South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

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South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by flatline »

Inspired by the ATL-7 thread, I pulled SA 1 & 2 off the shelf and worked through them the last couple of evenings after the kids were in bed. There are definitely things in those books that I would tweak or outright replace before running the setting, but in my opinion, it is the best designed and implemented setting on Rifts Earth.

There are things I don't like, but I can easily fix those without having to re-balance and re-write the entire setting (like I would have to do with North America). Removing the over-hyped prose about the Megaversal Legion and turning them into a more conventional alien power on Rifts Earth is easily done and doesn't ruin the balance of powers already established. Tweaks to the Archons to replace the Tri-beam with something a bit less goofy would help, too.

I know that a lot of people look at the stats and immediately write off all the rest of what's in the books. But that's stupid since stats are the absolutely easiest thing for the GM to adjust. However, I would like to point out that if you're not comparing stats to other settings and look at South America in isolation, the stats work and are well balanced. And, perhaps more importantly, every bit of equipment presented adds flavor to the setting (unlike North America where there are dozens of laser rifles that are totally generic).

The SA books are more idea dense than any other world books I can think of. Too bad they got such a bad rap.

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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Svartalf »

Yep, I'mm a big fan of South America too... I just like Carella's work I suspect...
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by flatline »

Hmm...looking at my shelf, it does turn out that I like all the Carella books I have. Probably means I should pick up the others he wrote.

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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

There's a lot of good stuff in the SA books, there's just also a lot of stuff I don't like.
First and foremost, there's the Mega-Cliches: Conquistador power armor, Amazons on the Amazon river, and so forth.
Then there's the stuff that's just kinda goofy (super-powered cat city).
Add in the power level and such, and I haven't gotten much use out of the books overall.

Although I thought that the variety of factions and their interconnections were pretty strong.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by flatline »

Killer Cyborg wrote:Although I thought that the variety of factions and their interconnections were pretty strong.


This is what I feel is missing from North America. The relationships between factions is superficial at best and the variety is lacking.

South America got it right.

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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

flatline wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:Although I thought that the variety of factions and their interconnections were pretty strong.


This is what I feel is missing from North America. The relationships between factions is superficial at best and the variety is lacking.

South America got it right.

--flatline


I can agree on that point.
Later books in North America tried to replicate the feel by listing how factions felt about each other, but not often enough, and too late in the game to make things feel as cohesive as they should.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by glitterboy2098 »

Killer Cyborg wrote:There's a lot of good stuff in the SA books, there's just also a lot of stuff I don't like.
First and foremost, there's the Mega-Cliches: Conquistador power armor, Amazons on the Amazon river, and so forth.
Then there's the stuff that's just kinda goofy (super-powered cat city).
Add in the power level and such, and I haven't gotten much use out of the books overall.

Although I thought that the variety of factions and their interconnections were pretty strong.



and a lot of the goofy stuff can be fixed by a GM just by de-emphasising it. conquistidor armor? art is only psuedo-canon, have it be a bit more ironman like or something. amazons on the amazon? the city is in a dimensional pocket.. you can shift the location around some. or just never call them amazons in game. super powered cat city? have the gods in question just be their religion, not physical inhabitants. and give them stone age or at best sdc medieval tech when they aren't using gear bought from other sources. etc.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

glitterboy2098 wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:There's a lot of good stuff in the SA books, there's just also a lot of stuff I don't like.
First and foremost, there's the Mega-Cliches: Conquistador power armor, Amazons on the Amazon river, and so forth.
Then there's the stuff that's just kinda goofy (super-powered cat city).
Add in the power level and such, and I haven't gotten much use out of the books overall.

Although I thought that the variety of factions and their interconnections were pretty strong.


and a lot of the goofy stuff can be fixed by a GM just by de-emphasising it. conquistidor armor? art is only psuedo-canon, have it be a bit more ironman like or something. amazons on the amazon? the city is in a dimensional pocket.. you can shift the location around some. or just never call them amazons in game. super powered cat city? have the gods in question just be their religion, not physical inhabitants. and give them stone age or at best sdc medieval tech when they aren't using gear bought from other sources. etc.


