Rifts Mercenaries and the giggle factor...

[SolCannibal]

the daemonix did hold up to their end, except for the part where they cost tolkeen pretty much every single ally they had (not that they had a lot) the one time they were actually deployed into a fight.

I can see your point but wouldn't put the blame for that problem squarely in the Daemonix's shoulders (i was going to say lap, but with their morphology i not really most have that). For starters because it's fair to say from the text sources in the box that what got Tolkeen in that situation in the first place was Creed and his council's refusal to relocate Tolkeen - when that was a quite viable option for them almost up to the tragic end - along jingoistic and agressive stance toward the Coalition, going to the point of making an actual declaration of war first. That seemed clear even in pieces of 1st person fluff like Erin Tarn's final plea with Creed, so it relates to issues higher and farther than the decision to use the Daemonix.

That's really not a viable option, you don't just relocate an entire city that took generations to build up and all that population to some random location that unless it's in another dimension or other planet you're just going to have to fight or more again when the CS expands that far as they're quite clear about intending to conquer the entire planet and kill all non-humans and mages. They did what you expect from your leaders, acted to defend their people and the lands that belonged to them.

Unless you have the magical resources and infrastructure to do so - and it was implied in books, or at least in Erin's dialogue with Creed, the Council had the resources to dimensionally shift the cities behind their barrier to another locale or dimension. I wouldn't even consider such an option if something along those lines wasn't in the books already from what i remember.

if the daemonix led tolkeen to believe that they could be trusted to not engage in traditional demon behaviours, and then did not follow through on that promise, then yes, they screwed over tolkeen.

as i said, this is not unexpected. if you're not a complete and utter moron of epic proportions, you probably saw that coming miles away, and were indeed shocked that it took so long for it to become an issue.

but just because anyone with half a brain could have told you the daemonix were inevitably going to do that, doesn't mean the daemonix didn't deceive the people in tolkeen. tolkeen should have known better, yes, but it doesn't change the fact of their betrayal, it just means they were really really really stupid to not have been expecting it.

Wait, wait you're telling me the Daemonix screwed over and betrayed Tolkeen because by being more loyal and obedient minions than such demonic creatures usually are, they mislead the Council about its own capacity to manage an army of monsters?

Sorry, but i don't really see the Daemonix trying to trick the Tolkeenites on anything like that, specially when they hate most other demonic races and would be much happier without them along in "their" fight, not to mention that with Tolkeen's defeat they lost their main source of much valued magic-wielding bling and any repairs.

also, it's possible for a spellcaster to draw on the PPE of other people. so it didn't have to go to waste at all. granted, 30% of it would be unavailable to the shifter that called them, but 70% of it could have simply been used by their summoner to provide buff spells as required (since that person is a spellcaster and is required to be present to give them orders anyways, after all).

Daemonix already have "cannons". if you want them to deal a bit more damage at longer range, mass-produce some fire globes a few days in advance using all their PPE, and invest a few credits into a large burlap sack. if you're feeling really enthusiastic about spending resources towards improving them, you can even use ironwood spells to make MDC wooden armour and/or shields for them. you could *even* go so far as to provide them with talismans of useful damaging spells (just as one example, a level 8 caster - which i am confident tolkeen has - could grant sorcerous fury in a talisman, which provides a 2d4x10 bolt with a range of 2400 feet, and an extra 400 MDC, lasting 8 minutes - more than long enough to reach melee range if you're berserk enough to just charge, which sorcerous fury pretty much guarantees).

Spend some effort to make your cannon fodder important enough to shoot? sure. makes sense. but magic has an abundance of dirt-cheap solutions that require little or no time or resources for that. why would you spend hundreds or thousands of man-hours plus hundreds of thousands of credits worth of gemstones to do it? those resources were very poorly spent. just imagine the devices those techno-wizards could have developed instead. or heck, they could have just used the technology on humans who are actually loyal and trustworthy, and who have the judgment to make good use of the abilities you could potentially grant with TW bionics. something that would *actually* fit well for guerilla warfare, rather than a 20 foot tall demon who is rejected by other demons for being too stupid. someone that you can train to be useful for either guerilla warfare or conventional warfare. someone who doesn't look at your other citizens and fantasize about torturing them.

magic is amazing at turning nothing into something, if you have the knowledge. there's no need to spend a whole of something to create not much of something.

