Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

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Pepsi Jedi
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Pepsi Jedi »

eliakon wrote:
Pepsi Jedi wrote:
eliakon wrote:
I would remind you of your collage days then
When you make a claim, it is YOUR burden of proof to support it.


1) You're not my professor. You can't give me a grade.
2) You're not my boss. You don't pay me.
3) You're an annonimous person on the internet that doesn't like me. Your opinion means slightly ever so slightly more than 'nothing'.

Now. I don't say number three to be mean. Just to have a base to make the next point.

I don't work for you. Especially not for free. My time is worth more to me. If you want me to do scut work, you'll need to pay me, because your opinion, doesn't motivate me enough to do so. :)

I see that you don't get how discussions work
While you like to just make wild claims all day and then demand that people prove you wrong the way Logic works is that you have to support your own claims.
The fact that you refuse to do so suggests that the claim is false


Pepsi Jedi wrote:
eliakon wrote:
Especially when you make a wild assertion that no one else believes.


Unfounded statement. Two or three annon people on the internet may not believe me. This doesn't mean it's not true, nor is it my job to educate you. If you'd like to pay me for my time, I'd be willing to though. On a contractor sort of basis. You still wouldn't be my 'boss' but you could lease my time for the purposes of education, should you meet the price. :)

Since not a single person here seems to believe that 1 in 4 people is a murderer waiting for the rule of law to fail, yeah it is a wild claim.


Pepsi Jedi wrote:
eliakon wrote:
You can either cite a source for your claim, or you can with draw your claim, or you can accept that everyone is going to believe that you are making stuff up.


It's not 'everyone'. It's you. I'm ok with you not believing me. Your opinion, again, only matters slightly less than nothing. In that it may prove intresting, only in context as to what any stranger thinks MAY be interesting, even if they're wrong.

Or perhaps its just that I like actually having discussions with people instead of just having them make wild claims that they then demand that I prove false.
I do that enough with kids, not with people that claim to be educated adults.


Pepsi Jedi wrote:
eliakon wrote:
It is not the duty of other people to research YOUR EVIDENCE FOR YOU to find out if you are lying or not.


You claim I'm lieing. Prove it.

Oh wait, you don't want to do work for free? Ahhh... I see where you're coming from. Still you're the one that's claiming it's a lie. Prove it.

Nah, I don't have to prove your lying. I just HAVE though proved that your claim is unfounded, unsupported and thus specious.
Which means that the rest of the adults in the conversation can go on with the real discussion using the actual citied examples that demonstrate that humanity is not a pack of murderers looking for a place to happen.


Pepsi Jedi wrote:
eliakon wrote:
It is your job to be able to support your own claim.


Nope because 1) you're not paying me. 2) I'm not seeking a grade from you for a degree. 3) You're not a person who's opnion matters highly to me. and 4) I don't work for you in any way.

It's not my job to do anything for you. Believe me or not. That's up to you

I should correct myself then
If you want people to BELIEVE you it is.
You can say anything you like sure. But it has no credibility in the slightest when you are unwilling and unable to support it.

When you claim "Oh trust me, your all wrong, I am right so I win the argument" and your "evidence" is that you say so...
Well, egotistical is a nice word for it. Logic has a whole series of fallacies for it as well.


Pepsi Jedi wrote:
eliakon wrote:
This is why, when someone here makes a claim about the game, THEY have to back it up, they can't just say "I'm right duh, look it up"


Most don't. That or they claim it's in a book and when you look it up you find they've lied or ommited things. I do this often. I'd say almost every week I check people's 'cited sources' on these boards and prove them wrong. Did it just this week two or three times with the claims that those tattoo dragons were native to earth and red giants were native to earth and neither were proben to be true. I do so alot. People don't expect others to have every book and actually check their sources.

I could spend time to cite sources but in that aspect, I choose not to. Not because I can't, but because it's too much like work. lol

I can check palladium books quick and prove people wrong. Doing so with real world things takes more time and effort. I choose not to expend my effort for free.
in short, proving I'm correct in terms of RPGs is easy and amusing.

Doing so for RL things would take effort and work and wouldn't be amusing. So unless I'm getting paid I don't waste time doing it.

Should you wish to make arrangements to pay me for my time. I would be more than happy to do so, but I'm guessing not.

For the record, if I did cite my sources. I doubt you'd believe them anyway, so I'm unsure why you would want me to, other than to waste my time. Something I choose not to do with out compensation. :ok:

Nah, I will just consider you a proven liar actually.
Since you have made specific, identifiable claims, claims that you say are true, and that you as an expert in the field can verify. But then you refuse to back up those claims, with any evidence, and are un able or unwilling to verify your supposed expertise.
Thus I will call BS on the entire claim.
You can feel free to support your wild claims if you like though. I would be most amused to see it, since in none of my classes on psychology, abnormal or normal, suggested that there was anything like the claim you are making.
Indeed the number I heard was that sociopathy such as you are describing is considered extremely rare on the order of one in thousands or tens of thousands. Especially considering that by your reasoning there should be literally hundreds of millions of murders every year which is easily verified as false.


Your entire post is meant to try and goad me into doing work you don't want to do for yourself, to waste my time in an effort to 'prove' something you won't believe even once it's proven to you.

As for your final claim though, that sociopaths are rare on the order of one in thousands or tens of of thousands. I can point you to a few places
2005 book 'The sociopath next door' by psychologist Martha Stout, estimates 4% of the US population are sociopaths. Which would be.. 4 people out of 100. Or 1 out of every 25 people. Not one in thousands or tens of thousands. Infact, with the population of 320,000,000 this would put the number of sociopaths at what.. almost 13,000,000. Yes.. thirteen million sociopaths in the US alone?

If that won't do you, you could check out the book written by a confessed sociopath M.E Thomas, "Confessions of a Sociopath"

You could check "The Psychopath test" by Jon Ronson

If you want other interesting reads you can look into the study on 'successful sociopaths', where in you'll find that many corporate leaders and even leaders of state clearly fall into the category. You might check out Stephnie Mullins-Sweatt

Get back to me once you've read all that, if you'd like more. That should keep you occupied for a little bit though and some of them are interesting reads.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Daniel Stoker »

Axelmania wrote:The titular princess protagonist Star Buttery in "Star vs the Forces of Evil" serves as a really great example of this dichotomy between the good intentions one can have behind one's actions versus whether in a sightlines going back centuries if you are the defender or aggressor.


I didn't expect to come across a link between anything here and Star vs the Forces of Evil.... and nicely done too. :ok:


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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by HWalsh »

Pepsi Jedi wrote:Your entire post is meant to try and goad me into doing work you don't want to do for yourself, to waste my time in an effort to 'prove' something you won't believe even once it's proven to you.

As for your final claim though, that sociopaths are rare on the order of one in thousands or tens of of thousands. I can point you to a few places
2005 book 'The sociopath next door' by psychologist Martha Stout, estimates 4% of the US population are sociopaths. Which would be.. 4 people out of 100. Or 1 out of every 25 people. Not one in thousands or tens of thousands. Infact, with the population of 320,000,000 this would put the number of sociopaths at what.. almost 13,000,000. Yes.. thirteen million sociopaths in the US alone?

If that won't do you, you could check out the book written by a confessed sociopath M.E Thomas, "Confessions of a Sociopath"

You could check "The Psychopath test" by Jon Ronson

If you want other interesting reads you can look into the study on 'successful sociopaths', where in you'll find that many corporate leaders and even leaders of state clearly fall into the category. You might check out Stephnie Mullins-Sweatt

Get back to me once you've read all that, if you'd like more. That should keep you occupied for a little bit though and some of them are interesting reads.


I don't need to read all of that, because I can google book titles too.

The odd thing is that the term "sociopath" isn't actually used by professionals anymore. So references to them doesn't really fly as the term, by professionals, has been converted into antisocial personality disorder.

See the term sociopath was a bit too broad as there are varying degrees of ASPD. One of the common myths regarding people who have ASPD is that they are all dangerous, which is why the term sociopath fell out of favor. It had negative connotations that carried an image of a psychopath or a serial killer. So, I mean, the book references you gave are fairly decent, but you really should brush up on your ICD and DSM terminology a bit.

I'm not saying that your claims to your education are not true, but when speaking to people who may, or may not, have some degree of experience it helps to be clear and concise. Also, it again, is a bit odd that you would use the term sociopath to denote people who are capable, and likely, to engage in that kind of behavior when that is exactly why the term fell out of use.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Shark_Force »

HWalsh wrote:The xits at about 1.2 billion mean 6 armies of 200,000,000 but a huge percentage of that aren't warriors. Probably less than 50% so while it is a lot the Xits aren't a threat to the CS.

9,000,000 they can pop out instantly.
There are also millions of Skelebots.


uhhh.... are you quite sure you're not misplacing a couple of 0s or something?

i mean, when i said the xits aren't *quite* as bad of a threat as their raw numbers might suggest, i did immediately note that they were still a very serious threat, and i really meant it.

you, on the other hand, seem to think 9 million to 100 million (plus having to still deal with another 1 million that, while not primarily combatants, are not exactly terrible at it either), and then do that 5 more times afterwards, is a trivial task...

now, don't get me wrong. i fully expect an army of competent soldiers all equipped with ranged weapons and lead by competent generals (which, given the siege on tolkeen, is not at all guaranteed) will punch above their weight class compared to an army which is only partially equipped with ranged weapons and is frankly kinda gullible.

but no matter how you slice it, that's a lot of bugs to kill. if the CS was legitimately gearing up to declare all-out war on the bugs, instead of random tiny city-states and individual d-bees, i would totally support their state of panic, because just looking at those numbers should give anyone not on the bug side of the equation a lot of restless nights.

my problem is that so far, they've done a lot less protecting of anything and a lot more murdering, and their preferred method of murdering appears to involve sending as many unskilled untrained bullet sponges at the enemy as possible until eventually they bury their enemies under a pile of their own corpses (so much for protecting humanity, they're probably directly responsible for more human deaths in the past few years than most other causes in the past few decades).
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by HWalsh »

Shark_Force wrote:
HWalsh wrote:The xits at about 1.2 billion mean 6 armies of 200,000,000 but a huge percentage of that aren't warriors. Probably less than 50% so while it is a lot the Xits aren't a threat to the CS.