The ability of GMs to fix problems on their own does not mean that there aren't problems.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Nightmask »

glitterboy2098 wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:There's a lot of good stuff in the SA books, there's just also a lot of stuff I don't like.
First and foremost, there's the Mega-Cliches: Conquistador power armor, Amazons on the Amazon river, and so forth.
Then there's the stuff that's just kinda goofy (super-powered cat city).
Add in the power level and such, and I haven't gotten much use out of the books overall.

Although I thought that the variety of factions and their interconnections were pretty strong.



and a lot of the goofy stuff can be fixed by a GM just by de-emphasising it. conquistidor armor? art is only psuedo-canon, have it be a bit more ironman like or something. amazons on the amazon? the city is in a dimensional pocket.. you can shift the location around some. or just never call them amazons in game. super powered cat city? have the gods in question just be their religion, not physical inhabitants. and give them stone age or at best sdc medieval tech when they aren't using gear bought from other sources. etc.


What would be the point of sticking the cat city at stone age technology levels? A good chunk of the founders of the city were anthro cats created using Golden Age genetics technology and at least some were educated about it, there's no reason for them to be reduced to stone age technology.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by glitterboy2098 »

Nightmask wrote:
glitterboy2098 wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:There's a lot of good stuff in the SA books, there's just also a lot of stuff I don't like.
First and foremost, there's the Mega-Cliches: Conquistador power armor, Amazons on the Amazon river, and so forth.
Then there's the stuff that's just kinda goofy (super-powered cat city).
Add in the power level and such, and I haven't gotten much use out of the books overall.

Although I thought that the variety of factions and their interconnections were pretty strong.



and a lot of the goofy stuff can be fixed by a GM just by de-emphasising it. conquistidor armor? art is only psuedo-canon, have it be a bit more ironman like or something. amazons on the amazon? the city is in a dimensional pocket.. you can shift the location around some. or just never call them amazons in game. super powered cat city? have the gods in question just be their religion, not physical inhabitants. and give them stone age or at best sdc medieval tech when they aren't using gear bought from other sources. etc.


What would be the point of sticking the cat city at stone age technology levels? A good chunk of the founders of the city were anthro cats created using Golden Age genetics technology and at least some were educated about it, there's no reason for them to be reduced to stone age technology.

they were lab animals for test, received little to no education, left the lab suddenly, had no industrial infrastructure to start with, and went out into the empty jungle.

you can't build a technological infrastructure out of dirt and vines.. no matter how many gilligan's islands episodes you watch.

and if you remove the direct divine intervention, none of the groups involved in the city have any way top make technology in general, much less advanced tech. they even lack to the tools to make the tools to make the tools..


edit: don't forget.. stone age does not automatically mean 'cavemen hunter gather'.. the mayans, aztecs, anasazi, and most of the rest of the 500 nations of native americans in the america's were stone age level technology... they had little to no metalworking. yet they produced some amazing civilizations and wonders.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Tor »

flatline wrote:Inspired by the ATL-7 thread

There are at least a couple of these, pretty hard to search for since they didn't include that exact initialism...
2007 "Anti-Tank" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=68451
2012 "ATL7" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=129955

Is there one more recent than these?

flatline wrote:There are things I don't like, but I can easily fix those without having to re-balance and re-write the entire setting (like I would have to do with North America).

Like removing the ability of Archons to carry multiple LRMs on small power armor? :) Flying Titans in RMB could carry shorts, I would be okay with Archons carrying mediums on PA, but LRMs seem like an advantage to keep for their bots and larger ships.

flatline wrote:Removing the over-hyped prose about the Megaversal Legion and turning them into a more conventional alien power on Rifts Earth is easily done and doesn't ruin the balance of powers already established.

I always figured those guys would have run into that merc company in DB3 and merged with them, seem to share similar attitudes.

flatline wrote:Tweaks to the Archons to replace the Tri-beam with something a bit less goofy would help, too.
What's goofy about them?

Killer Cyborg wrote:Mega-Cliches: Conquistador power armor, Amazons on the Amazon river

Yes but this is Rifts. No worse than Spirit West, really.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by flatline »

Tor wrote:
flatline wrote:Inspired by the ATL-7 thread

There are at least a couple of these, pretty hard to search for since they didn't include that exact initialism...
2007 "Anti-Tank" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=68451
2012 "ATL7" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=129955

Is there one more recent than these?