All those things there i agree with you - exploiting the PPE reserves of Daemonix to give ranged attacks and make them into even more effective behemoths is pretty valid on itself, as it fully equates them with mechas and armored vehicles, but the TW solution does not seem like the most cost-efficient way to do so in terms of time and resources to me either. Just having a saddle or howdah (or a water-proof cabin, as Daemonix can spend a bunch of time underwater) for a spellcaster commanding the damn thing would probably offer maximum versatility for mininum cost but risks the caster dying with the monster and even in Tolkeen magicians are a limited (and valued) national resource, so equipping them with stuff like fire globes and talismans with select spells would be more practical, not to mention it would liberate any shifters & other magicians to summon different critters in other fronts if need be, while the Daemonix were guided by soldiers or officers.

That said, these same PPE reserves mean the Daemonix can pack around high-powered TW ordnance that would be otherwise impratical outside of a ley line or nexus for most creatures of magic lesser than (some) greater demons or adult dragons (who can be just as unruly and hard to command and deal with in their own ways), what has value on itself. Overall i would say that unlike Brodkill, Gargoyles and lesser demons in general, Daemonix best tactical use is not as super-grunts but as living armored vehicles, fighting, transporting troops and heavy magical artillery in place of things like their costly in time and resources magical mecha, for example or transporting AND powering those devices techno-wizards could have developed instead of the canon implants, as you mentioned.

[Shark_Force]

the daemonix didn't lie to tolkeen by (maybe, we don't have details on how much they were even used before the sorcerer's revenge - it's possible and even likely they acted like that before, just it was not as noticeable because it was more out of sight and therefore out of mind) not acting like demons. they lied to tolkeen by ever agreeing to follow orders in the first place (which is part of the pact they make with shifters when summoned and such), and by making the implication that they were ever really allies in the first place.

additionally, you can't give the daemonix orders unless the guy who summoned (and controls) them is present. so while sending the spellcaster with them (though i don't know why you have this fixation on turning them into a vehicle, since most spellcasters already own one anyways) does risk the caster... but the caster has to be sent with them in the first place. that risk happens either way. you do your best to protect the caster, you do the bare minimum to make the minions more threatening (because that also makes them harder to control), and you invest the bare minimum into the troops you're hoping will die in the process of drawing enemy fire towards themselves. when the time comes to "release the hounds" so to speak, the spellcaster doesn't have to go join the battle or anything. he can sit back while invisible and protected like crazy (he can even use PPE from the daemonix to protect himself) and let the daemonix charge in. but you need him there to give that order in the first place, whether or not he participates in the battle or even stays anywhere near the battle.

you don't make your expendable troops cost a ridiculous amount of resources. seriously, what daemonix TW enhancement is there that gives them a better weapon than sorcerous fury? any buff spells can just be cast on them by someone else (again, remembering that you already have to send the spellcaster along anyways) making use of their PPE to cast essential buffs (if any). what's more, in addition to the tendency of supernatural creatures to underestimate mortals in the first place, you can make them literally not care about survival at the same time as you make them hard to kill and capable of dishing out plenty of damage.

anything a TW-enhanced daemonix can offer could have been done as good or better without investing any resources that aren't extremely renewable, and then spending those same non-renewable resources on any number of other areas.

(my personal choice would have been research on TW scroll printing presses and TW talisman wood lathes, as well as a few choice designs like TW realm of chaos landmines, but YMMV. well, rather, my first choice would have been finding a way to make tolkeen not vulnerable to a bunch of guys walking up and kicking in the door, which tactic tolkeen did a pretty awful job of defending against, but after that was done - perhaps by a TW wall of defense dome that has unlimited MDC and can only be bypassed with teleportation and such, for example - then start working on other useful projects, even projects that are less valuable than the ones i suggested but more similar to the daemonix TW enhancement program, such as empowering loyal minor and major psychics with TW bionics).

[grandmaster z0b]

In regards to the OP and original discussion: RUE describes CS hand grenades as "about the size of a peach".
Grenade damage is also inconsistent: a CS rifle grenade is 2d6 MD but the NG Super Laser Pistol grenade does 4d6 in RUE (did 2d6 in RMB). CWC have rifle style micro-fusion grenades that do 6d6 but they never seemed to use that technology to make a hand grenade with more damage. Wellington Industries in Rifts: Mercenaries have armor piercing grenades that do 1d4x10 shot by the WI-GL4 and WI-GL20. Rifts: Mercenaries also has NG grenades that do less than CS ones (4d6 for plasma when CS plasmas did 5d6 back in those days, 2d4 for frags when CS frags did 2d6) however somehow their rifle grenades did 4d6 - how does their rifle grenade do the same damage as their biggest hand grenade?

