how 2 cope when a Xiticix Warrior eats your buddy's head

[Axelmania]

PTSD and stuff was brought up in the Holmes' tactics thread, this branches off enough I think to be worth discussing on its own.

I have to wonder if the "Dead Boy" attitude helps in this. For any fans of "The Walking Dead" show, there is a bit of a double-meaning to the title in that it doesn't necessarily reference the monsters (zombies) but also the humans fighting them. Death seems so certain in their dangerous world that the humans have become very grim, accustomed to the danger (those who couldn't hit in communities or died), sometimes even emulating the monsters they fight (draped in guts, getting bitey with your enemies, making zombie buddy-pets of your siblings/children) and I wonder: couldn't the Coalition take on a similar mindset?

A smart guy would be wearing standard-issue helmet, which covers the entire face. So you don't really see your buddy's face getting carried off by a bug, you just see the standard-issue helmet, which might help a little... you don't have to see their terrified expressions, you aren't triggered by them.

I also wonder about environmental noise-sealing and communication via radio. If a commander sees that his Grunt his losing the duel with the Warrior and his armor is about to give out, could he remote-control the EBA to shut off it's radio transmission so that his buddies do not hear his death scream?

I could see that help in reducing trauma too.

Another helpful thing: I don't think the Xiticix would drop the corpse on you to freak you out. They usually carry those off to make them into food for their babies, so you wouldn't have to worry about burying your buddy or seeing his guts everywhere.

Revenge also seems like a good motive. The CS has the means to utterly decimate Xiticix if they want to. A grunt who wanted to get revenge for his lost buddy could volunteer for 'border containment' later and use these tactics to just mow down the Xiticix.

Keeping in mind that RUE 361, you can shoot 30% beyond normal range at -5 to strike, a Xiticix TK Rifle can at best shoot from 5200 feet, and they have a limited ammo supply so it isn't a good idea for them to waste their 50 shots on misses, so if they did shoot from that far they're probably want to spend an extra attack aiming for +2 to hit, which would halve their rate of fire.

1) CS Command Car, CWC p 164, 200mph, a rail gun with 2 mile range (costs less than a million) and rail gun rounds aren't too expensive, it seems.

2) the C-T60 High-Powered Laser Cannon:aser cannon that shoots 6000 feet. Since lasers have an effectively unlimited supply of shots, there is every incentive to fire -5 to strike shots at 7800 feet.

2a) the Mark VII Slayer APC (CWC p 150), 80 mph, has 1
2b) the CTX-50 Line Backer, CWC p 153, 150 mph has 2, as below
2c) the CTX-52 Sky Sweeper, CWC p 156, 90mph has 2, operated by individual gunners, who can fire as the pilot has the tank backpedal, and should be able to cripple any detected warriors before they can get in range to shoot.
2d) the IAR-3 Skull Smasher (CWC p 137) doesn't specify the C-T60 like the above 3 but its 1st weapon system the "Heavy Laser Cannon" has the same range/damage. This robot moves 90mph, faster than the Slayer, equal to the Sweeper, slower than the Backer.

3) the CR-004 Scout Spider-Skull Walker (CWC 146) has a 6000 ft range railgun
4) the IAR-2 Abolisher (CWC 136) has a 6000 ft range cannon. Since this is single shots and not a burst, I imagine you could possibly make called shots with it. That might not apply to double-blasts, but 2D4x10 to a single body part could sometimes be better than 4D4x10 to the main body.

The biggest CS weapon of utter dominance though... in Rifts Mercenaries pg 149, the Nightwing. A 6000 foot laser like the C-T60 but it does more damage... and in a flying vehicle (no terrain problems, no worry about camouflaged enemies) which can hover at 10k feet. It only begins to overheat after TEN HOURS of flying OVER 200mph. In an emergency it can go mach 2, and the CS was developing a faster mach 3 jet.

The Xiticix couldn't feasibly do a single thing if one of these monsters parked above a hive at 6000 feet and began blasting the hive, backing up as warriors moved from 7800 feet (130% laser range) to 5200 feet (130% TK rifle range) to avoid damage.

The only counter I can think of is a GM Judgement call like "the Nightwing can only hover by facing forward, the belly laser turret can't point down, only rotate left or right" in which case, the Nightwing would have to remain closer to the ground to snipe the towers, and could possibly be snuck up on by Xiticix traveling under tree cover.

[Blue_Lion]

Hey Captain I am detecting a large CS air craft moving north.

OK shoot it down with LRM.

other nations can deal with it.
You are looking it at from outside the game as just numbers with information that may not be available in game and assuming you predicted all the variables when there may be something unknown or you over looked.

Basically any troops that saw a bug kill and eat his battle buddy would at the very least have PTSD if not random insanities. It would greatly reduce the combat efficiency of such a unit.

[Axelmania]

This is why you are ordered not to look up as they impale him with a chitin spear, and the eating might be delayed until the corpse is carried back to the hive.