"ATL-7" was recently locked. It's probably still on the first page of the Rifts forum.

flatline wrote:Tweaks to the Archons to replace the Tri-beam with something a bit less goofy would help, too.
What's goofy about them?


The physicist in me cringes at the idea of a "plasma beam" by itself. But a "plasma beam" and particle beam that twist around each other and do additional damage because of some kind of synergy between the two makes me nauseous. A particle beam is so much more energy dense than a plasma that any damage done by the plasma would be totally ignorable compared to the damage done by the particle beam. And a plasma that is traveling fast enough to keep up with a particle beam is no longer a plasma, but is a particle beam itself. And it would take energy to make the two beams spiral around each other.

So it's stupid on like 4 different levels.
1. "plasma beam" by itself
2. "plasma beam" as fast as particle beam but isn't a particle beam
3. combination of plasma + particle beam does significantly more damage than particle beam
4. beams spiral around each other.

Just plain stupid.

--flatline
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

I ignore the specifics with the Tri-Beams, and just go with the effects, and the "three types of energy" without specifying what kinds or how they interact.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

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flatline wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:Although I thought that the variety of factions and their interconnections were pretty strong.


This is what I feel is missing from North America. The relationships between factions is superficial at best and the variety is lacking.

South America got it right.

--flatline


The problem with the factions in North America is that unless they are evil they don't really get along imo. Stubborn to a stupid degree and equally as untrusting. Despite their alignements. With the evil factions being presented as incredilbly cohesive and organized. All because of having a strong leader. Strongly independent as well to a suicidal degree as well. At least in the SA books their is some distrust yet some relationships as well.

Personally despite the obvious cliches I like the SA books. The damage values suddenly made sense. Want to charge that tank with your 35 mdc body armor and 1D6 pistol. Good luck chances are their is nothing left of your character. As it should have been from the start. As well I have not seen a similar enthusiasm in writing that was in the earlier book in the later books. The style makes me want to play the rpg. The later books not so much imo.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Tor »

flatline wrote:"ATL-7" was recently locked. It's probably still on the first page of the Rifts forum.

Ah viewtopic.php?f=8&t=147108 got it, feeling dumb and forgetful now. No idea why that didn't come up in a search. Only 6 days old, perhaps threads have to reach a certain age (week plus?) before the engine can search them?

flatline wrote:The physicist in me cringes at the idea of a "plasma beam" by itself. But a "plasma beam" and particle beam that twist around each other and do additional damage because of some kind of synergy between the two makes me nauseous.

Isn't that what the third or fourth beam is for, a kind of MacGuffiam?

I'm not totally clear on the number... we're told an "invisible" ionizing-laser fires first... but then you see THREE beams... so if the first laser is not visible, that means of the 3 visible beams 1 is plasma and the other 2 are... undefined?

flatline wrote:A particle beam is so much more energy dense than a plasma that any damage done by the plasma would be totally ignorable compared to the damage done by the particle beam.
Perhaps it is a question of quantity? Like the plasma beam is huge and thick and the particle beam is really narrow? So the PB superiority is countered by being in a small quantity?

flatline wrote:a plasma that is traveling fast enough to keep up with a particle beam is no longer a plasma, but is a particle beam itself. And it would take energy to make the two beams spiral around each other.

Perhaps the MacGufferific ionizing-laser is what speeds up the plasma relative to the rest of the environment and slows down the charged particles relative to external environment but they fit their definitions within the sub-environment of ion stream created by the vague-laser? The spiraling effect might had to do with some weird spatial-bending effect of the ionized space created by the unique Archon ionic-laser?
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Subjugator »

flatline wrote:The physicist in me cringes at the idea of a "plasma beam" by itself.


It's not so bad, really. It could be a colloquial description of the equivalent of a 'beam' of water...a big tube of the stuff pouring out and splashing all over the target. The problem that I see with it is that it'd have to somehow contain the stuff to do it.

But a "plasma beam" and particle beam that twist around each other and do additional damage because of some kind of synergy between the two makes me nauseous.


Yeah, that's a problem.