[SolCannibal]

the daemonix didn't lie to tolkeen by (maybe, we don't have details on how much they were even used before the sorcerer's revenge - it's possible and even likely they acted like that before, just it was not as noticeable because it was more out of sight and therefore out of mind) not acting like demons. they lied to tolkeen by ever agreeing to follow orders in the first place (which is part of the pact they make with shifters when summoned and such), and by making the implication that they were ever really allies in the first place.

They agreed to fight along with Tolkeen against the Coalition forces in exchange for their freedom from the hellhole they had been imprisoned into for millenia.
That they sure did. They might have failed to follow precise orders and strayed to torture and devour straggling or moribund deadboys, but can't say they were any worse than lots of other summoned monsters on that, not to mention they are following orders in the glimpse we do get of them, with the deadboys saved by cyber-knights during the Sorcerer's Revenge. Damn, demons are unruly by nature and Tolkeen failed to keep even their mortal forces coherent and focused in the death blow. The disaster of their "blitzkrieg" goes far beyond anything related to the Daemonix per se.

additionally, you can't give the daemonix orders unless the guy who summoned (and controls) them is present. so while sending the spellcaster with them (though i don't know why you have this fixation on turning them into a vehicle, since most spellcasters already own one anyways) does risk the caster... but the caster has to be sent with them in the first place. that risk happens either way. you do your best to protect the caster, you do the bare minimum to make the minions more threatening (because that also makes them harder to control), and you invest the bare minimum into the troops you're hoping will die in the process of drawing enemy fire towards themselves. when the time comes to "release the hounds" so to speak, the spellcaster doesn't have to go join the battle or anything. he can sit back while invisible and protected like crazy (he can even use PPE from the daemonix to protect himself) and let the daemonix charge in. but you need him there to give that order in the first place, whether or not he participates in the battle or even stays anywhere near the battle.

On the vehicle thing, no big deal just a bad wargaming habit - "mutant dinossaur with laser cannon equals tank", quick and dirty adaptations for reference, nothing special. From a practical standpoint it's simply because bringing your heavy guns in a big MDC monster will probably cost you less in time and resources than making a whole tank or giant robot from scratch if you have a surplus of big MDC monsters. The Beast Tank in pages 72-73 of Final Siege shows i'm far from the only one withat kind of ideas, for good or for ill.

Good points indeed, i'll admit i don't have a head for all the details on summoning and commanding monsters or how close or not may caster be to make use of the PPE reserves of their servants. What i was trying to get at was the possibility that Tolkeen might have tried to experiment with another arrangement, maybe to have their most powerful practicioners of magic free and available instead of busy with "monster-wrangling" as even in Tolkeen many people are not spellcasters. Just a theory anyways.

you don't make your expendable troops cost a ridiculous amount of resources. seriously, what daemonix TW enhancement is there that gives them a better weapon than sorcerous fury? any buff spells can just be cast on them by someone else (again, remembering that you already have to send the spellcaster along anyways) making use of their PPE to cast essential buffs (if any). what's more, in addition to the tendency of supernatural creatures to underestimate mortals in the first place, you can make them literally not care about survival at the same time as you make them hard to kill and capable of dishing out plenty of damage.

Can't argue with that.

anything a TW-enhanced daemonix can offer could have been done as good or better without investing any resources that aren't extremely renewable, and then spending those same non-renewable resources on any number of other areas.

(my personal choice would have been research on TW scroll printing presses and TW talisman wood lathes, as well as a few choice designs like TW realm of chaos landmines, but YMMV. well, rather, my first choice would have been finding a way to make tolkeen not vulnerable to a bunch of guys walking up and kicking in the door, which tactic tolkeen did a pretty awful job of defending against, but after that was done - perhaps by a TW wall of defense dome that has unlimited MDC and can only be bypassed with teleportation and such, for example - then start working on other useful projects, even projects that are less valuable than the ones i suggested but more similar to the daemonix TW enhancement program, such as empowering loyal minor and major psychics with TW bionics).