9,000,000 they can pop out instantly.
There are also millions of Skelebots.


uhhh.... are you quite sure you're not misplacing a couple of 0s or something?

i mean, when i said the xits aren't *quite* as bad of a threat as their raw numbers might suggest, i did immediately note that they were still a very serious threat, and i really meant it.

you, on the other hand, seem to think 9 million to 100 million (plus having to still deal with another 1 million that, while not primarily combatants, are not exactly terrible at it either), and then do that 5 more times afterwards, is a trivial task...

now, don't get me wrong. i fully expect an army of competent soldiers all equipped with ranged weapons and lead by competent generals (which, given the siege on tolkeen, is not at all guaranteed) will punch above their weight class compared to an army which is only partially equipped with ranged weapons and is frankly kinda gullible.

but no matter how you slice it, that's a lot of bugs to kill. if the CS was legitimately gearing up to declare all-out war on the bugs, instead of random tiny city-states and individual d-bees, i would totally support their state of panic, because just looking at those numbers should give anyone not on the bug side of the equation a lot of restless nights.

my problem is that so far, they've done a lot less protecting of anything and a lot more murdering, and their preferred method of murdering appears to involve sending as many unskilled untrained bullet sponges at the enemy as possible until eventually they bury their enemies under a pile of their own corpses (so much for protecting humanity, they're probably directly responsible for more human deaths in the past few years than most other causes in the past few decades).


That depends.

A smaller force can hold a larger force off for a considerable period of time.

There was a famous case in English history where 7 people held off 135 attackers for months until the 135 gave up.

So, If we go on the assumption that there is a 200,000,000 army vs a 27,000,000 person army, if the smaller army were entrenched rather than expanding, that isn't even 4:1 odds.

And yes the CS could easily field 27,000,000 units. 9,000,000 humans/dog boys/psi-stalkers and then 18,000,000 skelebots. Based on how the Xits work, they'd have to enter the hive, get themselves declared as the target. Fall back to a fortified position, then unload. Staggering in a fallback strategy. Utilizing range. This would likely whittle down the Xit numbers especially since they don't really have ranged combat capabilities. Under that situation, based on the information present in the Xit Invasion the CS could wipe out the hive with minimal losses until the time came to invade the hive.

Invading the hive would be the hardest part as Lazlo has access to magic and has a much more solid plan on how to do that. The CS could also, however, mass produce their Xit hunters and send them in. If the CS could produce 200,000 of them and send them into the hive, that would weaken it even further thus increasing chance of success tremendously.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

HWalsh wrote:And yes the CS could easily field 27,000,000 units. 9,000,000 humans/dog boys/psi-stalkers and then 18,000,000 skelebots.
...The CS could also, however, mass produce their Xit hunters and send them in. If the CS could produce 200,000 of them and send them into the hive, that would weaken it even further thus increasing chance of success tremendously.


Sounds like you're just pulling numbers out of thin air.
Got a source for any of that?
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Shark_Force »

that 7 vs 135 scenario can't be that famous, some quick googling isn't finding anything about it. care to narrow it down?

also, i rather suspect the 7 would have lost had the 135 just decided to suck up their losses and attack. the xiticix can be tricked into doing some stupid things, but they're never going to suffer a morale failure and hesitate to attack an enemy for fear of casualties.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by HWalsh »

Killer Cyborg wrote:
HWalsh wrote:And yes the CS could easily field 27,000,000 units. 9,000,000 humans/dog boys/psi-stalkers and then 18,000,000 skelebots.
...The CS could also, however, mass produce their Xit hunters and send them in. If the CS could produce 200,000 of them and send them into the hive, that would weaken it even further thus increasing chance of success tremendously.


Sounds like you're just pulling numbers out of thin air.
Got a source for any of that?


Nope, just an extrapolation based on how fast the Skelebot numbers jumped previously and on how much they have produced before. 18,000,000 is a small number based on how fast they produce larger, more complex, and more costly machines. Heck the fact that, if I remember right, an example squad in SoT was: 4 Humans, 1 Psi-Stalker, 4 Dogboys, and 6 Skelebots shows that they have them in tremendously large numbers. Especially since they left thousands of them in each Skelebot graveyards specifically for the purposes of indiscriminate killing.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

HWalsh wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:
HWalsh wrote:And yes the CS could easily field 27,000,000 units. 9,000,000 humans/dog boys/psi-stalkers and then 18,000,000 skelebots.
...The CS could also, however, mass produce their Xit hunters and send them in. If the CS could produce 200,000 of them and send them into the hive, that would weaken it even further thus increasing chance of success tremendously.


Sounds like you're just pulling numbers out of thin air.
Got a source for any of that?


Nope, just an extrapolation based on how fast the Skelebot numbers jumped previously and on how much they have produced before. 18,000,000 is a small number based on how fast they produce larger, more complex, and more costly machines. Heck the fact that, if I remember right, an example squad in SoT was: 4 Humans, 1 Psi-Stalker, 4 Dogboys, and 6 Skelebots shows that they have them in tremendously large numbers. Especially since they left thousands of them in each Skelebot graveyards specifically for the purposes of indiscriminate killing.


Show the math and the sources.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by HWalsh »

Shark_Force wrote:that 7 vs 135 scenario can't be that famous, some quick googling isn't finding anything about it. care to narrow it down?

also, i rather suspect the 7 would have lost had the 135 just decided to suck up their losses and attack. the xiticix can be tricked into doing some stupid things, but they're never going to suffer a morale failure and hesitate to attack an enemy for fear of casualties.


Corfe Castle, Dorset - The siege by parliamentary forces was defended by Lady Mary Banks and her... Wait for it... 5 guards.

Yeah, I was wrong. It was only 6 defenders.

Anyway, the initial siege began with Lady Banks and her 5 defenders holding off a force consisting of 135 men. They held on for some number of weeks before the attacking forces rallied 500-600 troops (so at this point she was literally fighting 100:1) but then 80 defenders arrived who were able to reach the castle. The final siege was around 86 vs 600. The defenders won. It is a very famous siege of historical significance.

So... Yeah. Much easier to defend then it is to attack.

This is of course the first siege the castle withstood in (I believe) 1643 - There was a second siege that later broke the castle. If I remember correctly. It has been forever since I took European History.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by HWalsh »

Killer Cyborg wrote:
HWalsh wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:
HWalsh wrote:And yes the CS could easily field 27,000,000 units. 9,000,000 humans/dog boys/psi-stalkers and then 18,000,000 skelebots.
...The CS could also, however, mass produce their Xit hunters and send them in. If the CS could produce 200,000 of them and send them into the hive, that would weaken it even further thus increasing chance of success tremendously.


Sounds like you're just pulling numbers out of thin air.
Got a source for any of that?


Nope, just an extrapolation based on how fast the Skelebot numbers jumped previously and on how much they have produced before. 18,000,000 is a small number based on how fast they produce larger, more complex, and more costly machines. Heck the fact that, if I remember right, an example squad in SoT was: 4 Humans, 1 Psi-Stalker, 4 Dogboys, and 6 Skelebots shows that they have them in tremendously large numbers. Especially since they left thousands of them in each Skelebot graveyards specifically for the purposes of indiscriminate killing.


Show the math and the sources.


Can't do so right now. Will have to crack out CWC as we figured these numbers out quite a long time ago.

Ultimately it doesn't matter, because even if I do post them all, they are still extrapolations. I mean the Coalition can produce millions of SAMAS in about a year, but can't do a mass buildup of Skelebots? Far easier to make things? We are only talking about something that is far easier to produce than SAMAS and can be mass produced. Those numbers aren't outside of the realm of reason.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

HWalsh wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:
HWalsh wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:
HWalsh wrote:And yes the CS could easily field 27,000,000 units. 9,000,000 humans/dog boys/psi-stalkers and then 18,000,000 skelebots.
...The CS could also, however, mass produce their Xit hunters and send them in. If the CS could produce 200,000 of them and send them into the hive, that would weaken it even further thus increasing chance of success tremendously.


Sounds like you're just pulling numbers out of thin air.
Got a source for any of that?


Nope, just an extrapolation based on how fast the Skelebot numbers jumped previously and on how much they have produced before. 18,000,000 is a small number based on how fast they produce larger, more complex, and more costly machines. Heck the fact that, if I remember right, an example squad in SoT was: 4 Humans, 1 Psi-Stalker, 4 Dogboys, and 6 Skelebots shows that they have them in tremendously large numbers. Especially since they left thousands of them in each Skelebot graveyards specifically for the purposes of indiscriminate killing.


Show the math and the sources.


Can't do so right now. Will have to crack out CWC as we figured these numbers out quite a long time ago.

Ultimately it doesn't matter, because even if I do post them all, they are still extrapolations. I mean the Coalition can produce millions of SAMAS in about a year, but can't do a mass buildup of Skelebots? Far easier to make things? We are only talking about something that is far easier to produce than SAMAS and can be mass produced. Those numbers aren't outside of the realm of reason.