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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Subjugator »

flatline wrote:
Tor wrote:
flatline wrote:Inspired by the ATL-7 thread

There are at least a couple of these, pretty hard to search for since they didn't include that exact initialism...
2007 "Anti-Tank" http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/v ... =8&t=68451
2012 "ATL7" http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/v ... 8&t=129955

Is there one more recent than these?


"ATL-7" was recently locked. It's probably still on the first page of the Rifts forum.

flatline wrote:Tweaks to the Archons to replace the Tri-beam with something a bit less goofy would help, too.
What's goofy about them?


The physicist in me cringes at the idea of a "plasma beam" by itself. But a "plasma beam" and particle beam that twist around each other and do additional damage because of some kind of synergy between the two makes me nauseous. A particle beam is so much more energy dense than a plasma that any damage done by the plasma would be totally ignorable compared to the damage done by the particle beam. And a plasma that is traveling fast enough to keep up with a particle beam is no longer a plasma, but is a particle beam itself. And it would take energy to make the two beams spiral around each other.

So it's stupid on like 4 different levels.
1. "plasma beam" by itself
2. "plasma beam" as fast as particle beam but isn't a particle beam
3. combination of plasma + particle beam does significantly more damage than particle beam
4. beams spiral around each other.

Just plain stupid.

--flatline


It would seem that someone is trying to figure out a way to do a plasma p-beam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_acceleration

/Sub
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by flatline »

Subjugator wrote:
flatline wrote:
Tor wrote:
flatline wrote:Inspired by the ATL-7 thread

There are at least a couple of these, pretty hard to search for since they didn't include that exact initialism...
2007 "Anti-Tank" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=68451
2012 "ATL7" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=129955

Is there one more recent than these?


"ATL-7" was recently locked. It's probably still on the first page of the Rifts forum.

flatline wrote:Tweaks to the Archons to replace the Tri-beam with something a bit less goofy would help, too.
What's goofy about them?


The physicist in me cringes at the idea of a "plasma beam" by itself. But a "plasma beam" and particle beam that twist around each other and do additional damage because of some kind of synergy between the two makes me nauseous. A particle beam is so much more energy dense than a plasma that any damage done by the plasma would be totally ignorable compared to the damage done by the particle beam. And a plasma that is traveling fast enough to keep up with a particle beam is no longer a plasma, but is a particle beam itself. And it would take energy to make the two beams spiral around each other.

So it's stupid on like 4 different levels.
1. "plasma beam" by itself
2. "plasma beam" as fast as particle beam but isn't a particle beam
3. combination of plasma + particle beam does significantly more damage than particle beam
4. beams spiral around each other.

Just plain stupid.

--flatline


It would seem that someone is trying to figure out a way to do a plasma p-beam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_acceleration

/Sub


If you read the article you linked to, the plasma itself isn't accelerated but is instead used as a medium to help accelerate other particles. The hope for the technology is that it will allow us to build high energy particle accelerators much smaller than the ones we use today.

--flatline
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Subjugator »

flatline wrote:If you read the article you linked to, the plasma itself isn't accelerated but is instead used as a medium to help accelerate other particles. The hope for the technology is that it will allow us to build high energy particle accelerators much smaller than the ones we use today.

--flatline


GREAT GOD ALMIGHTY!

I just read what CONTEMPORARY particle beam weapons can do!

The pulsed particle beam emitted by such a weapon may contain 1 gigajoule of kinetic energy or more.


Assuming that this scales as have other items, the p-beam weapons in Rifts earth are grossly under-powered. This thing has around 550,000 times as much energy as a 5.56 mm round...and that's for a contemporary one!

I can just imagine the armor released for a hyper-tech particle beam weapon.

"The Northern Gun P-1400 Planetary Scale armor today! It comes at a very reasonable price of 5.5 sextillion credits! Come get yours today!"

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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Glistam »

I also greatly enjoy the South America books and the ideas presented in them. I feel they function just fine as-is for a stand alone area. Story-wise there is little opportunity for characters from South America to make their way to other places around the world and on the rare occasion they do, it's still relatively for me to handle the disparity. The power level doesn't bother me at all because there's NO reason why the Coalition or Triax should be the apex of technology on Rifts Earth. I have always felt that Kevin's remarks published in the G.M.'s guide were both unwarranted and unprofessional.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by glitterboy2098 »

Subjugator wrote:
flatline wrote:If you read the article you linked to, the plasma itself isn't accelerated but is instead used as a medium to help accelerate other particles. The hope for the technology is that it will allow us to build high energy particle accelerators much smaller than the ones we use today.

