces first mounted a humanitarian mission to provide relief to a plague stricken nation. However, things went quickly downhill when hard-line elements of the government and military attempted an overthrow of the existing government. This conflict saw the deployment of 1,285 Glitterboys, 2,216 Silver Eagles, as well as supporting units, to total up to an NATO force of two point eight million soldiers. The conflict lasted fourteen months eight days, with a recovery and rebuilding period of five years, three months, six days until Allied forces pulled out. During that time there were, on the average, three attacks against NATO forces every single day." Hagan watched, transfixed by the footage that was obviously compiled from power armor data records. "All right, so the human race still fought, but why was it called a Golden Age? Everyone agrees that everyone was working together." Hagan argued. He was feeling better, his dreams swept away as his mind started wrestling with the difference between what he had learned over his life and what Archie had shown him, and was obviously working up to. "Everyone who mattered to historians who's records have been paid attention to worked together." Archie answered. "Observe." A map of the world came up, something that always fascinated Hagan. He knew that the area he had spent his whole life in was tiny on that map. The thought that he had thought himself well traveled when he'd barely traveled further than eight hundred miles in any given direction. The map went from contours to having borders drawn. Then colors were overlayed on the nations. Three different colors. "These represent what was known as 'developed nations' or 'First World Nations' at the time, with a large gross national product, international trade, long life expectancy, high medial wages, low infant mortality, and extensive infrastructure." Less than a third of the nations pulsed slightly in red for a moment, then the blue ones began to pulse. "These are the 'emerging nations' or 'Second World Nations', which were moving from basic manufacturing to higher standards of living. These nations all had mineral wealth, or could provide resources that the more developed nations needed." Then the green ones pulsed. "These were the Third World Nations, all of them with unstable governments, poor standards of living, a gross national product that was misused and mishandled." "So?" Hagan asked. Two thirds of the world were not the First World Nations, and in what Archie had taught him were Africa and South America, only six nations total were First or Second World nations. "Conflicts that took place in poverty stricken areas, areas with little voice in the United Nations, were not noted to have interrupted the 'Golden Age', and the small brushfire wars that occurred did not affect the standard of living of those in the First World Nations." He paused for a second, then dates and conflict names started popping up. Hagan watched as the names built up on the sides of the map. Over a hundred of fifty armed conflicts between 2025 and the Great Cataclysm. Hagan noted, with some irony, that there were less conflicts during the so-called "Second Cold War" than during any period of the "Golden Age", something that made him shake his head. "The sharing of technology and information only happened between the major nations. The lesser nations couldn't afford the technology, although major multi-national corporations, who's profits for reach of those companies would dwarf the entire GNP of the Coalition States, would use those nations as places to manufacture the high tech materials the other nations needed. In some nations those same corporations fought limited military engagements against other corporations or against local forces that disputed the corporations right to those natural resources. In the Third World Nations the population was often kept deliberately poor and ignorant to provide cheap labor for the major corporations who provided military and consumer goods to the major nations. Should a government become too problematic there were ways of making them more compliant. This included manufacturing excuses to have major military powers topple the existing government through military force and install a new government more amenable to the corporations desires." Archie paused for a moment. "The most egregious of those incidents was in the nation of Burma, which was found to contain a natural mineral important in the manufacturing in high density microtronic systems. In 2055 the Burmese government, which had elected officials who had promised fair labor laws, nationalized the corporate assets within the nation. Those corporations then arranged for the sale of illegal chemical weapon systems to the Burmese government, and later leaked that data to their northern neighbor, the Reunified Russian Republic. The Triple-R then invaded Burma in a five day six hour onslaught that destroyed the Burmese military and toppled its government. After a six year four month occupation, the new government, much more pro-Triple-R, and much more friendly to the corporations who had orchestrated the previous governments downfall, was installed. This war, driven entirely by the desire for cheap labor, no ecological restrictions on manufacturing and the disposal of waste products, and cheap access to a mineral for cellular phones and other microtronics, killed over two hundred thousand soldiers, eighty percent of them Burmese soldiers, killed three point six million civilians, and displaced another eight million civilians. It damaged the entire infrastructure of the nation, and set it back decades." "All right, so there was some fighting. I get it now." Hagan answered, his mind still reeling at the sheer death toll that Archie seemed to take in stride. "What would have a 'real' war been like, if these were just 'brushfire wars'?" Archie was silent for a long moment, something Hagan was used to when Archie was coming up with his own data. Finally he answered, and Archie's voice was cold, distant, almost mechanical. "In a conventional struggle toward the end of the Second Cold War, for example the projected Pan-African Pacific War, an estimated one hundred and sixteen nations out of one hundred and ninety five nations would have engaged one another. It would have pitted the Third World with some Second World allies against the First World Nations and some of their Second World Allies. The disparity between the First World and Third World had only grown larger, and the Third World was getting tired of creating the luxuries for the First World while being paid a fraction of a cent in comparison to a worker of the First World. The Third World was heavily relying on augmentation systems outlawed by the First World, such as Juicers or Crazies, as well as power armor designs gained through espionage that could be manufactured without relying on zero-G manufacturing systems." "The war would have been devastating. An estimated twenty-two nuclear detonations in First World population centers during the opening engagements, then massed attacks hoping to overwhelm the First World military forces. Conservative estimations predicted that the Third World Nations, which were beginning to coalesce into a coherent political body much like the UN and NATO, would have fielded over one hundred thirty million soldiers during the initial attacks, giving them a five point six to one advantage over the First World nations standing military forces, enough to allow them to emerge victorious at first. Analysis estimated that the conflict would last a minimum of six years and would result in the death of over one billion people, a significant percentage of the world population. Cleanup and rebuilding by the victorious nations would then take another fifteen to thirty years." Hagan shook his head at that cold figure. "Why? Why would so many people fight like that? Life during the time before Rifts was so much better, why throw away their lives like that?" Archie made a slight buzzing sound, which passed for shaking his head. "The First World had a better standard of living than the elite of the Coalition States, while the Third World lived in wretched conditions worse even than burb towns or shanty towns nowadays." "But there wasn't any monsters trying to eat them." Hagan protested. "Instead they faced death through disease, starvation, contaminated water, soil, air, and food. In some nations tribal or civil war meant that adults were conscripted into military forces, even children were forced into military forces. Civilians were brutally murdered, dozens or hundreds each day, by warlords or government troops." Archie told him, playing video footage that made Hagan's stomach roll. "In the Third World the infant mortality rate was roughly 36%, life expectancy was roughly 48 years, mostly because of pollution, and hourly wage was roughly one point six credits while a loaf of uncontaminated bread cost fifteen credits. This kept workers in debt to the company in basic slavery. Less then 40% of the population of the Third World had access to education, medical care, electricity, and uncontaminated water and food. The majority of the employed population lived in group housing owned by the corporation, their rent taking a sizable percentage of their wages." Archie told him, with footage of the conditions coming up. Hagan could see bare footed children walking through discolored puddles, dozens of people working on factory floors in the nude or just with paper gowns while armed guards watched over them. "Conditions worsened during the 'Golden Age of Man' for the Third World Nations as those nations were systematically exploited for cheap labor, manufacturing of dangerous substances, and their natural resources that the First World needed. While in the First World infant mortality was below 10%, average life expectancy was estimated to be 230 years old due to medical advances in longetivity treatments, and the median wage hourly wage was thirty eight credits an hour. A middle class individual in the First World made more annually than an entire town in a Third World Nation." Archie added. "Do you understand now why the old world was facing a major war when the Coming of the Rifts occurred?" Hagan nodded slowly. "It's a matter of perspective, isn't it?" Hagan asked, leaning back and taking another drink off of the half-full whiskey bottle. "Two kingdoms come to blows now, throwing a couple hundred power armor soldiers at each other over the course of a few weeks, and we call it a war, but back then it wouldn't have even been noticed by most people, correct?" "Correct, Hagan. If it was in Africa, the Pacific Rim, or South America, it would be doubtful that it would even be news in the First World. In my archives I have news programs where the news is more concerned over the sexual antics of several American Senators who were discovered purchasing genetically modified humans for sexual gratification then the fact that six hundred people were killed by chemical weapons in attack against a city by revolutionaries fighting against their own government. That particular incident never even reached the news services because nobody cared about it and it did not effect their lives." "So the Golden Age of Man is all a matter of perspective. This is what used to be called America, one of the First World nations, and what you called a Super-Power. The trade and technology sharing between the other Super-Powers and emerging nations made it so that America was having a Golden Age, along with the other nations like it." Hagan said. "While other nations would call it 'The Age of Exploitation." Archie added. There was silence for a long moment. "I was created during the Second Cold War. All of the history is contained in my archives, and I've studied it extensively." There was more silence before Archie spoke again. "Do you want to talk about your dreams now, Hagan?" Hagan shook his head. "No. I think I'd like to study what you are talking about a bit more." He waved at the monitor. "You were showing Glitterboys earlier, ones without the NEMA logo. Can I see those again?" There was silence again for a long moment. "Why? They're just Glitterboys." Archie sounded evasive to Hagan, who had known the self-aware AI for years now. "Yes, but I thought I saw something." Hagan answered. "Can I see that footage again?" "I forgot which footage it was." Archie tried. "Archie..." Hagan's tone was disapproving, and Archie made the noise that corresponded with a human shaking their head. "Hagan, there are some things that are better left in the ash of the old world. Those Glitterboy designs are best left dead and buried." "Why?" Hagan asked. "Because Glitterboys, as far as everyone knows them, are protectors. The Chromium Guardsman that are now known as Glitterboys are protectors, defenders, and the ones you saw are not." Archie sounded evasive still, almost worried. "Please, Hagan, just let it go." "Archie?" "Let the Harbingers stay in the past, where they belong, Hagan. Let the old world stay buried under ash and death, please." Archie pleaded. "You sound like they're dangerous, like you're afraid of them." Hagan said. "The Coalition States is building a better, stronger war machine now that Tolkeen is out of the way with plans on seizing all of the Mid-West, the minions of Atlantis are appearing more and more frequently armed with heavier and heavier weaponry, Germany is locked in a war with a foe that seeks to destroy all of mankind, but you're afraid of an old armor design like the Glitterboy? Designs that Quebec or Triax probably already has and have improved upon?" Silence again. "Archie?" "It's more than just the Harbingers, Hagan." Archie answered after a long moment, when Hagan had repeated Archie's name twice more. "It's what they represent." "What's that?" Hagan asked. "Go to sleep, Hagan. We'll talk later." Archie answered, and there was a metallic click.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:31
