So we finally started our game and.....

[grandmaster z0b]

In regards to your original post, combat can feel like a grind but there is a few things you can do to help.

Firstly I have a document that has most of the combat modifiers in one place to help me. I would put it up but mine has a lot of house rules so that won't necessarily help. I'm fairly sure others have similar things floating around.

Secondly to avoid MDC grind do the following: at low levels make sure the enemies are wearing already damaged armor, which makes sense in this world. Why would everyone be walking around in brand new armor? If they are fighting monsters and stuff feel free to cut the total MDC in half or to whatever you feel is appropriate. The fights will go quicker and people are more likely to run away sooner.

Also remember the players will get better at working out how to quickly deal with threats. Grenades, explosives and other area of effect weapons help. For the ley line walker the spells Magic Net and Carpet of Adhesion are your best friend. Magic Net can end combat very quickly and Carpet of Adhesion is great to trap your opponents whilst the party runs away or finds cover, or better yet combine that with some explosives whilst they are stuck! Other options are aim for the head- it has less MDC or aim for the weapon etc.

The MDC grind can also be solved by getting much better weapons- this is where I think a lot of people get confused. They think of other games where 6d6 is a lot of damage but don't realise in Rifts even 1st level things often have over 100 MDC. After a couple of levels grab an NG-P7 (a standard gun from the original book) that does 1d4x10 per shot or the Wilks 457 from Sourcebook One that does 1d6x10 per pulse burst.

At the start of the campaign I'm running people were actually really worried that I was "power gaming" by giving them what they thought were powerful weapons at levels 2 and 3, however they were used to D&D. After that I was able to throw enemies at them without being scared that combat would slow to a crawl.

Lastly I don't 100% agree with your take on psychic powers although I do agree there's some overlap in general and psychic powers could do with a rework. If the character is a psi-tech you're probably thinking about Telemechanics, Telemechanic Possession, Machine Ghost etc. The original edition just had Telemechanics which made a lot more sense, I'm not sure why they then introduced more powers that seemed to overlap. However in general I think psychic powers are pretty well done and quite interesting.

[ShadowLogan]

Having to flip thru the books and then calculate all the bonuses is fairly intense and time consuming. It's something I as a GM do enjoy doing for creating good villains, but having to do it for every common encounters looks like it's going to be a chore.

Just remember that you can re-use characters, so you could simply roll up a few generic villian flunkies (they don't even need to be complete) and re-use them multiple times (even for the same encounter) so in the near term you have an investment in time, but long term it is possible to save on it.

The combat starts fun but the hitpoint grind just drags it down after 2 to 3 hours straight. The last fight I actually ended it prematurely just because it was getting so late.

Yeah it can turn into a grind fest if you aren't careful, but it also depends on a variety of factors that can be controlled by you (the GM), not just the players ability to do damage.

You could have a GM NPC(s) w/the party who can soften up the enemy somewhat, or a group of travelling NPCs who join in (weather they stay w/the PCs...). You could also give them a vehicle w/some firepower if you feel they need to drastically increase their damage out put for encounters in general or specific.

Mage and Psychics are going to be more powerful on Ley Lines and/or Nexus Points so moving the encounter to one such location can also help with their damage output. However IINM aspects have changed/omitted between RMB and RUE.

Make the HP threat more manageable so that you aren't there for hours. This means a bit of tailoring to what the Party can handle/do and might take a bit to workout. I don't know what the HP threat looked like in the game, but depending on the Armor/Weapons/vehicles of the party vs the threat, you may have caused the situation w/o realizing it.

Don't forget the Monster/Villain doesn't have to fight to the death, it could flee due to injury or other factors. They might also attract/call in for help themselves, requiring the PCs to flee as the situation gets out of their ability to deal with (if the party insists on trying to take on the new arrivals...).

Some can be vulnerable to certain materials. Its been de-emphasized in general (there are still specific instances I believe like Vampires and Werewolves), but in the Rifts Main Book (original, not Ultimate Edition) there was a Random Monster Table, complete with weakness, that would do double damage (a potential way to increase damage output).

The environment can be used against the villain/monster, but it can also be used against the PCs. Cave-ins/landslides/falling walls/trees (damage and possibly pin), "conveniently" placed barrels of (explosive, acid, encasement, etc) material, wires to get tangled up in, etc. Options the PCs can use need to be mentioned that might be useful. If the PCs don't think to use it that's fine, but if they do use it should reward them with XP for clever ideas and such. The more detailed the environment description is the more the PCs have to work with, you may want to consider using Perception Checks to determine what's in the environment.