What makes you think thT the CS can produce millions of SAMAS per year?
What makes you think that AI robots are easier to produce than mindless power armor?
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by HWalsh »

Killer Cyborg wrote:What makes you think thT the CS can produce millions of SAMAS per year?
What makes you think that AI robots are easier to produce than mindless power armor?


KC we know how many SAMAS they popped out for CWC. That growth of 2.2 million was done in something like 2 years (unless I am far wrong on the time frame) and as far as AI robots being easier to produce. They are far more fragile, far less well armed, the CS uses them as "use and forget" troops. Namely they use them, according toe SoT, as a gauge to see if there is an enemy presence using the number destroyed to determine the average size of enemies.

You don't waste troops in the thousands like that if they aren't very easy to replace.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

HWalsh wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:What makes you think thT the CS can produce millions of SAMAS per year?
What makes you think that AI robots are easier to produce than mindless power armor?


KC we know how many SAMAS they popped out for CWC. That growth of 2.2 million was done in something like 2 years (unless I am far wrong on the time frame)


I think you may well be.
What is your basis?


and as far as AI robots being easier to produce. They are far more fragile, far less well armed, the CS uses them as "use and forget" troops. Namely they use them, according toe SoT, as a gauge to see if there is an enemy presence using the number destroyed to determine the average size of enemies.

You don't waste troops in the thousands like that if they aren't very easy to replace.


"Easy" versus human lives is relative.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by HWalsh »

Killer Cyborg wrote:I think you may well be.
What is your basis?


The Coalition build-up for the "Campaign of Unity" begins in 102 PA. This is after Lady Prosek is grabbed by FoM forces.
SoT takes place beginning in 104 PA.

Thus the changeover from "Old Style" to "New Style" SAMAS had to be done after the Lady Prosek incident in 102 PA and before Chalk's Folly in 104 PA.

"Easy" versus human lives I'd relative.


Not really. If that were the case they'd use Dogboys and/or Psi-Stalkers.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Pepsi Jedi »

HWalsh wrote:
Pepsi Jedi wrote:Your entire post is meant to try and goad me into doing work you don't want to do for yourself, to waste my time in an effort to 'prove' something you won't believe even once it's proven to you.

As for your final claim though, that sociopaths are rare on the order of one in thousands or tens of of thousands. I can point you to a few places
2005 book 'The sociopath next door' by psychologist Martha Stout, estimates 4% of the US population are sociopaths. Which would be.. 4 people out of 100. Or 1 out of every 25 people. Not one in thousands or tens of thousands. Infact, with the population of 320,000,000 this would put the number of sociopaths at what.. almost 13,000,000. Yes.. thirteen million sociopaths in the US alone?

If that won't do you, you could check out the book written by a confessed sociopath M.E Thomas, "Confessions of a Sociopath"

You could check "The Psychopath test" by Jon Ronson

If you want other interesting reads you can look into the study on 'successful sociopaths', where in you'll find that many corporate leaders and even leaders of state clearly fall into the category. You might check out Stephnie Mullins-Sweatt

Get back to me once you've read all that, if you'd like more. That should keep you occupied for a little bit though and some of them are interesting reads.


I don't need to read all of that, because I can google book titles too.

The odd thing is that the term "sociopath" isn't actually used by professionals anymore. So references to them doesn't really fly as the term, by professionals, has been converted into antisocial personality disorder.

See the term sociopath was a bit too broad as there are varying degrees of ASPD. One of the common myths regarding people who have ASPD is that they are all dangerous, which is why the term sociopath fell out of favor. It had negative connotations that carried an image of a psychopath or a serial killer. So, I mean, the book references you gave are fairly decent, but you really should brush up on your ICD and DSM terminology a bit.

I'm not saying that your claims to your education are not true, but when speaking to people who may, or may not, have some degree of experience it helps to be clear and concise. Also, it again, is a bit odd that you would use the term sociopath to denote people who are capable, and likely, to engage in that kind of behavior when that is exactly why the term fell out of use.



I know the terms. I was using common parlance, as the discussion is happening on a palladium RPG board. As... most people here know the term 'sociopath'. Also I was responding to an incorrect claim about sociopaths being one in thousands or tens of thousands. Thus addressing the exact point being made.
If you look one of the studies I pointed out were about sociopaths that were nor murderers or anything but ones that get ahead in business and politics due to their behavioral tenancies.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Pepsi Jedi »

The majority of the hives are underground. Hitting the tops won't work. Nor will 'swarming' the hive underground because at some point your bodies or the bodies of those you're fighting are going to clog the tunnel and hamper egress.

No... 9,000,000 troops (Assuming they sent every troop they had forward and kept none at home, which would mean that other threats would just wipe out the CS while the armies were off at ar.) but assuming 9,000,00 vs 1,200,000,000, you're assuming that each cs grunt off the line, or any combination there of can kill a minimum of 133 Xit's.

Even if you take half the xits for 'non warrior classes' Which I do NOT think is the breakdown

Remember the Xit's all possess, 1) 340 degree field of vision 2) Polarized sight, 3) infrared and ultra violet sight 4) night vision, +2 inits, +1 strike +2 dodge. 4) They can smell twice as good as a dog boy at twice the range, they can track by sound, and detect movment, feel the vibrations of approaching vehicles, animals and such at a range of 6 miles, walking humans at 2,000 ft and flying things at 4000 feet, they can hear into the ultra sonic, and communicate through ultrasonic sound.
Their chemical 'Call to arms' even supercharges the 'Non warrior' castes giving them added combat bonuses and added attacks permelee. Some spit acid.
The Xits regen 1D6MD per 24 hours
They can adhere and stick to surfaces to climb
they're ambidextous with all their hands
They can fly with the average speed of 90
Horror factor of 10

Colony breakdown puts
36% warriors
6% hunters
5% Super warriors
4% leapers

So that's 51% of the xits are front line combatants, others can fight too but 51% have no jobs other than combat.

Remember, the combat classes Strength is SUPERNATURAL level. Not normal, not robot or agumented. Not superhuman but all the way up at Supernatural level.

And that's before you reach the young queens and stuff.

So going from 1,200,000,000 xits, for ease of math we'll call half front line combatants.

That's Six hundred MILLION front line combatants. With Supernatural strength and flight and all the other advantages I just typed out. Vs at the very most (As per newest book) 9,000,000 in the CS.

So a simple breakdown would put it at each and every member of the CS armed forces would be responsiable with killing 67 Xits of combat classes.. just to take out the front line warriors.

67 Supernaturally strong, flying bugs that can see in the dark and sense you coming from miles off, EACH.

Now... technology does help,, but 67 to 1 odds? Even if the bugs just marched forward and let the CS start blasting the front ranks (Just total moran straight walking approach) Each and every CS troop would have to kill 67 bugs EACH before they're overrun by supernatural predators that can pull their arms and legs off like THEY're flies.

And that's not counting the six hundred MILLION bugs still at home breeding more bugs at an exponential rate and who WILL FIGHT to their dyeing breaths for the hive. So in reality every CS troop in the standing army would be responsable with taking out a minimum of 133 bugs each.

And that's if no CS troopers die. For each CS troop that falls his burden of 133 bugs falls on the next guy and so on and so on.

Even if you break up into individual hives, your first battle is what 100,000,000bug combatants vs 9,000,000 CS forces? That's still 11 to 1 odds. And that's assuming every troop the CS has can be pulled from every state and every fortress city, every defended border and every base and put into the first, of 6 fights that large. It also would assume that the CS suffers no losses from the first one hundred million warrior army it fights and another 100,000,000 workwers and what not in the holes AFTER the first battle, and can still field their maximum number of troops the entire campain. An impossibility when facing 11+ to 1 odds against supernatural monsters.

Yes. I think that even by anyone's most remote possible defintion, that the bugs are a huge huge HUGE threat to the CS.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Shark_Force »

it feels weird to say this, but i mostly agree with pepsi jedi (at least, about the xiticix).

i will make one small correction though: the CS most likely has at least a million ISS troops in addition to those 9 million. why at least a million? well the army gave them 1.6 million SAMAS, and it wouldn't make much sense to issue a ridiculously larger number of SAMAS than there are people to use them. so in all likelihood, there are at least a million SAMAS-capable ISS troops (possibly as many as 1.6 million, possibly more if we assume the ISS already had a bunch of SAMAS), assuming some of those suits are kept as replacements. and really, that should be plenty to defend the CS from any plausible threat in north america other than the bugs (again, the CS has no way of knowing how many troops splynncryth actually has, even if splynncryth was remotely likely to attack north america, which he isn't - even if the CS has somehow gotten spies to the other planets splynncryth controls, there's no plausible way for them to have counted the number of troops on those planets, because that would require a planetary survey of a hostile planet with virtually no resources available to speak of).
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Pepsi Jedi »

Once you get to the point of knowing your enemy has entire 'planets worth' of back up, do you need to actually count each one? Or can it be then assumed that dude'd got a crap ton of troops and likely more than your nation which, while a large one on rifts earth, still has less population than present day California?
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by kaid »

HWalsh wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:What makes you think thT the CS can produce millions of SAMAS per year?
What makes you think that AI robots are easier to produce than mindless power armor?


KC we know how many SAMAS they popped out for CWC. That growth of 2.2 million was done in something like 2 years (unless I am far wrong on the time frame) and as far as AI robots being easier to produce. They are far more fragile, far less well armed, the CS uses them as "use and forget" troops. Namely they use them, according toe SoT, as a gauge to see if there is an enemy presence using the number destroyed to determine the average size of enemies.

You don't waste troops in the thousands like that if they aren't very easy to replace.