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Ugandan "Hyena" Robot Combat Armor In 2055 the emerging nation of Uganda needed to be able to protect itself from Zaire and Sudan, both of which had suffered economic collapse and largely devolved into city-states ruled by local warlords. Rwanda was seeing an economic expansion, but in 2058 had their government overthrown by a corporate consortium who desired the recently discovered natural resources needed for high end military/consumer electronics. With the discovery of the same minerals in Uganda, the Ugandan government realized it needed to be able to protect itself, not only from depredations of their neighboring warlords, but from the mega-corp that ruled Rwanda like a puppet-state. Industrial and military espionage along with bribery and other methods had allowed the Ugandan government to get the manufacturing specifications for robot power armors that had been superseded by more advanced models, most of which depended on orbital manufacturing methods that Uganda had only limited access to due to UN treaties. The Ugandan government spent several years designing a suit of robot combat armor to field, intending on creating a suit that could be fielded cheaply, with minimum support, and perform a wide variety of tasks, preferably with modular systems to allow the suit to be mission flexible. With Zaire having fallen apart and the UN, in conjunction with NEMA (rather than the American, Canadian, or Mexican military), Uganda offered to host the majority of the UN Peacekeeping effort, allowing NEMA to build military bases within the nation with the insistence that the military facilities would return to Ugandan ownership once the Peacekeeping effort came to an end. Part of the package deal was that NEMA would provide military advisers for their "Advance Weapon Systems Testing" program, as well as recognize Uganda's right to manufacture and possess robotic power armor systems to protect their borders. In 2061 the first testing of the Ugandan robot combat armor took place under heavy NEMA security, over Triple-R and Sinai Pact protests. While the system proved promising, the armor was ultimately deemed a failure, as the modular system proved to be overly complex, too prone to breakdown, and too difficult to maintain in the cost of manhours and money. While some in the Ugandan government claimed that the performance of that initial power armor system showed that Uganda would just have to import obsolete systems from other nations, the NEMA advisors encouraged Uganda by reminding Ugandan government officials that both the US and Canada had suffered repeated setbacks far worse than the Ugandan systems did. The Ugandan scientists went back to the drawing board, virtually "building" first what they saw as their ultimate design, and then beginning to pare away the system to get a more realistic system, following the old engineering maxim of "It isn't when there isn't anything left to add that shows when something is finished, but rather when there is nothing left to remove." The end result was the Hyena Robot Combat Armor. It performed well during tests, being able to act as a support platform, a rescue operation system, and a front-line combat system. While it was larger and bulkier than most First World Nations robot combat armors, it was the first and only suit able to fight on the front line that did not depend on materials manufactured in a zero-G environment or cutting edge manufacturing technology. Additionally the Hyena was able to be largely maintained by a well equipped maintenance shop normally used for hover-vehicles or consumer electronics. While Uganda used materials a generation or two behind the First World Nations, they used it in innovative ways, ingenuity and adaptability making up for the lower tech base. The armor itself was an older type, formerly designed for tanks for the European Union before the denser armors shoved it aside before it was ever used in large numbers. France sold the armor formula cheaply to the Ugandan government, thinking it to be obsolete, and knowing that the armor was vulnerable to plasma. The Ugandan version of the armor did not suffer the serious vulnerability to plasma, having been molecular bonded in using one of the newer procedures designed by Unified Korea. While it was bulky, the flexibility of the armor allowed it to be layered on exposed hosing and joint guards in a way that the more advanced KLS Chromium Armor System did not. The armor had a low radar signature, with a built in "radar scatter" a natural byproduct of the armor itself. The power source was a daul "micro-fission" system, with attachments to allow a third power-plant to be installed for more energy intensive tasks. This reduced the number of capacitor systems by having a backup power system at all times, and also allowed the armor to be stored in a "warm state" so that it could be quickly brought fully online and combat effective. While the reactors were several generations behind NEMA and EU power systems, advances in aerogel shielding enabled the Ugandan armor to pack two separate power plants into the space that normally would be required for a single reactor of the same type. As those powerplants had been used extensively in main battle tanks between 2030 and 2050 there were not only plenty to be purchased as military surplus, but Uganda also managed to procure the manufacturing plants and ship them to Uganda quite cheaply. This meant that Uganda had three manufacturing facitilies for the powerplants. Two of which were in plain sight, while the third was hidden in a secure location that contained everything necessary to manufacture Hyena Robot Combat Armor. Using vanadiun/neo-tungsten hyper-alloy for the main duraframe seemed a dubious thing to do, but the Ugandans had acquired a manufacturing technique from Japan that resulted in increased tensile strength at the price of increased weight and less flexibility. While Japan had discarded the technique as unsuitable for their own power armor and robot combat armor systems, this easily met the Ugandans need, since the metals needed for the duraframe were readily available natural resources. The frame was designed to be modular, to allow for upgrades at a later date in case of advancements that the Ugandans could take advantage of. While most nations used solid duraframes, the Hyena used a hollow frame structure to allow degausing systems to "discharge" the frame during extensive energy combat or for the nuclear battlefield. While other nations were experimenting with artificial muscle fibers for their power armors and robot power armors, Uganda chose to follow in the Chromium Guardsman/Harbinger system and use memory metal heavily seeded with piezo-electric crystals in order to provide locomotion. But where the Chromium Guardsman and the Harbinger power armors relied solely on memory metal "muscles" Uganda chose to augment their muscle system with advanced hydraulic systems normally used in construction equipment, primarily the new cranes being used by the member nations of NEMA to upgrade their architecture. This gave the Hyena slightly slower physical reactions, but much more physical power that was less energy intensive. Additionally, the Hyena could suffer extensive damage to the "musculature" while still being able to be fully mobile. In testing Hyena RCA's were able to carry out combat missions and return to the safe zone operating only with the hydraulic "ligament system" with the memory metal muscles taken offline for battle damage. Additionally the Ugandan system was coated with "stealth" composites that not only cut down of the sensor system profile, but also insulated the muscles, provided protection from shrapnel, and the slight superconductor properties of the stealth composite cut down on the friction. The muscle system was self sufficient enough that in one test a pilot used the emergency power capacitor system to power the hydraulics to return to "base" when her reactors were shut down from "battle damage" during testing. The Hyena possessed not only the main two arms, complete with articulated hands and fingers, but two smaller arms that were usually folded up into the chassis to protect them for more fine and delicate work. The hands were delicate enough that with virtual advice from a doctor, the hands could perform surgery on a patient cradled in the two "combat extremities". This design allowed Uganda to get supplemental funding from the WHO and the Human Rights Commission, as it would allow the Hyena to act as a disaster relief platform. The smaller hands were deliberately designed to prevent the use of weaponry being used by the hands, their data and sensor systems too delicate to expose them to combat conditions. Both forearms of the primary "combat extremities" were heavily armored, deliberately designed to be folded across the body to protect from missile attacks or cannon fire. The forearms were rounded and more than a foot thicker than they needed to be on each side, to allow the pilot to cover the entirety of the torso. This made it so the protective "boxer's stance" was one of the main defensive maneuvers of a Hyena pilot, as the heavily armored forearms could withstand two or three direct shots from the RG-14 of the NEMA GL-10, and even survive a direct war-shot from a US Army Harbinger. Much of this was due less to the heavy armor, but more to the way the forearms were designed for ballistic deflection. The heavy shoulder armor had modular bolting to allow mission variable packages to be attached to the armor, everything from long range missile systems, to direct and indirect fire weapons, to missile/rocket interception systems based on the old US Navy "Vanguard" systems. The legs were heavily armored with approximately double the musculature needed, with a unique self-repair system for the knees, hips, and ankles. Beneath the armor were robotic systems that would first put the leg and foot in "repair" position, and then withdraw damaged components, pulling the damaged component into an internal storage area, then withdraw a new component from internal storage and replace the damaged portion. This allowed a pilot to fix each joint up to three times. While at first the system was designed to automatically fix damaged joint sections, field testing showed that the system had a hard time determining "safe" times to do the repairs, often attempting to repair the joint while the operator was engaged in combat. Secondarily the system would often repair systems that reported damage but still functioned within combat tolerances. This led to the operator being able to override the system and keep on fighting with damaged joint sections. The increased "muscle mass" in the legs were designed for several reasons. The first, and foremost, was to allow the Hyena to carry combat packages that would be too heavy for normal RCA's of the Hyena's size, as well as giving more tolerance for future weapons packages to be designed without putting an emphasis on ensuring that the new combat package was lightweight. It also allowed the armor to be fully capable even after sustaining damage to the leg "muscles" to reduce its strength by up to 60%. The head of the RCA was where the armor got its name. Shaped like a hyena, the head was full of the primary sensor systems, and was heavily armored more than necessary with the belief that snipers would target the head as per standard combat doctrine. The eyes on both side of the head provided a 270 degree view, while the articulated ears were used for audio and radar sensor. The laws were full of teeth, and the jaw could be lowered to deploy a plasmathrower, modeled after flamethrowers, with decent range and high damage. Additionally the "nostrils" held lightweight laser systems that were more for cutting high tensile construction equipment then combat, although they could be used for anti-personnel work in case of emergency. The jaw also "moved" when the external speaker system was used, as researchers found that observes, particularly those in shock after some kind of disaster or battle, reacted more favorably to have a "mouth" to see speaking. Sensor systems built into the basic Hyena RCA consisted of low-light, thermal, infrared, magnetic anomaly detection scans, radar, sonar, energy output sensors, variable sensitivity audio sensors, ultra-violet, and "open air sonar" tracking and sensor systems. The armor also possessed the Ugandan and NATO versions of frequency agile compression enabled radio systems, satellite communications, "whisker" laser communications, as well as the ability to tie into NATO/UN BaTNI systems as well as the Ugandan proprietary BaTNI system. The armor was also built to detect incoming radar pulses, radiation bursts, as well as other sensor systems. The suit also contained sophisticated electronic counter-measures as well as electronic counter-counter-measures, and stealth systems. Uganda had purchased several dozen Apache helicopters in the early 21st Century, and the "Black Hole Suppression System", a stealth system that had been dependable and battle proven, and the Ugandan scientists re-purposed the system to work on the Hyena, making the power armor nearly completely silent when running under full stealth systems with the full modular stealth package strapped on. During testing the Hyena RCA was able to move past alert infantry without being heard at distances less than 20 meters. One tester described standing next to a Hyena running under full stealth as "Standing next to an empty spot, only a faint pressure." Ugandan pilots were taught to stay in stealth until they launched an assault, then break off as soon as possible, go to stealth, and withdraw to another attack position while the second group of Hyenas engaged the enemy. Without any of the modular combat system attached the Hyena had virtually no offensive weaponry. This was a deliberate decision on the part of the designers, who wished to avoid any appearances of "militarizing" and antagonizing their neighbors. The Ugandan government designed the Hyena with an eye toward relief efforts, as well as the peacekeeping efforts in Zaire. While the "claws" on the main hands were surrounded by the prototype "vibro-field", on paperwork it was to allow the operator to tear open the new hyper-alloy construction materials being used to update and modernize Ugandan cities. Pilots were taught to use the claws to attack enemy armor, and at the suggestion of several test-pilots, the field was also modified so that when the pilot made a fist with the hands it would also cover the hands in such a way as to add additional kinetic energy release to punches. This resulted in the early test-pilots designing their own form of boxing designed especially for the Hyena, a combination of offensive and defensive moves to allow any pilot who found themselves engaged in combat without any weapon's package to survive and defeat an opponent who had thought themselves facing an unarmed and defenseless opponent. The modular mission flexible equipment system allowed for the Hyena to have equipment added to it according the mission parameters. The Hyena RCA featured "mounting points" on several areas of the body. Inner calf, outer calf, rear calf, outer thigh, two at the lower back, three on the upper back, two per shoulder, outer upper arm, inner forearm, two on the outer forearm. While some of the modular components could be attached anywhere, most had to be attached at specific locations. Even with this restriction, the Ugandan Hyena boasted an impressive array of functions and mission configurable abilities. One thing that the designers of the Hyena approached differently from most power armor designers was the crew compartment. While most power armor designs at the time looked at the crew or operator(s) as an unpleasant necessity, the designers of the Hyena took a page from