Two things:
1) The whole "let's give TW-bling to monsters to make them more compliant in the long run" apparently wasn't a Daemonix-only thing, if the Threno Bat-Things, Wind Water Sail-Ray and Craaphery Demon Snake in Final Siege serve as indication.

2) While i agree with you the examples we get in the books don't really help much, i think the point with the TW implants wasn't so much enhancing the Daemonix but the contrary - Daemonix enhancing high-powered TW devices as mobile platforms/batteries that fight back. Their PPE totals are equal or better than those of most greater demons.

[Shark_Force]

"not worse than what other people did" doesn't make it something other than what it is. no, they aren't the only ones who likely violated orders or twisted the meaning to suit themselves at every opportunity. but that *still* doesn't mean they didn't do it, and it still definitely doesn't mean it was a good idea to spend a lot of resources on enhancing them.

if you want to provide lots of PPE to people for use with TW devices, the energy sphere spell is perfect for this. it lasts quite a while, it has very good capacity, better than almost any greater demon if you cast it at a decent level of strength I would say, it costs no permanent resources whatsoever, and you don't even need any sort of special casting; you can just create the sphere full of PPE and hand it off to anyone who has at least one shoulder. it wouldn't be terribly subtle, but then, neither are 20 foot tall demons, so that's a wash, too.

[SolCannibal]

"not worse than what other people did" doesn't make it something other than what it is. no, they aren't the only ones who likely violated orders or twisted the meaning to suit themselves at every opportunity. but that *still* doesn't mean they didn't do it, and it still definitely doesn't mean it was a good idea to spend a lot of resources on enhancing them.

As much as enhancing a bunch of other beings in their forces, like the Threno - and certainly no "great betrayal", specially in account of some of their own officers doing the same atrocities in the same battle, when not actually ordering them to do so. If the Daemonix betrayed Tolkeen, the Tolkeenites troops betrayed themselves just as much with their mind-boggling indiscipline and desertion during the occasion.

if you want to provide lots of PPE to people for use with TW devices, the energy sphere spell is perfect for this. it lasts quite a while, it has very good capacity, better than almost any greater demon if you cast it at a decent level of strength I would say, it costs no permanent resources whatsoever, and you don't even need any sort of special casting; you can just create the sphere full of PPE and hand it off to anyone who has at least one shoulder. it wouldn't be terribly subtle, but then, neither are 20 foot tall demons, so that's a wash, too.

True that, the sphere won't fight for you but does not get ornery or homicidal either, not to mention quite portable.
Question, in what books does it appear beside the Book of Magic?

[Shark_Force]

apart from book of magic, energy sphere can be found in the unrevised federation of magic book. if your copy (should you have one) doesn't have like 20-30 pages of spells, then you have the revised version, which instead has more information about... dweomer, i think? places in the federation of magic, in any event.

also "we wasted resources on other soldiers" is still not a compelling argument for "we should waste resources on these soldiers", nor is "other people betrayed us" a compelling argument for "it's ok that these guys also betrayed us".

yes, tolkeen made lots of stupid decisions. they weren't limited to one specific area. but that doesn't make the stupid decisions they made in one specific area any less stupid.

also, a lot of the desertion came from 2 things:

1) a lot of people thought the war was done.

2) a lot of people were disgusted by the allies tolkeen had made.

bear in mind, tolkeen didn't actually have a lot of soldiers; they had some soldiers, and a lot of people who showed up because they thought tolkeen was being wrongfully invaded by the CS. those people that "deserted" were most of them mercenaries and people who voluntarily fought for tolkeen of their own free will, very few of the people involved were actually in any sort of formal military on tolkeen's side. it's not really desertion if you were never actually required to be there in the first place.

[everloss]

although rifts is a little screwy in that you don't need anti-tank weaponry to reliably damage tanks (alternately, another way of looking at it is that even a laser pistol is pretty much anti-tank weaponry, and everyone is pretty much just using anti-tank weaponry that can deal with bigger or smaller tanks).

I don't think I'd want to just have a laser pistol if I were facing even an Iron Maiden APC. Or a Demon-Skull. Or a Juggernaut. Or pretty much any tank in Rifts. 2D6 damage per shot against something that has 350-1000 MDC and fires back up to 1000 MD back at me? No thanks.