Yes given the resources their production lines seem pretty crazy good. We know they basically replaced the front line military gear for basically their entire army in a few years to the point they had millions of old samas in mothballs and or in use by internal security forces.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by kaid »

Pepsi Jedi wrote:The majority of the hives are underground. Hitting the tops won't work. Nor will 'swarming' the hive underground because at some point your bodies or the bodies of those you're fighting are going to clog the tunnel and hamper egress.

No... 9,000,000 troops (Assuming they sent every troop they had forward and kept none at home, which would mean that other threats would just wipe out the CS while the armies were off at ar.) but assuming 9,000,00 vs 1,200,000,000, you're assuming that each cs grunt off the line, or any combination there of can kill a minimum of 133 Xit's.

Even if you take half the xits for 'non warrior classes' Which I do NOT think is the breakdown

Remember the Xit's all possess, 1) 340 degree field of vision 2) Polarized sight, 3) infrared and ultra violet sight 4) night vision, +2 inits, +1 strike +2 dodge. 4) They can smell twice as good as a dog boy at twice the range, they can track by sound, and detect movment, feel the vibrations of approaching vehicles, animals and such at a range of 6 miles, walking humans at 2,000 ft and flying things at 4000 feet, they can hear into the ultra sonic, and communicate through ultrasonic sound.
Their chemical 'Call to arms' even supercharges the 'Non warrior' castes giving them added combat bonuses and added attacks permelee. Some spit acid.
The Xits regen 1D6MD per 24 hours
They can adhere and stick to surfaces to climb
they're ambidextous with all their hands
They can fly with the average speed of 90
Horror factor of 10

Colony breakdown puts
36% warriors
6% hunters
5% Super warriors
4% leapers

So that's 51% of the xits are front line combatants, others can fight too but 51% have no jobs other than combat.

Remember, the combat classes Strength is SUPERNATURAL level. Not normal, not robot or agumented. Not superhuman but all the way up at Supernatural level.

And that's before you reach the young queens and stuff.

So going from 1,200,000,000 xits, for ease of math we'll call half front line combatants.

That's Six hundred MILLION front line combatants. With Supernatural strength and flight and all the other advantages I just typed out. Vs at the very most (As per newest book) 9,000,000 in the CS.

So a simple breakdown would put it at each and every member of the CS armed forces would be responsiable with killing 67 Xits of combat classes.. just to take out the front line warriors.

67 Supernaturally strong, flying bugs that can see in the dark and sense you coming from miles off, EACH.

Now... technology does help,, but 67 to 1 odds? Even if the bugs just marched forward and let the CS start blasting the front ranks (Just total moran straight walking approach) Each and every CS troop would have to kill 67 bugs EACH before they're overrun by supernatural predators that can pull their arms and legs off like THEY're flies.

And that's not counting the six hundred MILLION bugs still at home breeding more bugs at an exponential rate and who WILL FIGHT to their dyeing breaths for the hive. So in reality every CS troop in the standing army would be responsable with taking out a minimum of 133 bugs each.

And that's if no CS troopers die. For each CS troop that falls his burden of 133 bugs falls on the next guy and so on and so on.

Even if you break up into individual hives, your first battle is what 100,000,000bug combatants vs 9,000,000 CS forces? That's still 11 to 1 odds. And that's assuming every troop the CS has can be pulled from every state and every fortress city, every defended border and every base and put into the first, of 6 fights that large. It also would assume that the CS suffers no losses from the first one hundred million warrior army it fights and another 100,000,000 workwers and what not in the holes AFTER the first battle, and can still field their maximum number of troops the entire campain. An impossibility when facing 11+ to 1 odds against supernatural monsters.

Yes. I think that even by anyone's most remote possible defintion, that the bugs are a huge huge HUGE threat to the CS.



Also not to mention that the basic xiticix ranged weapon has REALLY long range for a TW type weapon. I believe if I remember correctly their main rifles have a 4k foot range which is about double that of most tech weapons and xits attack pretty rapidly.

The only thing that keeps them from being certain death is individually they don't have that much MDC compared to other super natural creatures and while they do bio regenerate it is not super fast. It makes large scale bombings less effective but they are not like dragons and some other super naturals that heal full in minutes.

Honestly one of the best things that could happen to rifts earth is if one of those demon lords really is willing to try to stick his nether regions into the xiticix lands trying to take them as minions. I seriously doubt there is any real chance they can succeed and will likely wind up with xiticix swarming on the demons/devils that try it. I doubt it could take out the xiticix but it could at least be a good outlet to use up some of their spare capacity to knock them down at least for a bit. Xiticix could easily get to a position baring something changing soon of simply being to many of them to fight where they could simply swamp with pure numbers where you could not throw out enough munitions to stop it.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by kaid »

Pepsi Jedi wrote:The majority of the hives are underground. Hitting the tops won't work. Nor will 'swarming' the hive underground because at some point your bodies or the bodies of those you're fighting are going to clog the tunnel and hamper egress.

No... 9,000,000 troops (Assuming they sent every troop they had forward and kept none at home, which would mean that other threats would just wipe out the CS while the armies were off at ar.) but assuming 9,000,00 vs 1,200,000,000, you're assuming that each cs grunt off the line, or any combination there of can kill a minimum of 133 Xit's.

Even if you take half the xits for 'non warrior classes' Which I do NOT think is the breakdown

Remember the Xit's all possess, 1) 340 degree field of vision 2) Polarized sight, 3) infrared and ultra violet sight 4) night vision, +2 inits, +1 strike +2 dodge. 4) They can smell twice as good as a dog boy at twice the range, they can track by sound, and detect movment, feel the vibrations of approaching vehicles, animals and such at a range of 6 miles, walking humans at 2,000 ft and flying things at 4000 feet, they can hear into the ultra sonic, and communicate through ultrasonic sound.
Their chemical 'Call to arms' even supercharges the 'Non warrior' castes giving them added combat bonuses and added attacks permelee. Some spit acid.
The Xits regen 1D6MD per 24 hours
They can adhere and stick to surfaces to climb
they're ambidextous with all their hands
They can fly with the average speed of 90
Horror factor of 10

Colony breakdown puts
36% warriors
6% hunters
5% Super warriors
4% leapers

So that's 51% of the xits are front line combatants, others can fight too but 51% have no jobs other than combat.

Remember, the combat classes Strength is SUPERNATURAL level. Not normal, not robot or agumented. Not superhuman but all the way up at Supernatural level.

And that's before you reach the young queens and stuff.

So going from 1,200,000,000 xits, for ease of math we'll call half front line combatants.

That's Six hundred MILLION front line combatants. With Supernatural strength and flight and all the other advantages I just typed out. Vs at the very most (As per newest book) 9,000,000 in the CS.

So a simple breakdown would put it at each and every member of the CS armed forces would be responsiable with killing 67 Xits of combat classes.. just to take out the front line warriors.

67 Supernaturally strong, flying bugs that can see in the dark and sense you coming from miles off, EACH.

Now... technology does help,, but 67 to 1 odds? Even if the bugs just marched forward and let the CS start blasting the front ranks (Just total moran straight walking approach) Each and every CS troop would have to kill 67 bugs EACH before they're overrun by supernatural predators that can pull their arms and legs off like THEY're flies.

And that's not counting the six hundred MILLION bugs still at home breeding more bugs at an exponential rate and who WILL FIGHT to their dyeing breaths for the hive. So in reality every CS troop in the standing army would be responsable with taking out a minimum of 133 bugs each.

And that's if no CS troopers die. For each CS troop that falls his burden of 133 bugs falls on the next guy and so on and so on.

Even if you break up into individual hives, your first battle is what 100,000,000bug combatants vs 9,000,000 CS forces? That's still 11 to 1 odds. And that's assuming every troop the CS has can be pulled from every state and every fortress city, every defended border and every base and put into the first, of 6 fights that large. It also would assume that the CS suffers no losses from the first one hundred million warrior army it fights and another 100,000,000 workwers and what not in the holes AFTER the first battle, and can still field their maximum number of troops the entire campain. An impossibility when facing 11+ to 1 odds against supernatural monsters.

Yes. I think that even by anyone's most remote possible defintion, that the bugs are a huge huge HUGE threat to the CS.




One other thing that makes the challenge even harder is some of the issues brought up by heroes of humanity and why the CS is very hesitant to use nukes as anything other than a desperate last ditch weapon. It is that what happens if you kill a few million+ sentient things at the same time. The amount of PPE being dispersed at the same time could potentially bring you apocalypse MK2 of random rift storms.

So using mass kill techniques vs creatures like xiticix may wind up being really really bad which is why they are trying some odd ball techniques to attempt to cull some queens and hopefully keep the numbers from exploding to buy time to figure out other options.

Who knows though with the minion war some of the demon plagues could really wreak havok on xiticix given their population densities.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

kaid wrote:Also not to mention that the basic xiticix ranged weapon has REALLY long range for a TW type weapon. I believe if I remember correctly their main rifles have a 4k foot range which is about double that of most tech weapons and xits attack pretty rapidly.


Correct. Their TK rifles have a 4000' range, putting it on par with rail guns. And remember, guns can be fired at as much as +30% their normal range at a -5 strike penalty, so there could be some hits from TK rifles as far as 5,200' away.

On the other hand, only about 1/3 of the Xiticix warriors carry the TK rifles, so there is that to consider.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by kaid »

But 1/3 of xiticix warriors is still a disturbing amount and they definitely would do the old soviet trick of when somebody with a gun dies the next guy in line picks the weapon back up again. Baring people sniping the weapons to bits it still is a really thorny problem.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Pepsi Jedi »

If it's 1/3, of them....Indeed only Two hundred MILLION With the TK rifles. That's such a bummer... I mean the rest will have to fly up at speed 90 and rip people apart as that 200,000,000 sit back and pepper the troops with long range MD fire.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

HWalsh wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:I think you may well be.
What is your basis?