NEMA/US/Canada design program of the Chromium Guardsman and Harbinger armor systems. This meant that the comfort, security, and protection of the crew were made a priority. The main design philosophy was for a unisex compartment that the crew could be sealed inside, in moderate comfort, for up to six months if necessary, without undue hardship or mental stress. This meant comfortable, ergonomically designed combat couches inside of an "egg" that closed around the operator during combat operations, the ability to move the combat couches when in "travel" or "rest" mode so that operators could see one another, VR systems to provide entertainment, and an advanced meal dispenser systems purchased from Cyberworks and NASA combined together. The meal dispenser system used nutrient pastes with flavor additives that could produce over 1,200 different dishes, including 26 different pastries. The "eggs" that each crewmember resided in could have immersive VR systems, allow for complete "sensory deprivation" to allow sleep or medical recovery, had its own atmosphere and environmental systems as well as could function as an auto-doc for the crew member. The pilot suits included an electrical system that kept up muscle tone, could provide nerve stimulation or deadening, as well as track biometrics and other important data. The interior of the "operator station" was able to be "waterproofed" to allow the internal fire suppression system to provide a "hot shower" to the crew, allowing them to shower without leaving the cockpit. The Hyena cockpit was rated as "the most comfortable and user friendly" in 2063 by graders during the 2063 Combined National Armor Demonstrations in southern France. In a radical departure from most nations, who were undergoing "Cybernetic Phobia", Ugandan pilots were required to have a "Piloting Jack" as well as nervous system augmentation to operate the power armor without any need for movement. Cybernetic linkages were put into the spine to prevent the operators from suffering involuntary movements while operating the Hyena. The nervous system enhancements allowed the Hyena RCA to use the crew member's own autonomic nervous system to act as backups for the Hyena's primary systems. In more than one tests the crew was able to use their own nervous system and biological feedback systems to keep a Hyena RCA operational even after "catastrophic computer failure" and complete the assigned mission. While in full combat mode or under "cybernetic lockout" for extended periods of time the pilot's suit "muscle retention system" kept the operators from suffering muscle degradation. Standard crew of a Hyena numbers at four, although some Hyenas operated with a single pilot or a crew as large as six, with the inside of the crew compartment being able to be configured much like the external modular systems. A standard crew of four consisted of: Commander, Communications/Electronic Warfare specialist, Gunner, Pilot. Each member of the crew was cross-trained to be able to do the job of any other crew member, providing redundancy in case of crew injury or death. The Commander is typically an officer of at least Captain rank, with the rest of the crew being non-commissioned officers or enlisted. The Hyena Robot Combat Armor program was not without its critics, as it represented a measure percentage of Uganda's GNP at a time when Uganda was being asked to assist with the recovery of Zaire by the UN and NATO, as well as dealing with the fallout from the 2060 Central African Earthquake disaster. This disaster was a series of 22 earthquakes, each measuring at least 6.1, with accompanying aftershocks between 2.5 and 5.8, that took place over a period of three months, all of the earthquakes within a 1,500 mile radius. Critics of the Hyena cited the billions of dollars being spent as being desperately needed by the recovery efforts. However, the 2062 earthquake, which measured 8.2 on the Richter Scale, devastated northern Uganda and caused the formerly thought to be extinct volcano Mount Muhabura to erupt during the 2062 "finalization" testing of the Hyena radically changed public opinion. Thirty Hyena RCA's, virtually all of Uganda's force, were undergoing "Joint Services Training" with NEMA and NATO forces when the earthquake devastated the region. Unable to contact his commanders, General Mkumba ordered his men into the nearby towns to assist in rescue efforts. An APN photographer snapped the now iconic photograph of a Hyena RCA holding up an eight story building, bracing its shoulders on the second story main support girder and holding up the building long enough for rescuers to pull those trapped inside to safety. Those who had spoke out against the Hyena program found themselves facing enormous public backlash as that photo and more circulated, including holos of Chromium Guardsman bringing injured children to Hyena RCA's for the manipulative arms to perform lifesaving emergency surgeries. The Ugandan people felt safer knowing that the Hyena existed, and many local governments lobbied extensively to have Hyenas stationed in or near their cities and towns. The Ugandan government used this groundswell of public support to pass a levy to increase the number of Hyenas in the Ugandan military from an estimated 100 to nearly two thousand, which was upgraded to total of 6,000 in 2073, with over 14,000 handed over to law enforcement and rescue personnel with the rescue and relief packages. In 2064 the Ugandan Defense Ministry reported to NATO and NEMA that their high security R&D database had been penetrated by person or person's unknown, who had ignored Ugandan "black budget" accounts as well as the data on national security and other important targets to download the manufacturing and operation specifications on the Hyena power armor. Later investigation showed that the virtua-net penetration originated from Egypt by known crypto-anarchists, who then sold the specifications to multiple parties before one of the purchasing parties eliminated the crypto-anarchist cell. In 2067 espionage showed that Romania, Bolivia, and Bhutan were in possession of the specifications, with only Romania and Bolivia attempting to manufacture the Hyena. The Hyena RCA, in its final form, was able to replace Uganda's aging armored vehicles, artillery systems, and missile defense systems, thanks to the modular systems. By the time it was finally fielded in 2065 the modular systems had gone through multiple changes and upgrades that would have resulted in the RCA itself having to be redesigned for each role over ten times and increasing the development expense and time to unacceptable levels. Tests of the Hyena RCA in Joint National Operations showed that the Hyena was able to provide significant contributions even among the more advanced nations. The Hyena's capabilities rivaled or surpassed even the vaunted Mastiff and Bulldog RCA's in NEMA service, and surpassed the Triple-R and Chinese RCA's in the Hyena's weight and size classes. This led to a Russian attempt in the UN to ban the Hyena RCA from further production in 2067, attempting to levy UN sanctions against Uganda if they did not cease production of the Hyena and decommission the existing suits. However this attempt by Russia was blocked by many of the "elder" nations of the UN, and was one of the primary reasons behind the 2068 withdrawl of Russia from the UN. The Hyena modular combat packages consisted everything from offensive laser systems, to particle beam cannons, vibro-weapons, conventional 105mm cannons, 9.5" artillery shells, ion cannons, 4.5" mortar systems, as well as rail guns, magnetic accelerator cannons, and the Hyena's signature weapon, which was a pulse laser system mated with a 60mm rapidfire railgun. The Hyena could be configured to launch combat drones, chaff, flares, micro-prism mists, mortar or artillery shells, it could deploy secondary dog-brained AI robot systems for scouting, emplaced combat drones, and even repair drones. The law enforcement and emergency services modular packages included such things as enhanced sensor systems to locate survivors buried under rubble, deploy small drones to explore inside collapsed buildings or rush into burning buildings to locate survivors. The Hyena could also carry a water cannon with a shoulder mounted cannon and five two hundred gallon tanks (only the Hyena's heavy duty leg systems made it possible for the armor to move while carrying so much water), as well as deliver fire suppression foam. In 2071 the US Navy intercepted a cargo vessel registered to Liberia using the name and ID number of a ship that the US Navy knew had sunk in 2038. During the boarding action two Marines were injured when one of the ship's crew used a "Black Adder" man-portable railgun against the boarders. The Marines that boarded the ship also prevented the crew from scuttling the vessel, and it was towed to Pearl Harbor for investigation. In the hold were found thirty RCA's that appeared to be Ugandan Hyena power armor. When the Ugandan government was asked if any were missing, the Ugandan government invited UN, NATO, and NEMA inspectors to check their Hyena stocks, where none were found to be missing. Ugandan investigators discovered that while the Hyena's aboard "The Dawning Flower" appeared Ugandan at first glance, certain impurities in the molycirc's showed that they were manufactured somewhere on the Pacific Rim. Investigation cleared Uganda of any wrong-doing, and Uganda sued for and received the Liberian vessel under "economic piracy" laws of 2024. Third quarter 2073 NEMA purchased 250 Hyena's for examination and to train NEMA soldiers to operate the Hyena, as well as to practice combat operations with forces made up of troops using Hyena RCA. Additionally, the United States, Canada, and Mexico each took ten of the Hyenas for further examination, to compare them to the suits captured on the Dawning Flower and several other ships. Two were turned over to Great Britain, one to France, three to Germany, and one to Finland to allow them to compare the Ugandan versions to the half-dozen knock-off Ugandan found hidden in the Black Forest in 2072, and in the Alps in 2071, and captured by the British Navy during the boarding and capture of the Burmese cargo vessel "Brown Dog" in 2071. The Ugandan military fielded a wide variety of munitions, most of them depending upon the mission and objectives. Following the standard set by NEMA the urban modular setups use flechette rounds with the "magnetic adhesion" system to prevent flechette spreading as well as lower power acceleration curves, usually keeping the muzzle velocity between MACH 1.2 and MACH 2.2. Anti-armor war-shot for the direct fire cannons as well as the railgun or coil-gun magnetic acceleration systems are usually steel sabots with fin stabilized depleted uranium penetrator. Guided missile systems use either dog-brain AI or operator control for top-down anti-armor attacks, using a neo-tungsten explosively forged penetrator. Artillery and mortar rounds use a wide variety of munitions, from illumination bombs to STRIX system artillery shells to FASCAM types. In 2082 there were rumors that Uganda was experimenting with mission configurable warhead systems utilizing advanced nano-technology based on the IRMMS kit nanobots, but to date none of those types of rounds have been located. If they did exist or were in development by Uganda or NEMA, they were undoubtably used up during the early days of the Cataclysm. A Hyena configured as a command vehicle featured satellite uplink capabilities, acted as a communication processing node, coordinated artillery and mortar strikes as well as troop movements while outfitted with stealth systems, ECM/ECCM, and drone packages. While these vehicles were lightly armed they were never alone and were usually guarded by five to ten primarily combat outfitted versions. In addition there support strike packages that deployed smoke, chaff, prism-mist dispersal munitions, as well as minefield clearing systems, advanced ECCM capablities. Scouting units relied on ECM/ECCM, drone launches, stealth, fast movement, and secure communication. All of this was enabled by combining pre-set modular components in various arrays. A fully kitted out artillery Hyena usually possessed the following modular components: Inner right calf: Ground drone deployment, storage, and recharging bay. 2 40mm drone capacity. Inner left calf: Ground drone control module Outer right calf: 2 tube 6 shot 40mm laser defeating prism aerosol deployment Outer left calf: 2 tube, 6 shot 40mm smoke deployment system, high concentrate thermal masking smoke with chaff augmentation Rear right calf: Laser drill stabilization system Rear left calf: Laser drill stabilization system Outer left thigh: Frequency agile radio jamming system Outer left thigh: Electronic Counter Measures package Left lower back: 105mm ammunition storage, directed explosion system, 20 rounds Right lower back: 105mm ammunition storage, directed explosion system, 20 rounds Left upper back: 60mm drone storage, 25 drone capacity Middle upper back: 105mm external/internal loading mechanism Right upper back: Primary 105mm storage, 30 rounds Outer right shoulder: 105mm howitzer Inner right shoulder: 105mm howitzer (it takes both mountings to mount the howitzer) Outer left shoulder: Communication and control package, for enhanced communication systems as well as drone control Outer right shoulder: 60mm Drone launcher, 5 drone internal magazine Outer upper right arm: 105mm howitzer guidance and control system, including millimetric wave radar system and BaTNI interface Outer upper left arm: Electronic Counter-Counter Measures package Inner left forearm: Laser guidance system (emergency use, terminal guidance is usually provided by satellite systems, command vehicles, forward observers or combinations of the preceding) Inner right forearm: 60mm flare system, 1 tube, 6 rounds Upper right outer forearm: 40mm chaff storage, 12 rounds Upper left outer forearm: 40mm smoke storage, 12 rounds Lower right outer forearm: Single tube, 4 shot internal magazine, 40mm chaff dispenser Lower left outer forearm: Single tube, 4 shot internal magazine, high concentrate radar masking smoke As you can see, many critics of the Hyena made issue of the number of complex tasks a single Hyena unit could undertake. While most combat packages are much simpler, merely weapons and ammunition bays with up to two thirds of the mounting points left empty, artillery and command and control units packed complex packages which made them capable of handling flexible tasks. The above loadout is not only geared for extensive artillery operations (The external/internal loading mechanism not only moved the 105mm artillery shells from the onboard ammunition storage modules but allows the unit to be hooked up to a specialized ammunition transportation vehicle and accept ammunition loads from an outside source) but also carries defensive