--flatline


GREAT GOD ALMIGHTY!

I just read what CONTEMPORARY particle beam weapons can do!

The pulsed particle beam emitted by such a weapon may contain 1 gigajoule of kinetic energy or more.


Assuming that this scales as have other items, the p-beam weapons in Rifts earth are grossly under-powered. This thing has around 550,000 times as much energy as a 5.56 mm round...and that's for a contemporary one!

I can just imagine the armor released for a hyper-tech particle beam weapon.

"The Northern Gun P-1400 Planetary Scale armor today! It comes at a very reasonable price of 5.5 sextillion credits! Come get yours today!"

/Sub


keep in mind, modern particle beams of that power are mostly called "Particle accelerators" and are the size of a CS state
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Razzinold »

I really like those books as well.
My first character was a Plains Borg carrying the IL-11 Codobra Long Gun.
Heck two of us were PC's from that book are first time playing.

On a side note, I always pictured the blast from the tri-beam looking like the beam of energy that is fired from a proton pack. They depict a solid red beam with blue arcing and interlacing with it and a white light enveloping parts as well.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Nightmask »

flatline wrote:The physicist in me cringes at the idea of a "plasma beam" by itself. But a "plasma beam" and particle beam that twist around each other and do additional damage because of some kind of synergy between the two makes me nauseous. A particle beam is so much more energy dense than a plasma that any damage done by the plasma would be totally ignorable compared to the damage done by the particle beam. And a plasma that is traveling fast enough to keep up with a particle beam is no longer a plasma, but is a particle beam itself. And it would take energy to make the two beams spiral around each other.

So it's stupid on like 4 different levels.
1. "plasma beam" by itself
2. "plasma beam" as fast as particle beam but isn't a particle beam
3. combination of plasma + particle beam does significantly more damage than particle beam
4. beams spiral around each other.

Just plain stupid.

--flatline


Probably would have been a good idea to have simply described it as a strange alien energy weapon and left it at that rather than try and explain it as they did (after all the Intruders energy weapons go that route, just 'strange energy weapons that can overcome normal protections against energy attacks').
Fair warning: I consider being called a munchkin a highly offensive slur and do report people when they err in doing so.

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It's 'canon', not 'cannon'. A cannon is a big gun like on pirate ships, canon is what you mean when referring to something as being contained within one of the books such as how many dice to roll for a stat.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by flatline »

Nightmask wrote:
flatline wrote:The physicist in me cringes at the idea of a "plasma beam" by itself. But a "plasma beam" and particle beam that twist around each other and do additional damage because of some kind of synergy between the two makes me nauseous. A particle beam is so much more energy dense than a plasma that any damage done by the plasma would be totally ignorable compared to the damage done by the particle beam. And a plasma that is traveling fast enough to keep up with a particle beam is no longer a plasma, but is a particle beam itself. And it would take energy to make the two beams spiral around each other.

So it's stupid on like 4 different levels.
1. "plasma beam" by itself
2. "plasma beam" as fast as particle beam but isn't a particle beam
3. combination of plasma + particle beam does significantly more damage than particle beam
4. beams spiral around each other.

Just plain stupid.

--flatline


Probably would have been a good idea to have simply described it as a strange alien energy weapon and left it at that rather than try and explain it as they did (after all the Intruders energy weapons go that route, just 'strange energy weapons that can overcome normal protections against energy attacks').


That would have worked for me. I don't really object to the stats, it's just the prose I find offensive.

That said, I would still probably tweak the stats some anyways.

--flatline
I don't care about canon answers. I'm interested in good, well-reasoned answers and, perhaps, a short discussion of how that answer is supported or contradicted by canon.