The Coalition build-up for the "Campaign of Unity" begins in 102 PA. This is after Lady Prosek is grabbed by FoM forces.


CWC 45
Circa, 105 PA

CWC 89
For approximately the last five years, the Coalition military has been engaged in a secret campaign to refit and improve their forces.

SoT takes place beginning in 104 PA.


RGMG 12
106 PA (2392 AD): The Coalition States declares war on the kingdom of Tolkeen and Free Quebec.

"Easy" versus human lives [is] relative.


Not really. If that were the case they'd use Dogboys and/or Psi-Stalkers.[/quote]

Not sure what you're trying to say there.
My point was that they can crank out skelebots faster than creating humans, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily a piece of cake.

Speaking of which, here's some research I did a while back regarding skelebot production:
viewtopic.php?p=2481988#p2481988
Killer Cyborg wrote:Meanwhile, I did happen to find some solid numbers regarding the Coalition's robot production, though they are rather meaningless overall, because of the lack of other information.

SB1, 33
Three Battalions [of skelebots] (864) are currently in production at Lone Star's superior manufacturing facilities. In fact, an entire factory is now devoted to the construction of the skelebots and two other factories are being converted for mass production; should be in full operation within six months. Current level of manufacturing is approximately three battalions (864 bots) per month. the two additional factories will increase production to about 2592 skelebots per month. Chi-Town's limited facilities are limited to the production of 288 skelebots a month.

All this tells us is (as of 102 PA):
-That the Lone Star facilities are superior (in some fashion) to other CS manufacturing facilities, and that the a single CS factory in Lone Star dedicated to the production of skelebots can produce 864 bots per month.
-It takes the CS factories about 6 months to retool to produce skelebots instead of producing its previous product.

It does not tell us how many factories the CS has overall.
It does not tell us why the Chi-Town facilities are only capable of producing 288 skelebots per month (though presumably it is because most of their manufacturing capabilities are otherwise tied up).
It does not tell us if maximum production efficiency has been achieved.
It does not tell us how many hours of that month the factories are active.

That page also describes the "present number of skelebots in use" as well as those in production.
The numbers total at 1,248.

Other information:
CWC,35
The Chi-Town military employs over 1.2 million citizens in their factories and facilities alone. This includes everything from the production of military uniforms, medals, munitions, weapons, armor, robots, and armored vehicles to microchips, parts and widgets for just about everything.

CWC, 122
Since their introduction into military service approximately seven years ago....
(establishes timeline)

Six skelebot divisions (34,560 troops) are on their way to Quebec, while eight divisions (46,080) are already in place for the siege on Tolkeen. Another two divisions (11,520) patrol the borders of the Coalition States or are on limited missions in hostile territories.
The context there is showing that skelebots are now being used as frontline combat troops, so these seem to be simply the number of bots used offensively and/or in major numbers in hot zones.
The total there is 92,160.

IIRC, the CWC book takes place around 105 PA, only three years after the previous information on production.
Which indicates that the Coalition has dedicated a LOT more factories to the task of creating skelebots.

(CWC also includes some new types of skelebots, but the non-humanoid bots are produced inconsequential numbers, and the numbers of the new humanoid skelebots versus the old style, but those differences seem likewise inconsequential)
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

Pepsi Jedi wrote:That's such a bummer... I mean the rest will have to fly up at speed 90 and rip people apart as that 200,000,000 sit back and pepper the troops with long range MD fire.


Pretty much.

Here's a more specific breakdown of the kind of numbers we're looking at with the bugs:

XI 45
Breakdown of a Typical Xiticix Colony's Population
1 Elder Queen
2-100 Young Queens
4% Leapers
5% Super Warriors
6% Hunters
9% Nannies
10% Diggers
30% Workers
36% Warriors


With 200 million bugs (minimum) in a hive, that turns into a fighting force that looks like this:

8,000,000 Leapers
10,000,000 Super Warriors (around 2,500,000 will have TK rifles, and 500,000 will have a resin rifle or a TK pistol)
12,000,000 Hunters
72,000,000 Warriors (23,760,000 of which will have TK Rifles, 14,400,000 of which will have spike guns (400' range), 3,600,000 of which will have Resin Rifles (240' range), and the rest will have only melee weapons. Although keep in mind that they can throw their spears 300'.).

Per Hive.


(Oh, and according to p. 82 of Xiticix Invasion, defenders are -6 to dodge TK rifles. I don't know if I ever noticed that before.)
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by flatline »

Killer Cyborg wrote:(Oh, and according to p. 82 of Xiticix Invasion, defenders are -6 to dodge TK rifles. I don't know if I ever noticed that before.)


How does the dodge mechanic work when the shooter is thousands of feet away? How can you tell that a particular bug is about to fire?

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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Alrik Vas »

Someone needs to mod Plants vs Zombies to be CS vs X-bugs.

I'd play that all day, I imagine some here might lose on purpose.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

flatline wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:(Oh, and according to p. 82 of Xiticix Invasion, defenders are -6 to dodge TK rifles. I don't know if I ever noticed that before.)


How does the dodge mechanic work when the shooter is thousands of feet away? How can you tell that a particular bug is about to fire?

--flatline


CB1 10
One might think of the dodge roll not so much as the character seeing and moving out of the way of an energy blast, but as a combination of an attacker's penalty for shooting at a moving target and the luck of the intended victim. It is always more difficult to hit a moving/dodging target than it is to hit a stationary target. Even today, people 'dodge the bullet' by means of running in a zig-zagging pattern, executing a quick movement, or by leaps and rolls.
In many instances it is more luck than anything else. Obviously, the intended victim cannot see the bullet coming, but he can judge the angle of trajectory by observing the movement of his attacker and the direction of the attack, giving him a chance to try to move out of harm's way. Success may be luck, but it can work.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

Alrik Vas wrote:Someone needs to mod Plants vs Zombies to be CS vs X-bugs.

I'd play that all day, I imagine some here might lose on purpose.


Same!

I've been saying for years that there needs to be a Rifts tower defense game, and if I knew anything about programming, I'd make one somehow.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Alrik Vas »

flatline wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:(Oh, and according to p. 82 of Xiticix Invasion, defenders are -6 to dodge TK rifles. I don't know if I ever noticed that before.)


How does the dodge mechanic work when the shooter is thousands of feet away? How can you tell that a particular bug is about to fire?

--flatline

My guess is it's an abstraction. They aren't saying its harder to dodge, they're saying on target ranged attacks miss less. All firearms have dodge penalties associated with them. The bug tk gun has a different listing...for...reasons...
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by flatline »

Alrik Vas wrote:
flatline wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:(Oh, and according to p. 82 of Xiticix Invasion, defenders are -6 to dodge TK rifles. I don't know if I ever noticed that before.)


How does the dodge mechanic work when the shooter is thousands of feet away? How can you tell that a particular bug is about to fire?

--flatline

My guess is it's an abstraction. They aren't saying its harder to dodge, they're saying on target ranged attacks miss less. All firearms have dodge penalties associated with them. The bug tk gun has a different listing...for...reasons...


So if I'm a CS grunt with 6 attacks and there are 100 bugs shooting at me, I get to dodge the first 6, but not the remaining 94. If dodging were an abstraction for "zig-zagging" or otherwise moving evasively, it would apply a penalty for all the bugs, not just the first 6. That's where the abstraction becomes stretched.

--flatline
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by HWalsh »

Killer Cyborg wrote:RGMG 12
106 PA (2392 AD): The Coalition States declares war on the kingdom of Tolkeen and Free Quebec.


Then which is correct. The RGMG or the SoT book where it actually happened?

SoT:1 Pg. 105 specifically lists the date of Chalk's Folly (the missile attack on Tolkeen that started the war) as 104 PA.

"Easy" versus human lives [is] relative.


Not really. If that were the case they'd use Dogboys and/or Psi-Stalkers.[/quote]

Not sure what you're trying to say there.
My point was that they can crank out skelebots faster than creating humans, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily a piece of cake.

Speaking of which, here's some research I did a while back regarding skelebot production:
http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/v ... 8#p2481988
Killer Cyborg wrote:Meanwhile, I did happen to find some solid numbers regarding the Coalition's robot production, though they are rather meaningless overall, because of the lack of other information.

SB1, 33
Three Battalions [of skelebots] (864) are currently in production at Lone Star's superior manufacturing facilities. In fact, an entire factory is now devoted to the construction of the skelebots and two other factories are being converted for mass production; should be in full operation within six months. Current level of manufacturing is approximately three battalions (864 bots) per month. the two additional factories will increase production to about 2592 skelebots per month. Chi-Town's limited facilities are limited to the production of 288 skelebots a month.

All this tells us is (as of 102 PA):
-That the Lone Star facilities are superior (in some fashion) to other CS manufacturing facilities, and that the a single CS factory in Lone Star dedicated to the production of skelebots can produce 864 bots per month.
-It takes the CS factories about 6 months to retool to produce skelebots instead of producing its previous product.

It does not tell us how many factories the CS has overall.
It does not tell us why the Chi-Town facilities are only capable of producing 288 skelebots per month (though presumably it is because most of their manufacturing capabilities are otherwise tied up).
It does not tell us if maximum production efficiency has been achieved.
It does not tell us how many hours of that month the factories are active.

That page also describes the "present number of skelebots in use" as well as those in production.
The numbers total at 1,248.