systems. While a skilled single pilot could handle everything, the standard Hyena crew of four increased the Hyena's effectiveness by over 240% as well as allowed it to continue to carry out missions non-stop for weeks at a time by having crewmembers sleep in shifts outside of combat. Of note is the fact that the Hyena does not contain internal magazines, apparently to prevent sympathetic detonations of internal ammunition supplies from destroying the Hyena. Ammunition storage modules were designed in such way that any internal detonation within the module are directed away from the armor and additional modules due to internal design of the module itself. The internal capacitance storage is designed to power the internal systems, not any type of attached weaponry modules. While this does limit the Hyena chassis to act as a combat platform without the supporting modules, it does make for ease up system upgrades as well as ease of module configuration without any wasted equipment. After the Cataclysm more than 100 Hyena RCA's saw service against the demon plagues in North Texas, piloted by Ugandan nationals who were taking part in a multi-national exercise at Fort Hood Texas. During that time the Hyena performed exceptionally, facing off against the demon plagues, their experienced and skilled operators using their modular components to outstanding levels, taking some of the pressure off of the NEMA forces. As time went off more and more of the modular systems were damaged, destroyed, or ran out of ammunition, although thankfully, for the Hyena operators, two of the Hyena's had been configured for "long term unit sufficiency", which meant that those two Hyenas had modular components that allowed the pilots to manufacture railgun, cannon, and machinegun ammunition, not only for the Hyenas, but for the NEMA forces they assisted with. In 52 PA the town of Gildren's Hope in Indiana found two Hyena RCA's in the ruins of the city of Gary and traded them to the Coalition States in return for a yearly stipend of beef and vegetables for a period of 20 years. While the power plants were dead and the armor had been heavily damaged, the modular design system resonated with several of the CS R&D scientists. Unfortunately for the CS none of the modular combat packages had survived in working condition. While many of the R&D scientists derided the systems as being less advanced that the materials and systems that the CS already possessed, some of the scientists saw a lot of potential in the way the Hyena used a lower technology base in innovative ways to be in some ways superior to more advanced materials. In 82 PA a group of explorers in southern Texas found eleven Hyena RCA's in a warehouse in a shipping and receiver center out in the desert. They sold these armors to the black market for a fraction of the true value, since the armor possessed intact "interlinked support and combat systems" that were even loaded with ammunition. Before the black market could get buyers for the armor the CS busted the black market ring and confiscated the armors, taking them to Lone Star for investigation and examination. In 102 PA a group of explorers found a suit of Hyena RCA configured for indirect artillery fire mode in a partially collapsed barn in Nebraska, where it appeared that it had been stored once it had ran out of ammunition and both reactors had run out of fuel. That example of the Hyena is the basis for the loadout detailed previously. Of even more interest was the fact that three 105mm ammunition supply vehicles were stored with the Hyena. The entire package was sold to Lazlo, who incorrectly identified it as a suit of alien origin due to the instrumentation being written in Bantu. The armor was displayed as being of unknown alien origin after being bought by an independent collector. That collector allowed examination of the robot combat armor as well as the supporting vehicles for the purpose of this article. Recently several sets of Hyena Robot Combat Armor have become available on the Black Market, however investigation of these suits have shown that they were manufactured in North America within the past two years. The armor is the same design as the Coalition States polyceramic armor, the capacitor systems are based off of the Northern Gun designs, and the laser systems are of Wilk's manufacture, proving that the armor was made of systems and materials available in the post-Cataclysm North America. These versions lack the modular combat system and come in the direct combat model, the indirect fire model, urban pacification and emergency services model. All weapon systems are all fixed and integrated into the Hyena itself, rather than being modular in design. Investigations as to where the armor has come from had returned no leads, and psychic examination of the armor has only given back the impression of a severe, intense looking man seated on a throne, wearing a crown of electronics, with robot dogs of unfamiliar design on either side of him. Leaving the statistics off of the Ugandan Hyena Robot Combat Armor was a deliberate decision. As you can tell, it's roughly the size of a UAR-1 or UAR-2, maybe a little bigger. The techbase was slightly cruder than the tech base that produced the SAMS and the Glitterboy, meaning that the tech took more space, wasn't as micronized as the NEMA armors. Suggested MDC would be in the range of the Glitterboy, and you can probably extrapolate the main body MDC by the article I posted. Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Sep 28, 2014 |
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Sep 28, 2014 07:32
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The effect of the Great Cataclysm on the RG-14 were primary considerations regarding the Glitter Boy becoming an "iconic" system, with an image that lasted centuries after the fall of man. Most people unfamiliar with the complexity of weapon systems just know that the RG-14 is "the" railgun and do not think of anything beyond that. However, those people have no real understanding of the complexity of modern weapons. Just months prior to the Cataclysm the Force XXII Project finished the upgrades on the NEMA, US Department of Defense, and the Canadian military, following years of examination of the weapon in field trials, the infamous Golden Papers analysis by the NEMA Armed Services Committee, and the US and Canadian military. Multiple operations in regions struck by volcanic disasters had shown that railgun systems had a problem with rhyolitic adherence on the rails and rings, as well as rhyolitic adherence to the interior of the firing chamber.1 This led to a redesign of the weapon to make the system more resistant to the rhyolitic coating, or allow the weapon to be firing even with the glass coating the system. This led to improved rings and rails being placed, that resonated with the "boom" of the RG-14, allowing the sonic detonation to effectively powder the glass, and then ejecting it from vents on the side of the weapon. The system was known to fail after extreme use in extreme environment, as was seen during the 2082 Yucatan Incident, where after the volcano erupted just offshore and began coating the Yucatan peninsula with ash a filter system failure left 122 NEMA (Mostly Mexican additions to the NEMA force), 38 Mexican, 6 Canadian and 12 US Army "Glitterboy" pilots suffering from mass delusion and hallucinations that caused them to engage "Demonic forces" the were supposedly within the ash-cloud. The pilots and their crews expended multiple full loads, forty suits vanished, presumably when the Mayan ruin of Ek Balam was destroyed when terrorist forces of the "Rising Dawn" detonated nuclear weapons stolen from the Mexican military, from the nearby Mexican military base. The blast destroyed most of the Glitterboy suits, the locally stationed Mexican power armor forces, the US Army "Harbinger" suits dropped in via aircraft, the ruins themselves, and the military base, as a "triple rosette" system was used of 21 nuclear weapons, each in the 500 kiloton to 1.5 megaton range. Strangely enough the blast seemed to have been mostly ineffective, with theories ranging from "ash compression kinetic bleedoff" and "timing offset" explaining away the lessened blast force detected by the orbiting satellites. 2 All of this resulted in a massive overhaul of the RG-14, leading to the RG14A4 system being fully deployed to the NEMA forces by the end of the Fiscal Year roughly a year before the Cataclysm, after a crash program of updating the Glitterboy and the related systems in the Mexican, Canadian and US military. The RG-14A3 was never deployed to active service, although several thousand were produced. According to research it appears that more than a few of the Glitterboys were armed with RG-14A3 during the Great Cataclysm, as well as the weapon system being pressed into service as a vehicle weapon or static weapon emplacement, so the weapon will be covered here. The RG-14A3 was produced after the Panama Canal Incident, and was largely state of the art and can be argued to actually be more advanced then the RG-14A4, but those advancements were the very problem that led to it not being deployed widely. The weapon system was built using orbital and Luna manufacturing techniques, using advanced polymers, hyperalloys, and aerogel components, Zero-G molycirc blocks, and advanced combat superconductors. The recoil dampening system had proven to be an excellent addition, however the expense of just replacing the recoil dampening system almost outweighed a complete Tier 3 overhaul of the entire power armor system and weapon. The recoil dampening system did no preclude the use of the recoil suppression system built into the armor, but merely kept barrel rise from happening to such an extent. However the Mexican Advanced Military Research Program developed a unique shoulder assembly system that was far superior to the A3's recoil suppression system as well as having many other advantages, such as cost, power armor strength, resilience, and ease of maintenance. The A3 came fully integrated BAttle Tactical Network Interface, with an "advanced processing node" that allowed the A3 to act as a forward data processing node in case of the loss of the data processing centers, satellite contact, or contact with the military intelligence groups. This "black box" system provided the operator of the armor to track up to 2,500 ground targets, 5,000 air targets, provide ECM/ECCM support, provide artillery counter-battery information within seconds of the incoming artillery rounds clearing the horizon, allow the RG-14A3 to be used as a "point defense weapon" against incoming artillery and rockets, and many other functions, including air defense, and near-orbit defense. However this was an expensive system, which provided a plethora of information to the operator, and required months of training and acclimation to avoid suffering from information overload. The system was also capable of single shot, three round "burst", and fully automatic, although the fully automatic was locked out. Since the lockout was accomplished by software overrides, it was trivial for the operator or the unit maintenance officer to override the software lockout and allow the pilot to fire up to 120 rounds a minute, which meant that the entire ammunition load could be expended by a panicked or ill-trained pilot in less then a second. The RG-14A3 also contained the "Fire Buddy TM" limited AI targeting assistance system. While this worked great in testing and the laboratory, the constant "Hey, hey, look! Hey, hey, look at this! I found something!" of the AI caused many pilots to become enraged at the system. Many quoted the high pitched voice, the constant speech, and the fact it was unable to be disabled as part of their hatred. One operator, a 20 year veteran of power armor piloting, with over sixteen engagements under his belt, pulled free the RG-14A3 and began beating it against a nearby Patton Main Battle Tank screaming "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!" and had to sedated and hospitalized. The RG-14A3 also allowed the pilot to override the safety protocols and the weapon and fire at not only "full warshot" speeds, but also "emergency overcharge shot" speeds of up to Mach 45, more than enough to break earth orbit and strike at target in lunar orbit or even on the surface of the Moon. With the advanced targeting systems, the connection to BaTNI, and the "emergency overcharge shot", allowed two new pilots, both intoxicated, to shoot a Helium-3 Mining vehicle near Tycho Base. This resulted in increased tensions between NEMA and the Afghanistan/Pakistan/Indian Multinational Alliance. (APIMA) APIMA accused NEMA of doing it purposefully, despite the fact both pilots were court-martialed and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. The A3 suffered from a major problem that was rectified in the A4 and the A3A (Vehicle and static weapon mount) was that several different companies that produced components used substandard materials in their manufacturing. GeoSynch Orbitals in particular used flawed manufacturing techniques in the creation of the hyperalloy components used for the mounting of the superconductor assemblies that resulted in vibrational cracks appearing after it was fired as few as a half-dozen times. These cracks damaged the alignment of the system, as well as causing the "magnetic adhesion" used on the flechettes to be only partially applied, resulting in a significant percentage of the flechettes spreading too far. In post-damage tests to see the exact problems by Tier-3 system analysts the spread rate was deemed as unacceptable within as close as 20 meters. At a range of 500 meters over 80% of the flechettes had spread out to a 40m wide pattern, resulting in less than 1 flechette per square meter impact pattern. During tests with war-shots, it was discovered that the round would often hit sideways or start tumbling within 25m of the barrel. Twice the uneven pull of the magnetic accelleration rings caused the barrel to be jammed by war-shot as it was pulled sideways. This failure was the final straw, and the A3 was pulled from production, and GeoSynch was black-listed from any government or military contracts by the EU, NEMA, NAA, and the Pan-African Alliance. However, upgrade and repair kits were produced, mostly by Cyberworks (who capitalized on KLS's failures in their subcontracting overwatch), that fixed the component stress fractures, as well as the other problems. The A3 systems were relegated to depots and weapon storage, because the military rarely throws anything away they might get a use out of later. It is estimated that 3,400 of these units were produced and put in depots, and forensic examination of history shows that up to 80% of these weapons were deployed during the Cataclysm, possibly 60% of the remaining systems were destroyed by natural disasters, which still