[everloss]

Yes, that's why I started in here asking what KC was basing this on because I thought he might have run across something I missed since I knew the physical fatigue wasn't all that clear and my first thought that I knew there were rules for it was because of the 'Resist Fatigue' power.

Daniel Stoker

For physical fatigue, here's what I can find offhand:
RUE 317
Swimming
After noting the speed of a skilled swimmer: This pace can be maintained for a total of minutes equal to his PE attribute number before starting to feel fatigued.
Further down: The act of swimming on the surface of the water has the same fatigue rate as running and medium to heavy exertion, especially at great speed or for very long periods of time.

The indication there is that running and other forms of "medium exertion" can be maintained for PE Minutes before fatigue starts to set in.
Which, if one measures fatigue solely by what the books say, means that an average (PE 10) person wouldn't feel any more fatigue walking up stairs than in taking an elevator, unless one is walking up stairs for 10+ minutes.

Page 9 of the RMB has the effects of fatigue. It is literally the page after rolling attributes.

[everloss]

*Smirks bemusedly in Battletech's direction* Heh...they have entire 28 man platoons fitting into vehicles the size of Bradleys!

Ah, I always bite at a Battletech tangent. I love that game, and it has a lot of serious huh??? moments, however, I gotta take issue with this: Battletech NEVER lists actual dimensions for vehicles. Just tonnage. So you can't actually say that a 28 man platoon fits into a 6 man IFV. They rarely even have comparisons to humans, unless you count minis, which are never actually to scale. The Locust Mini (20 tons) was almost the same size as the Atlas (100 tons). Which is ridiculous. But there are a LOT of ridiculous things in Battletech (like how all guided missiles are actually unguided Estes model rockets).

/tangent

[Shark_Force]

although rifts is a little screwy in that you don't need anti-tank weaponry to reliably damage tanks (alternately, another way of looking at it is that even a laser pistol is pretty much anti-tank weaponry, and everyone is pretty much just using anti-tank weaponry that can deal with bigger or smaller tanks).

I don't think I'd want to just have a laser pistol if I were facing even an Iron Maiden APC. Or a Demon-Skull. Or a Juggernaut. Or pretty much any tank in Rifts. 2D6 damage per shot against something that has 350-1000 MDC and fires back up to 1000 MD back at me? No thanks.

it's a matter of perspective.

for the credit cost of one tank, you can buy a *lot* of lasers.

that tank may seem like it has a lot of MDC, but if you get a squad of 10 infantry together, they'll probably have ~1,000 MDC and deal 3d6x10 or better damage on average (as a group), and cost less in resources (how much they cost in training and salary vs maintenance cost of a tank and training/salary of the crew is not quite so easy to calculate, especially since most likely training costs are not consistent between training organizations and certainly training levels won't be). but seriously, if you think about it, let's say a tank costs 4 million credits (pretty danged cheap for a tank in rifts), and you're comparing vs a 10-man squad of infantry. each squad member can have 400,000 credits in equipment and your costs in terms of gear is the same... more likely, though, you'll invest less in equipment (you can get a pretty solid armour + energy rifle combination for well less than 200k credits, including some spare e-clips, and spend the remaining money on other things. probably including an e-clip charger, if you can).

just to put a bit more specifics behind that, consider for example:

a suit of crusader EBA has 95 MDC main body and costs 55,000 credits.
a wilk's 447 laser rifle deals 3d6 MD per shot and costs 18,000 credits with respectable range.

that's for some fairly basic equipment, and i'd say you've got pretty good odds with that equipment of taking out most rifts tanks (of course, that all depends... if you're tightly packed and the tank sends a missile barrage, and you can't shoot down the missiles, you're pretty screwed...)

furthermore, given that allowance of 200k per soldier, that leaves plenty of room for equipping the squad as a whole with more specialized gear... including plenty of various explosive devices, and potentially even weapons that can fire mini-missiles (or, at the very least, some very scary full-auto grenade launchers).

if you want to go *really* nuts and spend an equal amount on equipment, the JA-12 laser rifle is a traditional favourite (it will likely outrange many rifts tanks, though RL tanks would vastly outrange it). various naruni weapons are likely to outperform, but not necessarily by enough to be worth the CS harassment. spend another 90k credits on chipwell challenger armour (technically a power armour, so should also benefit from power armour skills and such), and you've still got 60k to kit them out with specialized weapons like wellington industries SAWS weapons (including potentially about 1 long-range missile launcher per 2 people in the squad), or even 3 per squad equipped with an automatic grenade launcher (and that's in addition to standard weapons; if you're replacing that JA-12, you can manage 5 of those grenade launchers in a squad, and that's way more devastating than most tanks could ever dream of being).