And by the time of the SoT books they are literally leaving "Skelebot Graveyards" (multiples) with 18,000+ Skelebots.

Other information:
CWC,35
The Chi-Town military employs over 1.2 million citizens in their factories and facilities alone. This includes everything from the production of military uniforms, medals, munitions, weapons, armor, robots, and armored vehicles to microchips, parts and widgets for just about everything.

CWC, 122
Since their introduction into military service approximately seven years ago....
(establishes timeline)


But this timeline clashes with the timeline presented in the SoT line.

Six skelebot divisions (34,560 troops) are on their way to Quebec, while eight divisions (46,080) are already in place for the siege on Tolkeen. Another two divisions (11,520) patrol the borders of the Coalition States or are on limited missions in hostile territories.
The context there is showing that skelebots are now being used as frontline combat troops, so these seem to be simply the number of bots used offensively and/or in major numbers in hot zones.
The total there is 92,160.


Again, SoT indicates that they have far greater than that number. Considering they were still engaged with FQ at the time and they left at least 54,000 skelebots between three of the Skelebot graveyards.

IIRC, the CWC book takes place around 105 PA, only three years after the previous information on production.
Which indicates that the Coalition has dedicated a LOT more factories to the task of creating skelebots.


CWC has to be incorrect. It directly contradicts SoT. SoT came later, does this not mean SoT takes precedence?
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Alrik Vas »

I think whichever makes more logical sense should be observed...but we can't rely on that with Palladium usually. :(
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by eliakon »

Just a thought here...
But the Bugs don't really have swallowing rifts to stop the use of cruise missiles on their nests/swarms...
I mean its not like this is a game of Warhammer 40k where you HAVE to kill every foe in personal one on one combat with your own infantry...

The Bugs are EXACTLY the sort of enemy which NBC weapons are designed for. They don't know how to decontaminate them selves after a strike, they don't have air defense radar to warn them of incoming strikes, they don't have NBC seals to protect exposed individuals, they have NO medical quarantine system to isolate infected individuals...
For a ruthless enemy like the CS the Xictic are probably quite literally the [i]least[/]of their worries.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by kaid »

Yes they would be the ideal targets for nukes but as it talks about in the heroes of humanity book the CS is really really really gunshy about unleashing a nuke. They are greatly worried if you use a mass simultaneous kill weapon such as a nuke you could unleash apocalypse MK2 feeding ley lines/nexus that much additional energy all at once.

So baring the problem being so bad there is literally no other choice available they will keep trying the other options first. I think their ideal would be enough decapitation strikes vs queens to drop the population then let nature do its work or some kind of chemical/biological way of killing them but slow enough not to trigger mass PPE bursts.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

eliakon wrote:Just a thought here...
But the Bugs don't really have swallowing rifts to stop the use of cruise missiles on their nests/swarms...
I mean its not like this is a game of Warhammer 40k where you HAVE to kill every foe in personal one on one combat with your own infantry...

The Bugs are EXACTLY the sort of enemy which NBC weapons are designed for. They don't know how to decontaminate them selves after a strike, they don't have air defense radar to warn them of incoming strikes, they don't have NBC seals to protect exposed individuals, they have NO medical quarantine system to isolate infected individuals...
For a ruthless enemy like the CS the Xictic are probably quite literally the leastof their worries.


New Navy, page forty-something:
CS nukes are patterned after the pinnacle of pre-apocalypse nuclear weapons design- the same design that touched off the Great Cataclysm. These are "clean" devices that produce minimal fallout (long-term radiation) but combine the destruction of a thermonuclear explosion with the enhanced radiation of a neutron bomb. What this means is that these nukes can utterly destroy enemy cities, bases and armies without causing long-term devastation of the environment, or so the CS believes.

XI 87
Even if the CS uses extreme force (even nuclear weapons?) to pulverize the aboveground structures and Xiticix defenders, an estimated 35%-55% would survive underground, which is also where the queens are hidden.

and

This is an all or nothing proposition, and the Coalition understands that. They just aren't certain they can win.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by eliakon »

Killer Cyborg wrote:
eliakon wrote:Just a thought here...
But the Bugs don't really have swallowing rifts to stop the use of cruise missiles on their nests/swarms...
I mean its not like this is a game of Warhammer 40k where you HAVE to kill every foe in personal one on one combat with your own infantry...

The Bugs are EXACTLY the sort of enemy which NBC weapons are designed for. They don't know how to decontaminate them selves after a strike, they don't have air defense radar to warn them of incoming strikes, they don't have NBC seals to protect exposed individuals, they have NO medical quarantine system to isolate infected individuals...
For a ruthless enemy like the CS the Xictic are probably quite literally the leastof their worries.


New Navy, page forty-something:
CS nukes are patterned after the pinnacle of pre-apocalypse nuclear weapons design- the same design that touched off the Great Cataclysm. These are "clean" devices that produce minimal fallout (long-term radiation) but combine the destruction of a thermonuclear explosion with the enhanced radiation of a neutron bomb. What this means is that these nukes can utterly destroy enemy cities, bases and armies without causing long-term devastation of the environment, or so the CS believes.

XI 87
Even if the CS uses extreme force (even nuclear weapons?) to pulverize the aboveground structures and Xiticix defenders, an estimated 35%-55% would survive underground, which is also where the queens are hidden.

and

This is an all or nothing proposition, and the Coalition understands that. They just aren't certain they can win.


Right, so an initial bombardment of the clean nukes would wipe out a MINIMUM of 45% and as many as 65% of the defenders. As well as 100% of all Xiticix swarming outside the hives (time to trigger some swarms with flying skelebots it sounds like)

And that is just INITAL bombardment.
Follow up strikes with things like persistent chemical agents (like say VX) to poison bugs as they leave the hives.

That totally leaves out the use of biological weapons tailored to the Xixtic biology (which have the wonderful advantage of being really hard to species jump) Which can be used to infect and weaken/kill entire hives.

And then there is the NGR system of micro-bot assassins

Or the idea of sappers carrying Nuclear weapons INSIDE hives (after you have vaporized the outside, and killed of the majority of the defenders)

Are you going to kill them in a weekend? No
Are you going to wipe the entire species out? Sure, might take a year, maybe two at the outside... Or, put another way, it would take less time than it took to destroy Tolkeen to annihilate the #1 bogyman foe in North America.

The problem is that too many people want to either use quick brute force one hit kills, or if that fails fall back on infantry skirmishes. This is a major military power, I sort of assume that they will use, oh I dunno... Military Tactics or something?
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Alrik Vas »

flatline wrote:
Alrik Vas wrote:
flatline wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:(Oh, and according to p. 82 of Xiticix Invasion, defenders are -6 to dodge TK rifles. I don't know if I ever noticed that before.)


How does the dodge mechanic work when the shooter is thousands of feet away? How can you tell that a particular bug is about to fire?

--flatline

My guess is it's an abstraction. They aren't saying its harder to dodge, they're saying on target ranged attacks miss less. All firearms have dodge penalties associated with them. The bug tk gun has a different listing...for...reasons...


So if I'm a CS grunt with 6 attacks and there are 100 bugs shooting at me, I get to dodge the first 6, but not the remaining 94. If dodging were an abstraction for "zig-zagging" or otherwise moving evasively, it would apply a penalty for all the bugs, not just the first 6. That's where the abstraction becomes stretched.

--flatline

I didn't mention zig zag. I meant abstraction in the type of, "let's use the rules we have and make them apply to more stuff."

Truth be told, there is a penalty your enemy takes fit shooting at you of you are running. -1
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by HWalsh »

Step 1:
Send in about 18,000-20,000 Skelebots to rile up the hive. They can waste this many in a Skelebot graveyard, they can waste this with a Xit hive. Xits do NOT coordinate between hives, so you still of the proposed 1.2 Billion are only dealing with 200,000,000 of which only 100,000,000 are soldiers. Rile the hive up. Draw out the warriors.

Step 2:
Unleash the nuke while the enemy swarms the skelebots. Boom, that should eliminate the maximum strike leaving only 35% of the hive remaining, or less. Now there are 70,000,000 Xits remaining, of that at the most only 35,000,000 are warriors. Most likely this would be more than that as you specifically riled up the hive first.

Step 3:
Drill into the Xit hive from the surface using skelebots. Deploy in the holes a chemical agent designed to kill Xits. Pump it in using the secured holes so that it travels through the hive.

Step 3 (Alternate):
The chemical deployment can be something non-lethal to the Xits, and instead is just designed to burn at MD temperatures. Drop in something to ignite it. Boom. Crispy bugs.

This would reduce the hive considerably and would also at the very least delay any plans the Xits have, thus reducing their threat considerably, to ramp up the war machine.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Alrik Vas »

eliakon wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:
eliakon wrote:Just a thought here...
But the Bugs don't really have swallowing rifts to stop the use of cruise missiles on their nests/swarms...
I mean its not like this is a game of Warhammer 40k where you HAVE to kill every foe in personal one on one combat with your own infantry...

The Bugs are EXACTLY the sort of enemy which NBC weapons are designed for. They don't know how to decontaminate them selves after a strike, they don't have air defense radar to warn them of incoming strikes, they don't have NBC seals to protect exposed individuals, they have NO medical quarantine system to isolate infected individuals...
For a ruthless enemy like the CS the Xictic are probably quite literally the leastof their worries.


New Navy, page forty-something:
CS nukes are patterned after the pinnacle of pre-apocalypse nuclear weapons design- the same design that touched off the Great Cataclysm. These are "clean" devices that produce minimal fallout (long-term radiation) but combine the destruction of a thermonuclear explosion with the enhanced radiation of a neutron bomb. What this means is that these nukes can utterly destroy enemy cities, bases and armies without causing long-term devastation of the environment, or so the CS believes.