leaves almost 200 of them possibly in yet undiscovered storage. Over two dozen were found in use by Glitterboys who had no idea of the additional features, as most of them had been disabled during the Cataclysm, either by pilot preference or long term damage. The A4 system came in three different makes. The GR-14A4A was the standard NEMA Chromium Guardsman weapon, the A4B was used by several armored vehicles being deployed by NEMA, including the prototyped A-192 air to ground combat plane, which was basically a plane built around the weapon and its ammunition supply. The A4C was used for fixed emplacements, and was produced with advanced data processing nodes, link to BaTNI, robotic auto-loading systems, and remote operation systems. The GR-14A4A was largely the same as the original GR-14, featuring only semi-automatic fire selection, although thanks to the RG-14A3 many unit armorers knew how to modify the weapon to 3-round burst and fully automatic fire. Knowing this was a possiblity the system has "pre-charge" systems for the ring capacitors, making it so that fully automatic fire would only fire a maximum of 45 rounds a minute, and would automatically pause for "weapon cool-down" if a limit of 50 rounds were fired in a minute, rendering the weapon unusable for a full thirty seconds as the barrel was "cleaned" by the forced air and degaussing system and the software was reset to the firmware backups that were locked from alteration outside of a factory.3 The system was rebuilt with an eye toward extreme conditions that had caused failures in the RG-14A2, from thick volcanic ash requiring full environmental systems just to survive that would kill an unprotected being within a few minutes to forest fires to radiation areas to areas suffering chemical spills. This was in response to several man-made disasters, most notable the sad repeat of the Union Carbide spill in India in the late 20th Century. This time is was the Dow chemical spill in Burma that killed 1.3 million people, injured another 4.5 million, and put over 11 million poeple into the refugee status as the thick cloud of lomma-bromium-chloride used in the manufacture of consumer molycirc swept over Minbud and Magway in the pre-dawn hours. Chromium Guardsman as well as other nations moved into the city, which was engulfed in flames, to rescue any survivors. On repeated occasions the pilots discharged their weapons (The RG-14A2) to blow a hole in storage tanks in order spill out the contents rather than risk more explosions, where it was discovered that the thick chemical smoke left a residue on the interior of the weapon that eroded the weapon's superconductors as well as the magnetic rails. Ionizing radiation, as per the Tarija, Bolivia electrical power facility melt-down (A cascading failure in 2071 led to the nine compressed uranium fusion reactors melting down one after another over the course of 3 hours), showed that this could cause the failure in the onboard electronics, mainly in chips ALR-72 through ALR-92, as well as BUS-04, BUS-06, and BUS-13A, which led to cascading errors within the weapon's software. This resulted in six weapon discharges, two of which struck nearby refugee caravans, killing 238 refugees. Extreme overheating due to forestfires as well as when the city of Wa in Ghana caught fire, caused failure of the superconductor systems as well as discovering that stressed neo-aluminum parts suffered from "thermal exhaustion" when exposed to the high heats of modern city fires. Six Chromium Guardsman deployed to fight the fire who were on training exercises found that the neo-aluminum parts, which had suffered dozens or thousands of microscopic stress fractures, melted at temperatures far below the 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit normally needed to melt the lightweight hyperalloy. The discovery of the reduced melting point as well as the aligned crystalline structure of the neo-aluminum resulted in neo-aluminum being removed from the boom-gun in its entirety. The RG-14A4A had the following stats.4 Range: 3 Miles (firmware enforced, see blow) Muzzle Speed: Mach Two Weight: 925 pounds Height: 10.5 feet (3 meters) Primary Purpose: Anti-Personnel, Anti-Armor Secondary Purpose: Anti-Aircraft, Point Defense The RG-14A4 used the magnetic clustering effect to cause the flechettes to hold together up to 11,000 feet (roughly 2 miles), at which point the polarity immediately reversed, causing the flechettes to burst apart as well as causing the flechettes to be reduced to powder by the loss of the magnetic adhesion. While personnel could be injured by individual flechettes or powder impact up to 2.5 miles or 13,000 feet, it was rare and determined to be more acceptable than the risks of "war-shot" used by the militaries. Uniquely, the RG-14A4 was designed to fire a single flechette when deployed in "point defense mode", which allowed a single flechette to be stripped from the cluster and fired at MACH-2 with pin-point accuracy. This was designed to detonate artillery shells and damage incoming rocket attacks.5 This was also used on unarmored targets that needed eliminated or precise "sniper-shots" against light or non-armored personnel or vehicles.a This feature was adopted from the US Army "Harbinger" system, which often used the "sniper shot" to eliminate enemy personnel at long ranges without requiring the loading of a special munition. With problems with pilots and unit armorer's overriding the maximum range of the system, the firmware and software was "hard coded" to permit only a 2 mile range on the primary weapon, and the targeting software within the armor itself backed this up. The armor's targeting systems and the weapon's systems would easily detect most attempts to overwrite the software or firmware, and update the "corrupted" version with the "cold storage" EPROM system that contained a full backup of the Glitterboy and Boomgun's software and firmware. The "Cold Storage" system for the firmware and software was also added in case of heavy ionization radiation, sabotage, or "enhanced EMP attack" corrupted, damaged, or completely erased the software and firmware. The "Cold Storage" system (which was also in the RG-14A4) was an "information out, nothing in" system that allowed no incoming data to the system, preventing any alteration of the contents. It appears that this system is one of the primary reasons the complex software and firmware survived the Great Cataclysm and the lack of maintenance the Glitterboy and Boomgun suffered. The internal "rail system", consisting of superconducting monopole magnetic "rails" that guided and provided acceleration to the round had been reduced to four in the RG-14A3 system, but rail failure had proven a major problem. The Mexican Advanced Military Research Projects field tested a system containing 12 rails spaced evenly around the "ballistic area", each of the "rails" actually being a rotating cylinder of four rails. The system would rotate the rails after each firing, with the rear rail undergoing a quick analysis. Built in systems would "clean" the rails in the "back" of the system, including applying another "layer" of monopole superconductor to the composite rail. Each "rail" was actually dozens of layers that created a 1/2 inch thick linear rail. The system was able to recover "comprised" rail layers and "reprocess" them, resulting in an astounding 80% material recovery rate. NEMA and NAA and assorted military testing showed that the RG-14A4A could fire literally millions of rounds before significant degradation occurred. Even in the event of the total failure of the recovery system, the weapon was still good for over 750,000 full power shots in rapid sequence. Additionally, the RG-14A4 carried an additional set of six rails per rotating rail systems that would be used to replace any seriously damaged rail. The RG-14A2 and RG-14A3 used four magnetic acceleration "coils" to impart further velocity on the round, as well as cause the "magnetic compression" on the flechette rounds. The Canadian military and the US military experimented with six or eight rails, but it was the Canadians who designed the nine rail system that was used in the military version of the Chromium Guardsman.The last "ring" was what applied the magnetic adhesion pressure, while the others provided additional thrust. At first the RG-14A4 system for NEMA use was going to only use the standard and long tested 4 ring system. However, at the last minute the program decided to go with the 9 ring system, alternating the "firing rings" for each shot. This turned out to enhance the life and stability of the system. Additionally each ring was eight support points, and in between each support point was a "maintenance point", which cleaned the rings when the system rotated the rings in between shots. This provide shot by shot degaussing, cleaning of any foreign contaminates on the rings, as well as identified any damaged rings. The rings switched from Dupont combat superconductors to the Litton Compression System, using "enhanced density" rings, that actually consisted of dozens of mono-molecular layers of superconductors. The compress "core" was a solid mass that contained over twelve-hundred "layers" in a density collapsed "ring" in the center. As each layer degraded, the maintenance point shaved it off and pulsed the ring with a magnetic "code" that caused the density collapsed ring to "shed" another ring.6 Military grade version of the RG-14A4 did not use ammunition with cases, preferring the "caseless ammunition system" that most nation's militaries used. However, the NEMA version of the RG-14A4 allowed and preferred cased rounds to be used.7 The ejection system served two purposes, the first to eject any ammunition casing, the second to eject debris from inside the railgun system. As the system "cleared the barrel and chamber" both before and after firing the round, and some particles could be quite sizable, the weapon needed a sizable ejection port. As military pilots were taught to "hand load" rounds from easily available materials, and the venerable "soda can" could be used as a casing the system had to accommodate such extreme measures. Originally the system had a spring loaded cover that would blow outward on a hinge and the spring system return the cover to its proper position over the vent, but it appears that during the Great Cataclysm most of the covers were either removed for some unknown reason by commanding officers of NEMA or lost due to damage.8 The internal chassis systems were initially neo-aluminum, but were replaced by a special non-magnetic neo-tungsten during the production of RG-14A4. The external chassis was made of neo-tungsten and then advanced chromium armor for the outer-two-thirds of the chassis. Inside the chassis is aero-gel designed to absorb and disappate the electromagnetic pulse of the weapon firing, the magnetic "strobe" of the firing, as well as cushioning the internal structures from the sheer violence of firing the weapon. It appears in later years operators replaced damaged aero-gel with any available non-magnetic padding (It appears common mattress stuffing was the most common) when the aerogel succumbed to age and cracked apart or turned to powder. Some weapons were left without padding, but these weapons often failed within a few years or a decade of use as the additional vibrational stress upon the components caused systems to shift or vibrate out of alignment with power leads.9 Up until roughly -25 PA most places could not produce the necessary aerogel to repad the system, much less manufacture the specific type of aerogel needed to absorb the EMP as well as keep the detonation and vibration from damaging the parts. Originally the RG-14A4 had an internal millimetric phased radar system built into the weapon system. This system was capable of identifying hundreds of airborne and ground targets, tracking them, as well as tracking and projecting artillery and rocket trajectories. This was used for the point-defense role, as well as to create an inter-locking battlefield information system, and was quite capale even in an urban enviroment. Pilots often used it in low visibility areas to create a real-time updated map of their surroundings, and all pilots were trained in piloting the armor system and using the RG-14A4 completely blind except for the radar mapping. This system was largely a casualty of the Great Cataclysm, as the high ferrous content of the volcanic ash as well as the sheer thickness of the ash rendered the radar system almost completely useless. Examination of many "legacy" RG-14's has shown that the system is still there, intact and operational, but disconnected from the system by software lockout.10 The system used extremely precise radar to create a 3D map of the area, as well as track mobile objects. The system had a thirty mile range in an oval shape. To the forward arc of the weapon the range was 30 miles, with fifteen miles to the sides and ten behind, giving any operator plenty of time to track incoming missiles and artillery shells. Additionally "overhead cover" was provided by the radar at a distance of five miles, considering plenty of distance. Unsupported by the armor's combat computers the radar's support computers could track up to two hundred ground and air targets, and identify and track up to 1,500 airborne artillery and rocket rounds.11 The weapon itself had the software loaded for counter-battery solutions, however this data was never fed to the pilot and instead was merely relayed over the BaTNI system.12 Direct fire is quickly pinpointed and the information relaying to the pilot as "incoming fire-source", however only for the fire directed at the armor itself. The RG-14A4 also had software to quickly identify any incoming fire that used the frequency that would damage the armor. The laser targeting system on the RG-14A4 is still in use by most pilots, however it is sadly used only for "point and shoot" assistance common to the "modern" battlefield, even though the system is capable of much much more. It appears that the laser targeting system was largely disabled during the Great Cataclysm due to the ash-fall causing serious atmospheric attenuation of the beam. The system was originally designed to allow the pilot to "paint" targets for supporting indirect fire systems, be used a low-power cutting beam to get through modern construction materials, and even act as a light anti-personnel weapon. However the thick ash of the Great Cataclysm made using the weapon difficult, and the long periods between maintenance made it so that the power leads between the Glitterboy and the RG-14A4 became both corroded and knocked out of alignment. As the armor could work with the laser in "low power" mode, software was modified to leave the beam within the visible light range and reduce it to non-damaging power, as those leads were made of superior material and did not require the heavy conduits