If I don't provide a book and page number, then don't assume that I'm describing canon. I'll tell you if I'm describing canon.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by eliakon »

flatline wrote:
Nightmask wrote:
flatline wrote:The physicist in me cringes at the idea of a "plasma beam" by itself. But a "plasma beam" and particle beam that twist around each other and do additional damage because of some kind of synergy between the two makes me nauseous. A particle beam is so much more energy dense than a plasma that any damage done by the plasma would be totally ignorable compared to the damage done by the particle beam. And a plasma that is traveling fast enough to keep up with a particle beam is no longer a plasma, but is a particle beam itself. And it would take energy to make the two beams spiral around each other.

So it's stupid on like 4 different levels.
1. "plasma beam" by itself
2. "plasma beam" as fast as particle beam but isn't a particle beam
3. combination of plasma + particle beam does significantly more damage than particle beam
4. beams spiral around each other.

Just plain stupid.

--flatline


Probably would have been a good idea to have simply described it as a strange alien energy weapon and left it at that rather than try and explain it as they did (after all the Intruders energy weapons go that route, just 'strange energy weapons that can overcome normal protections against energy attacks').


That would have worked for me. I don't really object to the stats, it's just the prose I find offensive.

That said, I would still probably tweak the stats some anyways.

--flatline

This weapon just joins the ranks of science challenged weapons (I-beams, particle waves, kinetic beams....)
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Nox Equites »

Well it helps to have a single author envisioning the entire continent. It needs a third installment for just Patagonia.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Zer0 Kay »

Killer Cyborg wrote:
glitterboy2098 wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:There's a lot of good stuff in the SA books, there's just also a lot of stuff I don't like.
First and foremost, there's the Mega-Cliches: Conquistador power armor, Amazons on the Amazon river, and so forth.
Then there's the stuff that's just kinda goofy (super-powered cat city).
Add in the power level and such, and I haven't gotten much use out of the books overall.

Although I thought that the variety of factions and their interconnections were pretty strong.


and a lot of the goofy stuff can be fixed by a GM just by de-emphasising it. conquistidor armor? art is only psuedo-canon, have it be a bit more ironman like or something. amazons on the amazon? the city is in a dimensional pocket.. you can shift the location around some. or just never call them amazons in game. super powered cat city? have the gods in question just be their religion, not physical inhabitants. and give them stone age or at best sdc medieval tech when they aren't using gear bought from other sources. etc.


The ability of GMs to fix problems on their own does not mean that there aren't problems.


There are just as many problems with the "main" areas never mind as many if not more stereotypes.
Warmachine weapons doing as much or less damage than small arms.
American Natives
Black Market
New West
Ogopogo
Area 51
Aberdeen testing grounds
RCMP

Seriously? When did you think Rifts wasn't about bringing old legends and stereotypes into a post apocalyptic game?

That being said Carella puts more twists into his legend/stereo/archtype development than KS did, does and likely will continue to do.

Carella's power creep spread out the damage between sidearms and heavyarms and made it so a player in armor is more likely to duck in cover when a tank comes around instead of trying to have a shootout at high noon with it and would consider getting out the heavy cumbersome cannon to kill said tank instead of using a heavy laser assault rifle.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Zer0 Kay »

As for the tri-beam at least CJ was trying to develop alternative damage types instead of laser, plasma, ion and partial beam just being, essentially a descriptor of cost, energy consumption, damage, range and weight.

I wonder if CJ thought about redoing the railguns into coilguns for most of them (fast ROF, "low" damage) and railguns for the heavy ones (low ROF, "heavy" damage).
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Zer0 Kay »

flatline wrote:
Tor wrote:
flatline wrote:Inspired by the ATL-7 thread

There are at least a couple of these, pretty hard to search for since they didn't include that exact initialism...
2007 "Anti-Tank" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=68451
2012 "ATL7" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=129955

Is there one more recent than these?


"ATL-7" was recently locked. It's probably still on the first page of the Rifts forum.

flatline wrote:Tweaks to the Archons to replace the Tri-beam with something a bit less goofy would help, too.
What's goofy about them?


The physicist in me cringes at the idea of a "plasma beam" by itself. But a "plasma beam" and particle beam that twist around each other and do additional damage because of some kind of synergy between the two makes me nauseous. A particle beam is so much more energy dense than a plasma that any damage done by the plasma would be totally ignorable compared to the damage done by the particle beam. And a plasma that is traveling fast enough to keep up with a particle beam is no longer a plasma, but is a particle beam itself. And it would take energy to make the two beams spiral around each other.