[Proseksword]

Skelebots have 150 MDC, so that means you'll need to land somewhere between 10-14 hits with some of the weaker MDC weapons/spells to finish one off. With 3 1st Lvl PCs vs 3 Skelebots that's around 4 rounds, assuming you just shoot constantly and never bother to dodge. Good use of AoE weapons might speed that up considerably, but you're party would probably have been better off trying to disable them by targeting the eyes, head, and limbs and then finishing them off at leisure rather than plowing through their torso MDC.

Unfortunately, all three of the classes your players have picked don't particularly deal out a lot of damage at Lvl 1. Ley Line Walkers typically can't deal a lot of damage until they can start casting spells of level 6 or higher. They're typically much better at disabling, crippling, distracting, or avoiding hostilities than they are at directly dealing damage.

The Cyber-Knight turns into a tech-slaughtering monster at later levels but is basically a merc soldier that rolled psychic powers with a psychic vibro-knife equivalent at level 1.

Not sure how you have your Psi-Tech kitted out, but if its using the standard equipment, then your party is seriously lacking in the damage-dealing department.

My suggestion is that either you give them some weaker opponents until they gain a couple of levels, or just house-rule that all attacks deal the maximum possible damage for their die-roll. Bashing down 450+ MDC is a tall order for a party with no real heavy-hitters to speak of.

I'd also suggest that when you write your encounters, you should consider there are outcomes other than "every enemy is reduced to 0 MDC" that can be considered a victory. Did your players really need to destroy all the Skelebots? If they had simply blinded them, could they not have escaped and effectively eliminated their ability to continue their mission? Could they have simply trapped them with carpet of adhesion, then destroyed their legs? Could they have tricked them to go elsewhere? Been captured and reprogrammed to serve the Psi-Tech? There are a lot of other possible outcomes that would have been just as positive for the players, if not more so, but which wouldn't require them to dig through all that armor.

[DhAkael]

Are you doing combat as 'book-canon'? re; round robin initiatives (1 action per Pc, and then going round & round & round till init count done). If so, then yeah... it WILL take a long-bassed time to resolve combat.
One way to speed things up marginally, is to have each character resolve all their actions on their intiative count, but allow for "reserved" actions at the end of the count down.

Yes yes yes, I've heard all the brown nosers in here say that "but it's more realistic if you only get one action at a time" or "It's no fair to those who only have 3-4 actions watching as the higher init counts rack up the kills!!!"
It's not about racking up kills.
So what if the juicer wipes up the floor with the first wave of mooks... those who are NOT combat oriented can go and deal with other things; like disarming that nuke in the corner, or closing that dimensional gate before ANOTHER Balrog steps onto the dance floor.

But hey, it's your game. If you want to spend 2 real-world hours to resolve 30 seconds of in-game combat, go nuts.
Me? I'd rather have the combat flow and get to the real part of the game; the story and PC interactions / plot resolution.

Each GM and game group has to figure out what works and what doesn't for their own style of play.

Addendum; I hear ya on the problem of no pre-set monster / mook stats and combat bonuses. That is by far the largest failing of the system. I have over 30 pages of just raw pre-set stats for the more common "encounters" I've had to type out and print (@ 9 point font size in TW Cent MT). I feel for ya.

[Mack]

Along with the other suggestions presented, keep in mind that very few opponents should be willing to fight to the death. Even the Skelebots might* have a subroutine that says it's better to escape and report the encounter rather than be pointlessly destroyed. While Skelebots are not intelligent per se, they are not lemmings either.

* I say might, as in you (the GM) might consider using this to save a valuable hour of gameplay.

And I have to footstomp something grandmaster z0b said: That Wizard should not use any damage spells. Her real strength is in disabling opponents.

[runebeo]

If you really want to speed up combat have a second GM the main Gm does the story part and the controls main enemies in grid combat and the second helps if the battle is too large, but mainly in-charge of playing character's minions, robots, npcs like squires, support troops, animals, riding beasts. Combat really speeds up and the Second GM can have a blast.

[Bill]

Or just knock an order of magnitude off the MDC of everything. Don't adjust the damage, just the damage capacity. Combat will get a lot more serious a lot faster.