that the cutting/antipersonnel system required.13 b The original system was a multiple frequency agile system, which allowed the weapon to flicker hundreds of times a second over a narrow range of wavelengths so that the beam was difficult to back-trace and did not pose a danger to the pilot. The RG-14A4 had twelve different laser systems, each wavelength and frequency programmed into the armor's sensor system so that they could see one another's lasers. The RG-14A4 contained a wireless communication system with high bandwidth and extremely short range that transmitted via a extremely short range frequency agile system. This wireless communication system served three purposes. To allow the weapon's computer systems to communicate with the power armor's computer systems, to communicate with nearby allied power armor systems, and to communicate with the unit's BaTNI system. This was added after the 2075 Congo Incident, where snipers made the weapon's data cables a priority target, as well as disabling the power armor's communication system. The internal system uses the weapon's entire chassis as an antenna, making it almost impossible for enemy snipers to render the communication system inoperative. However, this appears to have been disabled during the Great Cataclysm for reasons unknown.14 The RG-14A4 originally had a "hopper" in the side that allowed the operator to drop metal debris into the hopper, which would then grind the metal into powder, which would then be "fashioned" into flechettes via physical and magnetic compression. The constructed flechettes would be magnetically compressed into a servicable round, which would then be loaded into the weapon. Non-metallic debris would be expelled through the ejection port, and the system was capable of producing a single round every two seconds. The hopper could hold up to 1 cubic meter of material, and would use the entire hopper inside of 15 seconds to produce eight fire-able rounds. This system was disabled during the Great Cataclysm as the system became rapidly fouled with ash. However armors that survived until the air cleared apparently used the system to produce rounds, allowing the system to be combat capable. Additionally, the system could also craft frangible links for an ammunition belt when ordered to, allowing the pilot to create a new 100-round belt of ammunition over the course of an hour. Examination of the "emergency fabrication system" on "legacy" weapons showed that the system was literally used until the grinders ceased to operate anymore. Testing shows that a whopping 10,000 rounds of ammunition had to be crafted before the system began to degrade.15 Examination of modern construction RG-14A4 systems show that while most weapons do not possess them, a few that appear on the Black Market contain the system even though the weapon shows evidence of being manufactured sometime after -25 PA. Finally, the RG-14A4 had a "autonomous repair system" that repaired structural damage by the use of the small robots ranging from the size of the head of a pin to the size of the average human palm (1/25th of an inch to three inches) that would examine areas that the internal system analysis had identified as suffering from damage or wear. The robots would perform an in-depth examination of the system and report to the onboard repair system what materials were needed, which the armor's onboard computer would then suggest possible sources of the material to the pilot for insertion into the "emergency fabrication" hopper. This would allow the repair system to fix damage inside the weapon (however it could not repair the chromium armor or molycircs) and even use civilian or scavenged military supercondutor to repair or replace damaged components of the magnetic accelleration system. However, it appears that this system began to fail after nearly a century of use, the robots "dying" and being expelled from the weapon. The system was not reproduced once construction of RG-14A4's began once again in PA times, as it was mistaken for a simple damage diagnostic system and found to be redundant.16 The RG-14A4B was designed for vehicles such as the Patton Main Battle Tank. The system vents from the sides of the weapon and does not have a rear venting system. The system is loaded from the vehicles internal ammunition bay, and the weapon is "cleared" by air filtered by the vehicle itself. It does not contain the hopper, the laser, or the wireless communication system, as all of these systems are built into the vehicle that the weapon is built into. The system's range is also increased up to twenty miles, allowing the armored vehicles to engage indirect fire as soon as it crests the horizon, as well as near-orbital targets. The system also does not possess a targeting/welding laser nor a radar system, again, these systems were built into the armored vehicle. Finally the weapons usually fired discarding sabot "war-shot" rather than the urban/AP round common to the NEMA forces. These weapons are rarely found, and less than a hundred have been located since the Great Cataclysm, usually on vehicles that were heavily damaged and taken to a makeshift repair facility, or were put in storage before the Great Cataclysm and never pressed into service, so data is sparse on these weapon systems. The RG-14A4C was designed to be deployed in fixed position and possessed several major differences from the RG-14A4A system. Sadly less than a handful of these have ever been found, and all of them damaged, so information on this system is sparse at best. First and foremost is a "mounting post" allowing the weapon to be mounted on either a "pintle mount" or a tripod or quadpod. Second was an minaturized fission reactor the size of a toaster, even though the weapon has a primary energy port and two secondary energy ports to allow the weapon to be attached to an outside power source. Finally the system can be powered by e-clips, but requires four e-clips to be slotted in and even then it will only operate for eight hours or twenty-five shots.c Additionally the weapon has data communication ports allowing the operator to wear smart-goggles or simply deploy the holographic display screen from the compartment inside the weapon. The RG-14A4C also possesses advanced processing nodes allowing it to operate a full BaTNI, or act as an advanced processing node for the local BaTNI. The internal systems can track up to twenty thousand ground and air targets, and a whopping five hundred thousand rockets and artillery, as well as provide counter-battery information and act as a point-defense processing node. This node is state of the art molycircs, blackboxed, and use seperate molycircs to operate a "virtual node" where operating software is loaded into the "virtual node" from the black box systems and data calculations are performed by the "virtual node" until the job is finished. Every seven to ten seconds the "virutal node" has its data-processing and code wiped out by the system and rapid loaded a new software package and the information reaquired from the sensor system's buffers. This prevents data corruption, visible light laser virus uploading, and other cyber-warfare attacks from taking the RG-14A4C system offline, while still allowing it to operate as a full BaTNI node.17 Built into the RG-14A4C is a powerful sensor system, integrating phased millimetric wave radar, laser scanning systems, magnetic anomaly scans, energy source scanning, as well as visible light spectrum analysis. Intensely detailed scans are only out to two miles in radius, but the radar and laser scanning system are another oval. The 90 degree arc in front of the weapon extends out to fifty miles, to the sides it has a range of thirty miles, and behind the system it only has a five mile range. This system requires an operator to wear advanced protective armor to protect them from the close range radar exposure, but as the weapon would be deployed to a combat zone, this was seen as a no-brainer. Research has shown that in two cases scavengers located these weapons, activated the system, and suffered massive fatal internal burns. Indirect fire mode is possible with the RG-14A4C, as the range allows it to loft a shell in a parabolic arc with a range of sixty miles, but this requires mission configured "shells" that to date only two example of which have been found. One exploded when it was mistakenly loaded by the scavengers into the accompanied Glitterboy, destroying the weapon's internal systems, the other sold as an artillery round for another weapon.18 Finally, the RG-14A4C is capable of a high rate of fire, up to one hundred rounds a minute. The RG-14A4C contains a larger hopper and ammunition fabrication unit that is capable of creating 50 rounds a minute and has a hopper capable of handing up to fifteen cubic meters of material, and possessing its own systems to eject the unusable debris. The robotic loading system is capable of attaching new belts and new ammunition canisters to the weapon. The loading system can attach a new belt from a large volume ammunition container in less than six seconds. One hundred round "drums" commonly used by Glitterboys are usually placed in a rack of ten to one hundred "drums", each drum pulled forward by the rack, used till empty, and "ejected" to the side. Very few of the ammunition racks or "extended volume ammunition magazines" have been located, and their existence is largely drawn from schematics found in military databases, as well as legacy Glitterboy "deep storage" memory systems. An intact RG-14A4C is often purchased for less than 10,000 credits by the black market, which then rebuilds the weapon into a "proper" RG-14A4A, while those who know what they have and sells it to the proper purchaser are able to recieve as much as 1.5 million credits for the weapon. Recently four of these weapons, in pristine condition, were available on the black market in Austin Texas for 5.5 million credits each. These were purchased by CS agents out of Lonestar and have since vanished. 1 This caused by volcanic dust becoming superheated by the passage of the round and adhering to the nearest surface as it first turns gaseous and then cools. This often leans a shiny coating, black or rainbowed, and often "tears" where it is black obsidian droplets. This can seriously effect a weapon. 2 Battle EPROM and ROM systems recovered from what few armors survived show a brilliant blue light sufficing the area, warped figures, massive static, intermittent radio contact, complete loss of GPS system, and loss of satellite contact. Additionally investigators believed that the pilots may have been up to 130 miles off course at one point due to the jungle terrain that was seen in the footage. 3 The ability to activate the additional fire modes on the RG-14A4 would require someone who is extremely knowledgeable in the RG-14's onboard software, is an expert in software, and knows what they are doing, as it requires additional commands to the loading system, the degaussing systems, the air compression systems, and the capacitor rings. 4 Field statistics are presented here, as controlled environment laboratory testing statistics were quite different. 5 This ability was removed from firmware and software during the Dark Ages. Examination of old battlefield wreckage from during the Cataclysm shows evidence that the removal of this ability happened sometime in approximately 2135 (according to the armor and weapon's internal clocks) during a widely spread firmware and software update. 6 With the loss of orbital Zero-G facilities, the "density collapsed" rings are no longer avialable. However they can be found now and then for sale on the black market by people who think they only possess "Golden Age" armor and weaponry parts. From someone who knows what these rings are, the rings often sell for as much as 1.5 million credits per set, or 250,000 credits each. 7 Ammunition will be covered in a later installment. 8 Examination of Chromium Guardsman disabled and destroyed during the Great Cataclysm around Old Bones show that the RG-14 had the ejection cover removed, bent slightly, and added to the feed loading to allow for a smoother loading due to volcanic ash deposits on the belt causing the ammunition belt to hang up on the unaltered feeder port. A document recovered from several power armor's long term data storage modules showed that this was a memo from the 24th Armor Defense Division of NEMA dated 6 Jan 2099 and signed Lieutenant General Sawyer, Commanding. 9 Weapons disabled by non-padded use can be repaired and re-shielded for a rather minor cost, however this must be done at a facility capable of producing or acquiring aerogel and neo-tungsten parts, takes 4d6 hours of work. 10 The system, if it is present and undamaged, only requires 1d4 hours of software coding to bring back online. 11 The artillery point defense radar computer quickly and accurately identified any artillery rounds or rockets that were likely to endanger the armor, highlighting only those rounds that posed any danger to the armor, rather than all the incoming missile systems. Those capable of a "top-down" attack were given priority over thermobaric blood weapons or crude EFP weapons. 12 Counter-battery computation result in measuring the arc of the in-flight artillery shell or the path of the rocket and identifying the originating location of the artillery shell, allowing support artillery and rocket batteries to engage and destroy attacking indirect fire units. To enable the pilot to see the data would require 1d6+2 hours to override the lockouts, identify the data output coding modules, and rewrite software to send the information to the pilot. This would require another 4+2d8 hours of programming to add in the software needed on the armor side to display the data in a meaningful way to the pilot. 13 The laser would require 2d4+12 hours of software reprogramming to get past the overrides, as well as recalibrating the system would require 1d4 hours of physical work. 14 The wireless system was disabled during the Demon Plagues when units around Chicago began reporting hearing an "alluring song" over the wireless, and several suits of armor walked off in the middle of the night, some without operators. The system can be brought back online with 1d4+4 hours of electronics work, and 1d4 hours of programming work. This will also bring online the BaTNI software and computer systems. The long range portion of the system has a maximum range of 22 miles, while the armor to armor system has a range of one mile. 15 To repair the system would require 14 hours of work, as well as 15,000 credits worth the custom made parts. 16 This can be replaced/repaired with 4d6+48 hours of work, requiring 125,000 credits worth the material, 1d4+2 RMK kits, and 3d6x10+50 hours of programming work. It will repair the weapon at the rate of 1 MDC per hour, and was originally programmed to do maintenance when the system was on "down time", or unless the weapon suffered a critical component failure. 17 The RG-14A4A does NOT have this system, as it was never designed to act as a primary BaTNI node. While it can process data, the data is kept in stored buffers that the system "scans" without loading the data into memory, sending the data the "resolution buffers", without ever allowing the data to enter the RG-14A4A's systems to prevent cyber-warfare from disabling the weapon. 18 This round is known about by scavengers, who view it as a dangerously unstable round of an unknown type, and as such they are either left behind or destroyed by the scavengers. a The "sniper dart" does 2d6 MD to a single target, has a 1 mile range, and can hit a target as small as a softball. It takes 20 uses stripped from a single shot to drop the damage from normal to 3d4x10 and 60 shots to reduce damage to 2d4x10, anything over 80 will reduce the damage to 1d4x10 as long as there are at least 10 left. After 10, unless the pilot overrides it, the armor will eject the "spent" round. b The laser does 5d6 MD per shot and is powered by the reactor. It is capable of defeating laser resistant armor within 1d4 shots, less during sunny days where the combat computer built into the weapon itself can extrapolate the frequency based on visible light scatter. c Each shot depletes twenty minutes from operation time. If less than twenty minutes of power remain, the system will not fire and instead will automatically eject the e-clips and begin beeping four short beeps with a 1 second silence, and then repeating. The insertion of an e-clip will pause it, then it will begin beeping again. A single e-clip will only allow 30 minutes of operation or two shots, with two clips providing three hours or ten shots, and three e-clips providing five hours or fifteen shots.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:35