XI 87
Even if the CS uses extreme force (even nuclear weapons?) to pulverize the aboveground structures and Xiticix defenders, an estimated 35%-55% would survive underground, which is also where the queens are hidden.

and

This is an all or nothing proposition, and the Coalition understands that. They just aren't certain they can win.


Right, so an initial bombardment of the clean nukes would wipe out a MINIMUM of 45% and as many as 65% of the defenders. As well as 100% of all Xiticix swarming outside the hives (time to trigger some swarms with flying skelebots it sounds like)

And that is just INITAL bombardment.
Follow up strikes with things like persistent chemical agents (like say VX) to poison bugs as they leave the hives.

That totally leaves out the use of biological weapons tailored to the Xixtic biology (which have the wonderful advantage of being really hard to species jump) Which can be used to infect and weaken/kill entire hives.

And then there is the NGR system of micro-bot assassins

Or the idea of sappers carrying Nuclear weapons INSIDE hives (after you have vaporized the outside, and killed of the majority of the defenders)

Are you going to kill them in a weekend? No
Are you going to wipe the entire species out? Sure, might take a year, maybe two at the outside... Or, put another way, it would take less time than it took to destroy Tolkeen to annihilate the #1 bogyman foe in North America.

The problem is that too many people want to either use quick brute force one hit kills, or if that fails fall back on infantry skirmishes. This is a major military power, I sort of assume that they will use, oh I dunno... Military Tactics or something?

Pretty much with eliakon on this one. Uncle Skullhead would take a giant poisonous dump on the x-bugs. CS troops are protected from it, it would kill the bugs combat effectiveness and they wouldn't be worried about the land much as the bugs already alien-scaped it anyway.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by taalismn »

Xiticix Wastelands/Glasslands...you can declare it an open target range afterwards and let Mother Nature bio-remediate it for a few decades or until you have the resources for a more thorough and quicker cleanup.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by The Beast »

Killer Cyborg wrote:SB1, 33
Three Battalions [of skelebots] (864) are currently in production at Lone Star's superior manufacturing facilities. In fact, an entire factory is now devoted to the construction of the skelebots and two other factories are being converted for mass production; should be in full operation within six months. Current level of manufacturing is approximately three battalions (864 bots) per month. the two additional factories will increase production to about 2592 skelebots per month. Chi-Town's limited facilities are limited to the production of 288 skelebots a month.


That's a weirdly small number for a battalion size...
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

eliakon wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:
eliakon wrote:Just a thought here...
But the Bugs don't really have swallowing rifts to stop the use of cruise missiles on their nests/swarms...
I mean its not like this is a game of Warhammer 40k where you HAVE to kill every foe in personal one on one combat with your own infantry...

The Bugs are EXACTLY the sort of enemy which NBC weapons are designed for. They don't know how to decontaminate them selves after a strike, they don't have air defense radar to warn them of incoming strikes, they don't have NBC seals to protect exposed individuals, they have NO medical quarantine system to isolate infected individuals...
For a ruthless enemy like the CS the Xictic are probably quite literally the leastof their worries.


New Navy, page forty-something:
CS nukes are patterned after the pinnacle of pre-apocalypse nuclear weapons design- the same design that touched off the Great Cataclysm. These are "clean" devices that produce minimal fallout (long-term radiation) but combine the destruction of a thermonuclear explosion with the enhanced radiation of a neutron bomb. What this means is that these nukes can utterly destroy enemy cities, bases and armies without causing long-term devastation of the environment, or so the CS believes.

XI 87
Even if the CS uses extreme force (even nuclear weapons?) to pulverize the aboveground structures and Xiticix defenders, an estimated 35%-55% would survive underground, which is also where the queens are hidden.

and

This is an all or nothing proposition, and the Coalition understands that. They just aren't certain they can win.


Right, so an initial bombardment of the clean nukes would wipe out a MINIMUM of 45% and as many as 65% of the defenders. As well as 100% of all Xiticix swarming outside the hives (time to trigger some swarms with flying skelebots it sounds like)

And that is just INITAL bombardment.


No. That is the CS pulverizing the above-ground structures, with no mention of how long that would take, nor of what exactly would be involved.

Follow up strikes with things like persistent chemical agents (like say VX) to poison bugs as they leave the hives.


Not familiar with VX. Is it a mega-damage poison?

That totally leaves out the use of biological weapons tailored to the Xixtic biology (which have the wonderful advantage of being really hard to species jump) Which can be used to infect and weaken/kill entire hives.


Sure. Or not.
Science doesn't always give us what we want.

And then there is the NGR system of micro-bot assassins


Is there?

Or the idea of sappers carrying Nuclear weapons INSIDE hives (after you have vaporized the outside, and killed of the majority of the defenders)


Possibly.
Or (again) possibly not.

Are you going to kill them in a weekend? No
Are you going to wipe the entire species out? Sure, might take a year, maybe two at the outside... Or, put another way, it would take less time than it took to destroy Tolkeen to annihilate the #1 bogyman foe in North America.


If it takes 18 months, there will be a new crop of Warriors ready.
And I doubt that's a realistic timeline.
Again, it took the CS far, far, far longer than it should have to even take out a speedbump like Tolkeen.

The problem is that too many people want to either use quick brute force one hit kills, or if that fails fall back on infantry skirmishes. This is a major military power, I sort of assume that they will use, oh I dunno... Military Tactics or something?


I kind of assume that both sides will use tactics. For example, the bugs won't necessarily just sit in their bombed-out hives waiting to die.
Massive bombing of the bugs will cause them to go after the CS, which is one reason why the CS wants to avoid that option.

Killing 50% of 1.2 billion bugs still leaves a hell of a lot of angry bugs.
Last edited by Killer Cyborg on Tue Jun 28, 2016 8:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

HWalsh wrote:Step 1:
Send in about 18,000-20,000 Skelebots to rile up the hive. They can waste this many in a Skelebot graveyard, they can waste this with a Xit hive. Xits do NOT coordinate between hives, so you still of the proposed 1.2 Billion are only dealing with 200,000,000 of which only 100,000,000 are soldiers. Rile the hive up. Draw out the warriors.

Step 2:
Unleash the nuke while the enemy swarms the skelebots. Boom, that should eliminate the maximum strike leaving only 35% of the hive remaining, or less. Now there are 70,000,000 Xits remaining, of that at the most only 35,000,000 are warriors. Most likely this would be more than that as you specifically riled up the hive first.

Step 3:
Drill into the Xit hive from the surface using skelebots. Deploy in the holes a chemical agent designed to kill Xits. Pump it in using the secured holes so that it travels through the hive.

Step 3 (Alternate):
The chemical deployment can be something non-lethal to the Xits, and instead is just designed to burn at MD temperatures. Drop in something to ignite it. Boom. Crispy bugs.

This would reduce the hive considerably and would also at the very least delay any plans the Xits have, thus reducing their threat considerably, to ramp up the war machine.


The numbers for bombing/nuking the xiticix are official and in the book.
As are the complications with trying to mop up the remaining bugs.

What's not in the books are your hypothetical xiticix-killing chemical agents.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by The Beast »

Killer Cyborg wrote:
HWalsh wrote:Step 1:
Send in about 18,000-20,000 Skelebots to rile up the hive. They can waste this many in a Skelebot graveyard, they can waste this with a Xit hive. Xits do NOT coordinate between hives, so you still of the proposed 1.2 Billion are only dealing with 200,000,000 of which only 100,000,000 are soldiers. Rile the hive up. Draw out the warriors.

Step 2:
Unleash the nuke while the enemy swarms the skelebots. Boom, that should eliminate the maximum strike leaving only 35% of the hive remaining, or less. Now there are 70,000,000 Xits remaining, of that at the most only 35,000,000 are warriors. Most likely this would be more than that as you specifically riled up the hive first.

Step 3:
Drill into the Xit hive from the surface using skelebots. Deploy in the holes a chemical agent designed to kill Xits. Pump it in using the secured holes so that it travels through the hive.

Step 3 (Alternate):
The chemical deployment can be something non-lethal to the Xits, and instead is just designed to burn at MD temperatures. Drop in something to ignite it. Boom. Crispy bugs.

This would reduce the hive considerably and would also at the very least delay any plans the Xits have, thus reducing their threat considerably, to ramp up the war machine.


The numbers for bombing/nuking the xiticix are official and in the book.
As are the complications with trying to mop up the remaining bugs.

What's not in the books are your hypothetical xiticix-killing chemical agents.


IIRC, there is one in the white adventure book that came with the GM screens.
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

The Beast wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:
HWalsh wrote:Step 1:
Send in about 18,000-20,000 Skelebots to rile up the hive. They can waste this many in a Skelebot graveyard, they can waste this with a Xit hive. Xits do NOT coordinate between hives, so you still of the proposed 1.2 Billion are only dealing with 200,000,000 of which only 100,000,000 are soldiers. Rile the hive up. Draw out the warriors.

Step 2:
Unleash the nuke while the enemy swarms the skelebots. Boom, that should eliminate the maximum strike leaving only 35% of the hive remaining, or less. Now there are 70,000,000 Xits remaining, of that at the most only 35,000,000 are warriors. Most likely this would be more than that as you specifically riled up the hive first.

Step 3:
Drill into the Xit hive from the surface using skelebots. Deploy in the holes a chemical agent designed to kill Xits. Pump it in using the secured holes so that it travels through the hive.