let me spend 400k per soldier instead of keeping half of it back for investing elsewhere (probably towards repairs, which are cheaper than repairing the tank btw, and e-clip recharges), and i can do even scarier things

[Alrik Vas]

If every soldier has NE Heavy Infantry body armor with integrated force fields and grav packs, each rocking heavy weapons, you essentially have a platoon of guys who would about equal a heavy hovertank or two, sure.

at that point though we're talking about guys with 200 MDC body armor, 150 MDC force fields and weapons that range from 1d6x10 to 4d6x10. So with enough funds you can turn every 3 man team into a hovertank that has less range and ammunition, but the advantage of being harder to hit. ...but the cost per soldier is pretty extreme at that point.

[glitterboy2098]

*Smirks bemusedly in Battletech's direction* Heh...they have entire 28 man platoons fitting into vehicles the size of Bradleys!

Ah, I always bite at a Battletech tangent. I love that game, and it has a lot of serious huh??? moments, however, I gotta take issue with this: Battletech NEVER lists actual dimensions for vehicles. Just tonnage. So you can't actually say that a 28 man platoon fits into a 6 man IFV. They rarely even have comparisons to humans, unless you count minis, which are never actually to scale. The Locust Mini (20 tons) was almost the same size as the Atlas (100 tons). Which is ridiculous. But there are a LOT of ridiculous things in Battletech (like how all guided missiles are actually unguided Estes model rockets).

/tangent

and going by size of the figures and in the novels (which are canon), they have 28 man platoons fitting into tanks the size of mine trucks. all their vehicles are about 6-7 times bigger than real world tanks of the same mass. all battletech's technology tends to be fairly bulky for its mass.

and the mechs are not supposed to be smaller than assualts.. not by much anyway. but what they are is spindlier. assualts just fit lots more stuff onto the same rough frame, with a lot more reinforcement to the structure.
in battletech, assualt mechs literally are just 'big boned'..

[Shark_Force]

If every soldier has NE Heavy Infantry body armor with integrated force fields and grav packs, each rocking heavy weapons, you essentially have a platoon of guys who would about equal a heavy hovertank or two, sure.

at that point though we're talking about guys with 200 MDC body armor, 150 MDC force fields and weapons that range from 1d6x10 to 4d6x10. So with enough funds you can turn every 3 man team into a hovertank that has less range and ammunition, but the advantage of being harder to hit. ...but the cost per soldier is pretty extreme at that point.

eh, no. I just listed a very simple set up, that for 140k credits apiece gives each soldier 120 MDC and 1d6x10 + 10 damage (with a triple pulse) at a range of 4,000 feet (which is pretty comparable to most tanks), and a secondary grenade fire mode albeit with less range and less damage (although it can hit multiple targets, of course).

that's not even close to breaking the bank. there are also a number of inexpensive options to add heavier damage, including the ability to use mini-missiles, for relatively small costs - you could literally give each person a 6-shot mini-missile launcher (range of 1 mile), some spare ammo for both the gun and the launcher, and still come in at under 200k credits each. I can literally field a squad of 10 infantry for less than the cost of one tank. i can also mix it up a bit and focus more resources on specific soldiers. if mobility is an issue, outfitting the squad with 1-2 mountaineers to carry the troops (and their gear) is even an option, and probably allows for faster travel than the tank, plus the infantry can get out and walk if needed (if i really wanted, i could probably supply them all with jetpacks and still have a 10-man squad that still costs less than a single tank).

it isn't exactly cheap to outfit a squad at 140k per soldier, but it's still cheaper than fielding tanks.

[Alrik Vas]

Yeah, but pit a squad of each vs the same opponent, like a CS armored platoon and which really does the better job?

I'm going with the tanks.

[SolCannibal]

Yeah, but pit a squad of each vs the same opponent, like a CS armored platoon and which really does the better job?

I'm going with the tanks.

If i'm getting it right, Shark_Force's point seems to be that you could pay for one platoon of heavy power armor per armored tank of the opponent, so they would have considerable advantage in numbers. And that throwing a platoon of heavy power armor troops against a MD tank is not the suicide that throwing an unsupported infantry unit upon a tank could be, among other things because every MD weapon counts as anti-armor at some level.