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The Great Cataclysm posed signifigant challenges, not only to civilians attempting to survive, but to the military forces and NEMA. Power armor, military vehicles, and advanced weapon system require air intakes and circulation, which require filter systems that can provide applicable air pressure and volume to the system. Despite Cold War 1 planning to fight on the nuclear battlefield, practical experience with volcanic eruptions, Cold War Two theory regarding "Brillian Pebble Strike" battlefields, both power armors and military weapons and vehicles had be able to handle ariborne particle debris, including the presence of "microfines" which was dust so small that when it pooled it took on the properties of water rather than normal dust. The biggest challenge of a "microfine environment" was the fact that even ceramic air-filters, normally used in P-3 Biological Containment Facilities, would become clogged the near-microscopic particles and require changing to return the equipment to service. Tests at White Sands and Groom Lake as well as the Canadian and Mexican equivelants showed that a "Brilliant Pebble Strike" attack would fill the atmosphere with microfines that would remain suspended up to eighteen days in the air, as the cloud created a very slight static charge that would keep the cloud somewhat coherent even in the presence of wind, which simply acted as another "current" in the microfine cloud. The microfine cloud acted more like a very dispersed water than a cloud of debris, wind just moving through the cloud, with the microfines simply arcing out and then returning the cloud, much like a solar flare. Charge difference between the ground and the cloud meant the cloud stayed airborne for long periods of time, but also did not drift very far, merely staying within the large area as a drifting hazard. To get rid of the cloud required ionizing the cloud, which caused it to "rain" to the ground within one to four seconds. This cloud was found to be a particular hazard to particle beam weapons, ion weapons, and railguns, with a common effect on lase weapons. For ion weapons the ion charge was absorbed by the cloud in less than fifty feet, the charge either absorbed by the cloud, or causing an "explosion" less than 20 feet from the weapon as the conflicting charges caused a critical failure. For laser weapons the problem was more simple and largely regarded as impossible to stop: The laser's intense energy would cause the microfines to fuse into volcanic glass within ten feet of the barrel for particularly "dense" clouds to one hundred feet for "thinner" clouds. Railguns suffered "magnetic adhesion" of the ash onto the accelleration components, the heat of the round's passing fusing it into iridescent glass. Each shot lined it thicker and thicker, and although the glass only thickened by micro-meter or so each shot, for "rapid fire" railguns that depended on armor ablation techniques, the rail would quickly become "insulated" by the microfine generated glass. Particle Beam weapons was where the real disaster occurred. If the cloud contained the same positive or negative charge as the particle beam consisted of, the cloud would suddenly compress around the weapon and instantly turn to glass from the heat. This would coat the weapon, and the firer, inside up to two meters of glass, coincidentally eliminating the microfine field. If the charge was opposite, a disasterous result occurred. Suspected of being a nuclear detonation, in 2072 a "microfine capable firing test" took place inside a cloud, which unfortunately had the opposite charge as the particle beam. This resulted in not only the energy in the cloud being suddenly released, but a measurable percentage of the potential energy of the microfines themselves being released. This resulted in a 8.4 megaton blast occurring at the firing point. Satellite imagery and other sensor data allowed the researchers to determine warning signs that would prevent the weapon from being fired in a microfine cloud, which lead to the installment of expensive and complex millimetric wave radar systems into vehicles and advanced weaponry. Larger particles had several problems inherent that were common with the microfine clouds: Mainly increased atmospheric attenuation for laser, ion, particle beam, and plasma weapons, as well as what became to be called "particle compression" on railgun rounds as passing through the ash degraded the range. Additionally ash inside the barrels of weapons was often superheated and ended up coating the internal structures of the weapons. All of this was a major problem during the Great Cataclysm as the sheer volume of ash put into the air over the course of ten years seriously comprimised the use of military weaponry. Common geology and vulcanology held the belief that even if the entire "Ring of Fire" would go off, it would merely throw ash in the air that would, for the most part, settle within a few weeks, sooner if it rained in the regions. While it was recognized that this would bring on a "nuclear winter" for up to a decade, what happened during the Great Cataclysm was far far worse. First of all, the continent of Atlantis returned, which caused the continental plates to buckle around the Atlantic Ocean and those plates connected to it. Japan vanished, resulting in the Ring of Fire separating, ripping open the crust of the earth like a pie crust. (The Yucatan is NOT missing according to geology and continental plate pressure) Finally, the increased pressure by the reappearance of Atlantis put additional pressure on the mantle around the earth. The constant pressure inward on the planet as the planet adjusted to the increased ocean pressure, continental plate pressure, the fracturing of plates, and the rest caused the volcanoes to eject ash for a period of ten years and trillions of cubic meters of magma were slowly pushed into the chambers of the volcanoes, throwing up gigatons of ash into the air. Several oceanic volcanoes and sub-oceanic volcanoes caused explosions measured in the megatons as cold seawater hit calderas and consequently exploded. This caused additional ashfall, debris, tsunamis, and earthquakes. The big problem with the major earthquakes is that it shook back up the finer the ash into the air across areas measuring in the hundreds of square miles, as well as stirring up drifting clouds. The Earth had already been undergoing global warming to a serious degree, with rivers drying up or changing course, the permafrost melting, and other major problems, which meant that while nuclear winter did kick off with a global warming change already in effect. Sea levels had already risen by 25 feet, but Atlantis surged it by another five feet globally. The ocean's circulation system, known as the ocean conveyor belt, was permanently altered, causing a mini-ice age in Western Europe that dropped temperatures drastically and resulted in snowfall as early as October with thawing occuring as late as March or April. Glaciers and permafrost in North America, Europe, Russia, and Asia provided a signifigant amount of fresh water, and with those thawing the loss of fresh water was devestating. During the early 21st Century major corporations bought the water rights to what climatologists had determined would be surviving fresh water sources, creating even greater shortages where people began having to pay a measurable percentage of their income just for fresh water. In clean water strapped third world nations, this meant even worse conditions, and led directly to the Second Cold War. Globally, the temperature had increased by 11 degrees Fahrenheit on average, year round, with the ocean temperature increasing by nine degrees. This led to the loss of over one point five million species, and a global die-off of oxygen producing algae in the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. During the Mid21st Century a lot of steps were taken to reduce this problem, but as it had taken centuries to occur (starting with the early mini-ice age burning of forests in Europe, Asia, and Africa) it would take decades to reverse. And then the Rifts happened. When the volcanic ash eruptions occurred, initially the earth cooled over 16 degrees Fahrenheit. This increased the mini-Ice Age that Western Europe was facing, brought about a second Ice Age in the Mongolian Steppes, South Africa, Southern South America, Canada, and Siberia. Within two years of the Coming of the Rifts the Bering Strait was icelocked by ice that was between thirty feet thick in summer and over a hundred feet in the winter. The world had been built with Global Warming in mind, and an Ice Age had befallen mankind. Millions froze to death, as they did not possess nor did they have access to cold weather protective gear. Crops, many bio-engineered to survive global warming, died off entirely, bringing about mass famine in places that might have been widely untouched by the Rifts themselves. Water froze in the perma-frost zones, crushing subterranean piping, and caused water shortages around the world. In the Ice Age zones the snow piled up year after year, with the ice no longer thawing as south as Edmonton Alberta in Canada. Many cities that had largely survived the Coming of the Rifts in Canada were buried beneath ice and snow, and even in 108 PA are still entombed the same way. The snow did not stop falling in Chicago Illinois until March of 2099, and did not fully thaw away until mid-April of the same year. Unfortunately, snow began to fall in late August, early September in 2099 and did not thaw until June of 2100, with snow starting in August of 2100. In 2101 the snow fell year round or did not melt away, meaning that by 2007 the snow level in Illinois was at eight feet during the summer. In 2012 the snow levelled dropped from 16 feet in the summer to 14 feet thanks to the end of the volcanic ash expulsion by the major volcanoes, and rapidly melted off over the next five years as the ash was swept out of the air by snow and rain. Luckily, by 2045 the climate change had reversed to the point where it was roughly at 1700's level. Even without the Rifts and the invaders from those Rifts, mankind teetered on the edge of extinction for decades. In Europe, Russia, Asia, and other places, the vast forests that primitive man burned to stay alive had been harvested over the decades, leaving them no way to stay warm once the utility grid went down. Millions froze to death, starved to death, or died of thirst and disease. It is estimated that at one point the total global population of Rifts Earth was less than one million people, mostly clustered in a few areas. It was the biggest die-off since the Xang-Wie Event in 40,000 BC. Tens of millions of species died off, many of them ocean species as the oxygen levels in the ocean plummeted as cold water absorbs less oxygen and the kelp beds were almost entirely wiped out. In some ways the climate change, earthquakes, tsumanias, and the earth itself was worse than the demon plagues, which could be fought and beaten. One cannot fight a blizzard that lasts for two months, but one can shoot a Brodkil in the face with a boom-gun. Over 85% of human population was killed off due to natural disasters, contrary to what modern holo-shows portray. There were 16 billion people on Earth on December 22, 2098. By 2052 the estimated world population was 900,000. A total die-off of 99.994375% due to climate change and predators from beyond the Rifts. This is compared to an estimated world population of 264 million humans world-wide, assuming a growth percentage of 22%. For the NEMA and military forces in North America this all caused serious problems. For the first two years the snow was black and during the "summer" the rain was black and gritty. This meant that the permafrost layers actually had striations of ash and snow once the snow no longer thawed. In some ways the permanent presence of snow made it easier to fight supernatural menaces, as even invisible enemies left behind footprints in the snow. Eventually the decision was made to allow the snow to pile up, as it provided a measure of insulation to the inhabitants of the lower floors of the buildings. Those multi-floor buildings whose roofs collapsed cue to the weight of snow were just allowed to collapse, as few people lived on the upper stories, as it made them vulnerable to aerial attacks. During the first few years even if it was raining or snowing, ash was still falling, as rain or snow form around tiny particles to which the moisture adheres, and the ash levels in the air meant that predominately the particle that the rain or snow formed around was ash. Additionally the ash was so fine in several categories that ash was uptaked into the atmosphere inside of water vapor droplets, meaning that the situation continued for years. Into one of the harshest environments ever conceived the forces of NEMA not only had to handle refugees who were faced with starvation, lack of drinkable (potable) water, disease, and a destroyed infrastructure, but they