Step 3 (Alternate):
The chemical deployment can be something non-lethal to the Xits, and instead is just designed to burn at MD temperatures. Drop in something to ignite it. Boom. Crispy bugs.

This would reduce the hive considerably and would also at the very least delay any plans the Xits have, thus reducing their threat considerably, to ramp up the war machine.


The numbers for bombing/nuking the xiticix are official and in the book.
As are the complications with trying to mop up the remaining bugs.

What's not in the books are your hypothetical xiticix-killing chemical agents.


IIRC, there is one in the white adventure book that came with the GM screens.


Nope.
ZK-12 is a biological agent, not chemical. :p

More importantly, "no matter what happens, the ZK-12 is destroyed in the adventure."
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by eliakon »

Killer Cyborg wrote:
eliakon wrote:
Killer Cyborg wrote:
eliakon wrote:Just a thought here...
But the Bugs don't really have swallowing rifts to stop the use of cruise missiles on their nests/swarms...
I mean its not like this is a game of Warhammer 40k where you HAVE to kill every foe in personal one on one combat with your own infantry...

The Bugs are EXACTLY the sort of enemy which NBC weapons are designed for. They don't know how to decontaminate them selves after a strike, they don't have air defense radar to warn them of incoming strikes, they don't have NBC seals to protect exposed individuals, they have NO medical quarantine system to isolate infected individuals...
For a ruthless enemy like the CS the Xictic are probably quite literally the leastof their worries.


New Navy, page forty-something:
CS nukes are patterned after the pinnacle of pre-apocalypse nuclear weapons design- the same design that touched off the Great Cataclysm. These are "clean" devices that produce minimal fallout (long-term radiation) but combine the destruction of a thermonuclear explosion with the enhanced radiation of a neutron bomb. What this means is that these nukes can utterly destroy enemy cities, bases and armies without causing long-term devastation of the environment, or so the CS believes.

XI 87
Even if the CS uses extreme force (even nuclear weapons?) to pulverize the aboveground structures and Xiticix defenders, an estimated 35%-55% would survive underground, which is also where the queens are hidden.

and

This is an all or nothing proposition, and the Coalition understands that. They just aren't certain they can win.


Right, so an initial bombardment of the clean nukes would wipe out a MINIMUM of 45% and as many as 65% of the defenders. As well as 100% of all Xiticix swarming outside the hives (time to trigger some swarms with flying skelebots it sounds like)

And that is just INITAL bombardment.


No. That is the CS pulverizing the above-ground structures, with no mention of how long that would take, nor of what exactly would be involved.

First strike wave IS initial bombardment.
Unless we are assuming that for some reason it will take dozens and dozens of nuclear weapons to destroy a single hive which seems...off. I mean if MD Buildings are that resilient why bother nuking Tolkeen?


Killer Cyborg wrote:
Follow up strikes with things like persistent chemical agents (like say VX) to poison bugs as they leave the hives.


Not familiar with VX. Is it a mega-damage poison?

Its a real world nerve agent. But since Nerve agents in the game don't do 'damage' directly MD/SD is not as big a distinction. Its also kind of hard to tell if it would be MD or not since...well MD doesn't exist in the real world. For all of that though the point of VX is that dusting the poison leaves a residue that is deadly for days afterwards...

Killer Cyborg wrote:
That totally leaves out the use of biological weapons tailored to the Xixtic biology (which have the wonderful advantage of being really hard to species jump) Which can be used to infect and weaken/kill entire hives.


Sure. Or not.
Science doesn't always give us what we want.

And your point is?
Because we know that the Xixtic are vulnerable to disease since they do not have "immune to disease" as a racial feature.
I mean I guess you can hand wave that it is impossible to make a disease...but when we get into "well it can't happen because I don't want it to" its pretty hard to have a discussion. Me? I am thinking that Lone Star should be able to make a disease for a bug.


Killer Cyborg wrote:
And then there is the NGR system of micro-bot assassins


Is there?

EIR-60 golf ball sized kill bots
Page 129 Triax 2


Killer Cyborg wrote:
Or the idea of sappers carrying Nuclear weapons INSIDE hives (after you have vaporized the outside, and killed of the majority of the defenders)


Possibly.
Or (again) possibly not.

How would it not work?
I mean seriously how are you going to PREVENT a skelebot from walking into a hive under a cover of a cloud of nerve gas? Anything that can get a line of sight on it will be dead from poison.
And that assumes that the nuclear weapons have to be huge, considering the size of real world nuclear weapons it would be possible to put a small yield tactical nuclear weapon (1-5 KT yield) in a fairly small, highly sheathed package.


Killer Cyborg wrote:
Are you going to kill them in a weekend? No
Are you going to wipe the entire species out? Sure, might take a year, maybe two at the outside... Or, put another way, it would take less time than it took to destroy Tolkeen to annihilate the #1 bogyman foe in North America.


If it takes 18 months, there will be a new crop of Warriors ready.
And I doubt that's a realistic timeline.
Again, it took the CS far, far, far longer than it should have to even take out a speedbump like Tolkeen.

A foe that had the ability to react, the ability to use magic to defend them selves, a foe that had environmental armor to prevent environmental attacks, a foe that was able to nullify the use of strategic weapons...
The Xitic are not in the same league as Tolkeen by a long shot. They have literally only brute force and numbers going for them...
and in this kind of fight the first is of no value and the second just makes them bigger targets.

I seriously think that this would take a month or two, six tops to conduct absent some amazing plot armor pulls of "new secret weapons and abilities"


Killer Cyborg wrote:
The problem is that too many people want to either use quick brute force one hit kills, or if that fails fall back on infantry skirmishes. This is a major military power, I sort of assume that they will use, oh I dunno... Military Tactics or something?


I kind of assume that both sides will use tactics. For example, the bugs won't necessarily just sit in their bombed-out hives waiting to die.
Massive bombing of the bugs will cause them to go after the CS, which is one reason why the CS wants to avoid that option.

Killing 50% of 1.2 billion bugs still leaves a hell of a lot of angry bugs.

That is a win for the CS.
I mean seriously, bugs leaving their hives to "go after the CS' just means that they can be killed in job lots faster and easier.
Like I said, bugs have no way to defend against stuff like this, and it would take them DAYS to fly from the Hivelands theater to someplace where they could DO anything. If they live that long its because the CS lets them.
The bugs move in swarms after all, and with a nice NBC opening the bugs outside the hives will be dead. Leave a hive = DOA if you simply put forces around the hives.
If they dig a tunnel and let a swarm out? Nuke it, or gas it, or use an FAE, or what ever else tickles your fancy.

Its not like the Bugs have a dispersed command center, forward deployed troops, ready reserves, or the ability to teleport. Heck most of them can't even effectively hide...
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Re: Coalition States - Good, Bad, or In-Between?

Unread post by J_cobbers »

First off question for Pepsi Jedi, totally off topic. Wouldn't the opposite of your user name be Coca-Cola Sith? Kind of makes sense in that Coke is red colored where pepsi has that yin yang red and blue balance the force thing going on. Btw I like Coke more, not that matters at all.

Ok more on topic:

I like the smuggle a nuke into the hive option. As we know (on a meta level, not common knowledge in game) there's the old, use the scent gland trick to get past the guards and into the deeper levels XI pg 11. If the CS command or scientist ever got this info they could put together a well made delivery system (perhaps a robot or cyborg disguised as a Xit much like the NGR uses against the Gargoyle Empire) covered in Xiticix scent that could walk non threateningly deep into a hive and deliver a full yield nuke and likely take out the Queens and most of the rest of the hive city.

On the point of good or bad or in between, it's all a matter of perspective, which I think is why they are written the way that they are, so that players and GMs have to wrestle with the moral conundrum of man kind's survival in a very hostile world, but at the price of genocide, racism and inculcated cultural ignorance. With regard to how the CS leadership deals with other powers in the Americas, they tend to be bullies rather than diplomats, who trust what they can control (technology) rather than what they can not (magic and an educated populace). But they also deal with other supernatural threats of beings of true unadulterated evil (demons and such) as well as dangerous wild MDC animals that can kill an unarmored human with one hit (like Rhino Buffalo or any other random monster). In that regard they are protectors. It is definitely a blurred line. The average CS grunt is trying to save the world from their perspective, no matter that not everything or everyone they are trying to save it from is any better worse than the average human. It's a matter of subjective good and evil vs objective good and evil.

There is also the old adages of 1) Picking the lessor of 2 evils. And if you are an average human, there are and have been more sinister evils (or threats) out there than the leadership of the CS (splugorth, vamps, xiticix, Mechanoids, Federation of Magic, harvester of souls, minion war etc).
and 2) Better to trust the devil you know. The CS are a largely known element, you know what the believe and stand for and can work around it, most of the others not so much. Yes they are sci-fi nazi's, but at least you know what they want and how they go about getting it done. The other big bads out there are either sneaky and interested in dominating / enslaving people (vamps, splugies, FoM, deevils and demons), or exceptionably hostile/genocidal to nonconforming life forms (Xits, harvester of souls, and the Mechs). Tell me which one you as a normal human want to work with day to day if you have to?

I haven't read through the SoT books yet, I'll get to them someday. But from what I have gathered, Tolkeen was always a more or less depicted as a fairly peaceful city state until the CS threatened it. Out of desperation they made alliances with the sorts of evil beings that the CS propaganda machine always accuses magic users of being associated with, which only when to prove the accusations made by the CS as to why Tolkeen was a threat in the first place. To the average CS citizen and ally the CS military looks totally justified for their attack. On a meta level as players and readers, we can see how, but for the invasion, Tolkeen's people were more or less good guys and probably would have continued on as they had been.
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