At least that's what i understood overall, he can certainly correct me if i got any of it wrong.

[Shark_Force]

err... no, not quite.

my point is that you *can* throw unsupported infantry at those tanks and expect to win. the "power armour" I proposed was definitely not, by any means, heavy. it is in fact almost the cheapest piece of junk power armour money can buy (chipwell has an even cheaper and crappier power armour as well, but I wouldn't suggest using it against MDC threats). in fact, the power armour I mentioned is more like a heavy body armour, the main 2 advantages being that it grants the wearer a fairly respectable PS score (so they can carry and use heavier weapons), and being power armour it technically lets the wearer qualify for robot combat skills, which grants even more actions. it isn't necessary to use that, however.

the equation isn't massively changed if we go right back to the original armour I suggested, which has 90 MDC and is a standard, common design that isn't even attached to any one company it's so widely produced by everyone.

my point is that for the cost of one tank (not a group of tanks, just one individual tank), you can buy one or more squads of infantry, with some sort of vehicle provided for mobility along roads and such, and a whole lot of reloads and repairs for said squad(s) of infantry, and that the infantry is fully capable of wrecking that tank. you can extend that out as far as you like; if you're going to buy 4 tanks, I can probably afford to field 40-80 infantry or even more (plus vehicles to carry supplies, e-clip recharges, etc), which will collectively have more actions, more MDC, and more damage than your tanks, while still likely having equal range to most rifts tanks (the setup I proposed has energy weapons with a range of 4,000 feet, with options for missile launchers or grenade launchers, depending on whether your preference leans towards massive range (additional radar required) or devastating AOE damage).

in rifts, infantry are amazing. their weapons *individually* may not be tank-destroyers, but each alone is capable of inflicting damage and when used in large numbers, will destroy tanks. the reason modern tanks are immune to small arms fire isn't that they can take a lot of hits from small arms... it's that they can essentially take a near-infinite number of hits from small arms and keep on rolling without any meaningful damage being inflicted by small arms (which is not to suggest that modern infantry is incapable of damaging tanks... but they don't do it with their regular weapons, they have to use explosives and rockets and stuff like that).

[Alrik Vas]

That's beside the point. I am aware of how rifts us designed in the respect of a hero with a gun vs a faceless mook in power armor or a tank. I'm comparing them, not against each other directly, but rather against the same challenge to see who would handle it better.

[Shark_Force]

unless the challenge specifically involves having a tank, most likely the infantry will do as well or better assuming similar amounts of money are spent on each of them. even if you limit it to the same amount of people, that just means i'll spend more on each infantryman to get better results.

for whatever reason, in rifts earth, tanks (as well as most robot vehicles) rarely have guns or armour noticeably superior to what you can get for infantry (and almost never better than what you can get for power armour).

[Alrik Vas]

Now I'm curious if you even CAN spend enough money on 10 guys, while limiting things to body armor and personal weapons, than you would on a single Naruni Juggernaught.

I mean, I'm sure you can just buy several tons of materiel and leave it somewhere else, but i mean could they carry that much cred worth of gear into battle? The issue might not even be capability, but rather that insane cost difference between the two.

Of course, I still think in the end that the tank is worthwhile for the single attack damage it's capable of. Maybe we'll have to do an actual breakdown of cost comparison.

[Shark_Force]

single attack damage from a tank is only relevant if, for some reason, all 10 guys could not attack. sure, they might need to spend 10 actions collectively to get as much damage. but since all 10 attacks happen in the same amount of time as the tank makes 1 attack, it's not really all that different.

but yeah, the 10 man assumption includes an assumption that you're spending money on some logistical concerns as well, like an e-clip recharger in a simple vehicle that can move around with them (like a mountaineer).

also, it is entirely possible to spend a lot of money on arming people with "extras". the group I listed at 140k apiece (plus e-clips), for example, doesn't have any heavy weapons with them. those cost extra, and in some cases can be fairly expensive... but generally speaking still not as much as the more expensive tanks, even if you give each of them a heavy weapon.

also, that comes back to where I occasionally mentioned "one or more" groups of 10 people.

obviously, this becomes somewhat less relevant if you only have 2-3 people, but even then, I suspect 2-3 guys with Samson power armour will compare quite favourably to most tanks