So it's stupid on like 4 different levels.
1. "plasma beam" by itself
2. "plasma beam" as fast as particle beam but isn't a particle beam
3. combination of plasma + particle beam does significantly more damage than particle beam
4. beams spiral around each other.

Just plain stupid.

--flatline


To me as stupid as calling what should be coilgun with low accuracy, rapid rates of fire, railguns and not excluding the term railguns to the heavy, single shell firing, monsters OR making no difference in the way each energy weapon does damage, with small special effects or even critical vs. X differences on damage.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by flatline »

Zer0 Kay wrote:
flatline wrote:
Tor wrote:
flatline wrote:Inspired by the ATL-7 thread

There are at least a couple of these, pretty hard to search for since they didn't include that exact initialism...
2007 "Anti-Tank" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=68451
2012 "ATL7" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=129955

Is there one more recent than these?


"ATL-7" was recently locked. It's probably still on the first page of the Rifts forum.

flatline wrote:Tweaks to the Archons to replace the Tri-beam with something a bit less goofy would help, too.
What's goofy about them?


The physicist in me cringes at the idea of a "plasma beam" by itself. But a "plasma beam" and particle beam that twist around each other and do additional damage because of some kind of synergy between the two makes me nauseous. A particle beam is so much more energy dense than a plasma that any damage done by the plasma would be totally ignorable compared to the damage done by the particle beam. And a plasma that is traveling fast enough to keep up with a particle beam is no longer a plasma, but is a particle beam itself. And it would take energy to make the two beams spiral around each other.

So it's stupid on like 4 different levels.
1. "plasma beam" by itself
2. "plasma beam" as fast as particle beam but isn't a particle beam
3. combination of plasma + particle beam does significantly more damage than particle beam
4. beams spiral around each other.

Just plain stupid.

--flatline


To me as stupid as calling what should be coilgun with low accuracy, rapid rates of fire, railguns and not excluding the term railguns to the heavy, single shell firing, monsters OR making no difference in the way each energy weapon does damage, with small special effects or even critical vs. X differences on damage.


You'll get no argument from me on that.

--flatline
I don't care about canon answers. I'm interested in good, well-reasoned answers and, perhaps, a short discussion of how that answer is supported or contradicted by canon.

If I don't provide a book and page number, then don't assume that I'm describing canon. I'll tell you if I'm describing canon.
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Re: South America 1 & 2: best setting on Rifts Earth!

Unread post by Zer0 Kay »

flatline wrote:
Zer0 Kay wrote:
flatline wrote:
Tor wrote:
flatline wrote:Inspired by the ATL-7 thread

There are at least a couple of these, pretty hard to search for since they didn't include that exact initialism...
2007 "Anti-Tank" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=68451
2012 "ATL7" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=129955

Is there one more recent than these?


"ATL-7" was recently locked. It's probably still on the first page of the Rifts forum.

flatline wrote:Tweaks to the Archons to replace the Tri-beam with something a bit less goofy would help, too.
What's goofy about them?


The physicist in me cringes at the idea of a "plasma beam" by itself. But a "plasma beam" and particle beam that twist around each other and do additional damage because of some kind of synergy between the two makes me nauseous. A particle beam is so much more energy dense than a plasma that any damage done by the plasma would be totally ignorable compared to the damage done by the particle beam. And a plasma that is traveling fast enough to keep up with a particle beam is no longer a plasma, but is a particle beam itself. And it would take energy to make the two beams spiral around each other.

So it's stupid on like 4 different levels.
1. "plasma beam" by itself
2. "plasma beam" as fast as particle beam but isn't a particle beam
3. combination of plasma + particle beam does significantly more damage than particle beam
4. beams spiral around each other.

Just plain stupid.

--flatline


To me as stupid as calling what should be coilgun with low accuracy, rapid rates of fire, railguns and not excluding the term railguns to the heavy, single shell firing, monsters OR making no difference in the way each energy weapon does damage, with small special effects or even critical vs. X differences on damage.


You'll get no argument from me on that.

--flatline


wow mot even my use of x as a variable ;)
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