had to face off against creatures from beyond space and time, many of them supernatural threats that could absorb as much damage as a First World state of the art main battle tank or light armored vehicle, and could put out the damage potential of the same. It was into this environment that the RG-14A4 "Boom Gun" was fielded and saved the day again and again, often defeating overwhelming odds and creatures that seemed to shrug off lighter weapons. NEMA had two version available, the MA-14A4E 60mm Magnetic Acceleration Combat System on the M-10A5 Power Armor Assault Suit nicknamed "Harbinger" from the old field trials and top secret design phase (Sub-Project Harbinger) that had resulted in the "Chromium Guardsman" power armor, and the RG-14A4A, RG-14A4B, and RG-14A4C railgun systems. These systems were built to handle the most extreme environments. From the theorized Lunar battlefields, Mars exploration and defense, and to even allow troops to fight after a Third World War, where it was assumed that orbital strikes, nuclear exchanges, chemical and biological weapons would have been unleashed. This meant that off all the power armor systems, the Chromium Guardsman and the Harbinger Assault Suits were best qualified to fight on this terrible battlefield. Possessing a full suite of weapons, enhanced sensor systems, the ability to perform rescue operations and refugee operations, and designed to survive not only the battlefield, but inside the very fireball of a nuclear detonation and the world after World War Three. The RG-14A4 systems were deployed by the surviving members of NEMA and the North American and Mexican military in a combination of the post-Third World War battlefield and the "enhanced battlefield" where demons took the place of enemy tanks and power armors. The NEMA forces had logged literally hundreds of man-hours of combat against power armor and robot combat vehicles under terrible conditions over the last several decades, commanders who had overseen operations under various conditions for decades, and armor that had undergone repeated revisions to fix errors discovered under combat conditions. Premier among the NEMA arsenal were the Chromium Guardsman and the Silver Eagles, pound for pound hardier, more versatile, and packing a harder punch than any other weapon system in the world, and the RG-14A4A was the weapon system of the Chromium Guardsman that could defeat even the strongest creature from the Rifts. Keep in mind that the PPE level of Rifts Earth at the time of the Great Cataclysm were of a magnitude higher than 108 PA, with most of the rifts being permanently cycling open to bleed off PPE and the ley-lines themselves lit up with such power that they could be seen from miles away and actually created electrical discharges around them all of the time. This meant that supernatural creatures were present on Great Cataclysm Earth that could not manifest in the comparatively weak PPE environment of 108PA. Creatures recorded on Battle-ROMs and other video and written recordings have never been seen since and have not been identified by even the most learned multiverse traveling researcher. More than a few creatures were able to still fight while withstanding the concentrated and massed fire of entire brigades of Chromium Guardsman and Harbingers, a level of fire that would destroy even the most tenacious foe now. Problems with the RG-14A4A were not unexpected problems, but with the loss of the repair and maintenance facilities, supply depots, manufacturing plants, and War Stocks meant that what had been assumed to be "acceptable performance loss" when resupply and maintenance could be expected meant catastrophic failure for weapon systems not designed with extended operations in high threat environments. Thankfully the RG-14A4 had been designed to operate for months without even the most basic of maintenance, with potentially years of operation with only the minimum of maintenance. Ash adherence was a known problem that thankfully the RG-14A4A was designed to counter-act. So where other power armor's weapon systems were beginning to suffer "fusing failure" the RG-14A4A had counter-measures to keep it combat operational. However ash caused filter clogging in the air systems, and performance suffered. The loss of the the War Stocks and the maintenance depots and parts depots resulted in either the filters being cleaned and reused, or taken from other vehicles. A particularly enterprising mechanic discovered that the Nissan Trueflight hovercar's primary intake filters would work just fine of the RG-14A4A. A Canadian mechanic discovered, before communications with Quebec went down, that taking the linear rails in the hands of the Glitterboy and flexing it into a 14 degree angle bow at 230 psi over a period of 45 seconds would result in the volcanic glass shattering free. The circular superconductors could be cleaned by spraying it with cryo-fluid (commonly scavenged from civilian air-car blade coolant systems) and then hitting it with a teflon covered sledgehammer, which would shatter the glass. This was entered into the "Maintenance Database" in the Cold Storage database and is still used this day to clean the coils. For degausing a mechanic with NEMA Third Armored Division discovered that running a second set of power leads to provide a reverse feed, and then "pulsing it" in alternating currents by activating first the primary sets and then the installed sets at 0.5 second intervals for 6 seconds would provide acceptable degaussing. This field modification was done to all operational M-14A4A weapon systems, and the degaussing method was added to the weapon and the suit's functions. Aerogel proved to be particular susceptible to ash clogging. Blowing it out with compressed air (usually at 215 psi) would work, but broke the microfibers as well as caused microfractures. After close to ten cleanings the aerogel would be shredded and almost useless. However a civilian mechanic discovered that standard mattress stuffing soaked with standard fire retardant foam from civilian building tanks and then baked in a civilian conventional oven for three to four hours at 500 degrees, and then put on high in a 450 watt microwave for 120 minutes would create an acceptable substitute that would need replaced far less often. This procedure is the one that survived the Great Cataclysm, and indeed, many robot repair facilities as well as legacy Glitterboy power armor pilots use to replace the shock padding. Superconductor failure became an issue several years into the Great Cataclysm, for two reasons. The constant sub-zero temperatures, combined with rapid reheating by a fired round and then sub-zero air being used to clean and flush the system caused micro-stress fractures from thermal fatigue. While the superconductor power-leads were specially designed for the Boom Gun, in order to provide the high powered 20+ MACH "war-shots", the much less power-intensive MACH-Two limit made it so that superconductor taking from the motor windings of civilian electrical cars and hovercars. This scavenging technique was put into the Maintenance Database and in the Cold Storage database. Internal heu-tungsten sections also suffered thermal fatigue and vibration fatigue, however a desperate mechanic from the US Army 8th Infantry Division noticed that nearly anything could be used for the structural systems, including simple carbon steel, providing that any ferrous metals be lined with anti-magnetic coating. This coating could be found in any stocked electronics or automobile mechanic garage. Additionally the components were a close match to the Mitsubishi-Ford Sternhauser cargo truck's forward fan guidance assembly and could be adapted to use within 20 minutes of work for anyone with a high school machineshop. This information was put out as quickly as possibly, and once again was put into the Maintenance Database. Molycirc failure was extremely low, but one component that became known for failure was the radar "tracking and identification system" within both the weapon and the armor. As the armor's system was considered priority, the weapon's computer circuitry was removed and used to replace the armor's systems. As those failures did not start occurring until approximately Year Six (With some units, roughly 19%, and 80% of those manufactured in Germany by the Triax Corporation) through Year Fifteen, the second set of failures did not happen until Year Fifty through Eighty. By that time the Tier 3 Maintenance Shop for 2nd Armor Division out of Fort Hood had identified that the tracking module for police and ambulance hover-vehicles was not only as capable as the military-grade system (with some reprogramming) but would fit with some adjustment to the housing in the weapon and the removal of some shock dampening material inside the Glitterboy. Additionally another mechanic (who was well over 140 but still considered late middle-age thanks to Pre-Cataclysm longetivity medicine) formerly with 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force discovered that with several component adjustments as well as a copy of the firmware from the Deep Storage Module, the circuitry for game AI's out of late generation gaming consoles could be used to replace the system without the removal of the shielding. These molycirc systems were actually able to be manufactured by anyone with a "Bubble Circuitry Forge" in several hours, and the Bubble Circuitry Forge could be crafted by a nano-forge that most home computers used to create easy to craft systems. By piling these together the aging woman was able to start the manufacture of Glitterboy molycirc systems that, while they didn't perform to military specifications, manage to get within 70% of NEMA standards. Field expedient fabrication and repair techniques were refined over the decades, and pilots were trained by their parents or mentors on how to repair the systems from easily scavenged or purchased materials. Several towns gathered up all the techniques and gathered the repair materials from nearby ruins before beginning to offer Glitterboy Repair Systems to those who many had come to view as "humanities saviors" during the long decades. Up until 85 PA the CS supplied those repair facilities. However several towns found out they were able to order repair parts from irregular caravans coming out of the American South-East. These parts were all Pre-Cataclysm, still in the original packaging, and many people figured someone had hit upon a maintenance depot containing a large store of parts. Investigation shows that these parts caravans stopped in 90 PA after CS investigations tracked them to near the location of the American Empire Fort Bragg. Several scavengers have located parts of Pre-Rifts manufacture in old ruins, and while most of them looked as if they had been stored there Pre-Cataclysm, one scavenger knew for a fact that the bunker had been cleared by his father over sixty years before. Examination of lots of the parts have shown that while they bear all the proper markings and manufacturing marks, as well as original packaging, certain discrepencies have shown up in those components. The largest ones is that the superconductor accelleration systems were manufactured in a gravity environment by the use of advanced manufacturing centrifuges to simulate a Zero-G environment. The hyperalloy for the chassis also use several materials that are found in North America, where Pre-Cataclysm systems used an element only found in Central Africa that was not as high performance but much cheaper and freely available. Companies that produced flechette ammunition for the Boom Gun did so either by careful manufacturing, Pre-Cataclysm computer nano-forges or 3D Printers, or by using a scavenged RG-14A4C ammuntiion hopper. More than a few Legacy Glitterboy Pilots used "The Ammo Machine" in the barn of their homestead, completely unaware it was the Emergency Ammunition Fabricator Unit taken from the M-14A4A and set up as a standalone system.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:36
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That's it. That's the writeups I did for the Rifts official books. The Glitterboy and the Boom-Gun gave me loving fits. I'd barely started the entries when my login got disabled due to using two different computers on the forum at the same time. Maybe I'll finish the writeups soon. Hopefully that wasn't too big of an infodump.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:38
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For a second I thought I was in the cat piss thread
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Sep 28, 2014 10:53
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50 Foot Ant you are doing the Lord's work.
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Sep 28, 2014 12:48
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Good god. I saw seventy-some new posts and thought something spectacularly awful had happened to the Robotech miniatures game, or KS had finally completed his metamorphosis into an alien intelligence.
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Sep 28, 2014 14:42
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Bieeardo posted:Good god. I saw seventy-some new posts and thought something spectacularly awful had happened to the Robotech miniatures game, or KS had finally completed his metamorphosis into an alien intelligence. I thought Kevin had burned the place down to stop creditors getting their hands on his stuff
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Sep 28, 2014 14:51
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72 poops do not a masterpiece make, holy poo poo on high.
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Sep 28, 2014 15:15
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NTRabbit posted:I thought Kevin had burned the place down to stop creditors getting their hands on his stuff what now?
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Sep 28, 2014 15:21
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50 Foot Ant posted:Hopefully that wasn't too big of an infodump. Rather than dumping it in individual posts, it would really up help to put it in a single or several documents off of dropbox or the like so people can download it, and the thread is less spammed. Have you ever submitting anything to The Rifter? Because if you're writing this much Rifts material, you really ought to. I'm glad to see you kicking up dust in the thread but 
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Sep 29, 2014 04:20
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Yeah, I should have either consolidated it a lot, or just put it in a document. Naw, I've never submitted to the Rifter. I've thought about it, but never really got around to it. Just... laaaazy
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Sep 29, 2014 12:00
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