I think these aircraft have minimissiles for defensive purposes. Also if someone does start LRMing your plane, I think the Nightwing has LRMs of its own to shoot back.

Enemies would also have to weigh if it's worth saving the Xiticix to harm the CS. I could see Lazlo as not interfering, and who else is north by the hives? FQ are buddies now.

[Eagle]

Ultimately the CS should be able to wipe out the Xiticix. I'd say the only reason they haven't yet is because the bugs mostly keep to their own territory and don't invade CS lands (or haven't yet). The CS has other threats that they want to deal with first, things that are more personal to them.

If I was the CS, I'd just rain down long range missiles on the hives. The CWC book says they've got 30 Talon stealth fighters, and each one can carry 6 LRMs. Fly them away from Chi-Town, maybe over the Great Lakes (so nobody can track them back to the source), and just unload 180 LRMs at a hive. Sure, there are underground tunnels, but you'll have killed a lot of bugs. Then wait until they start to rebuild, and do it again like a week later. Attacks like that should be able to keep the bug population in check. Eventually you'll have to go down into the tunnels, but you've got hordes of skelebots for that. You might use your trade agreement with the NGR to get some of those little robots that seek out gargoyle eggs and blow them up. Send hordes of those after Xiticix eggs and nits and you might make a serious dent in their population.

Though one of the best ways to fight them would be if you could artificially reproduce the chemicals they rely on. Imagine if you could crop dust the hive with "death scent" and then lead a trail directly to another hive. Let the creatures go to war with each other.

[Shark_Force]

Ultimately the CS should be able to wipe out the Xiticix. I'd say the only reason they haven't yet is because the bugs mostly keep to their own territory and don't invade CS lands (or haven't yet). The CS has other threats that they want to deal with first, things that are more personal to them.

If I was the CS, I'd just rain down long range missiles on the hives. The CWC book says they've got 30 Talon stealth fighters, and each one can carry 6 LRMs. Fly them away from Chi-Town, maybe over the Great Lakes (so nobody can track them back to the source), and just unload 180 LRMs at a hive. Sure, there are underground tunnels, but you'll have killed a lot of bugs. Then wait until they start to rebuild, and do it again like a week later. Attacks like that should be able to keep the bug population in check. Eventually you'll have to go down into the tunnels, but you've got hordes of skelebots for that. You might use your trade agreement with the NGR to get some of those little robots that seek out gargoyle eggs and blow them up. Send hordes of those after Xiticix eggs and nits and you might make a serious dent in their population.

Though one of the best ways to fight them would be if you could artificially reproduce the chemicals they rely on. Imagine if you could crop dust the hive with "death scent" and then lead a trail directly to another hive. Let the creatures go to war with each other.

you seem to have some mistaken ideas about the number of xiticix in north america. killer cyborg has a post where he did a ton of research somewhere on the forums, but it's a bit of a pain to dig up. long story short, i believe the absolute minimum number of bugs in north america should be something like 1.2 billion (200 million per hive). but more probably it's up around 2 billion or more. and the numbers are climbing fast.

you're going to need a lot more than 30 fighters to make any significant progress. and you're going to need to have an answer ready in case the bugs just decide to send out a couple hundred million warriors to destroy anything they think might possibly be the source, or if they just start striking out blindly at anything near them.

[eliakon]

For the curious about what happens when Xitcix eat a quarter of your friends?
There are some shell shock rules on page 58 of the Coalition War Campaign and of course the Insanity rules starting on page 330 of RUE.
Using these it is probably safe to assume that you would have a lot of people with Insanities and/or Shell Shock (Xitcix)

[Mack]

This is why you are ordered not to look up as they impale him with a chitin spear,

Ordered to not look up?

Are these are men, not 'bots.

[Killer Cyborg]

For the curious about what happens when Xitcix eat a quarter of your friends?
There are some shell shock rules on page 58 of the Coalition War Campaign and of course the Insanity rules starting on page 330 of RUE.
Using these it is probably safe to assume that you would have a lot of people with Insanities and/or Shell Shock (Xitcix)

Yup.

As a GM, I sometimes house-rule specific results instead of going with the random rolls, though.
IF somebody's trauma-induced phobia is from watching a Xiticix Super Warrior rip off a friend's head, for example, I might just decide that the guy has a phobia of insects, rather than to roll the dice and have him/her/it end up with a fear of snakes or psychic strangers.
It just makes more sense that way.

On the other hand, in real life a woman named Joy Underwood, after handling murder victims' bodies through her job at the local PD, ended up with a trauma-induced insanity that was only indirectly related to the trauma itself:
I still have the taste of death in my mouth, I can’t eat vegetables grown in the ground because they have dirt around them, like the people dug up in Puente’s yard - and I’m a vegetarian.

So in theory, if the guy who was traumatized by watching his buddy's head get ripped off by a Xiticix somehow associated the event with a snake, then a phobia of snakes might well be perfectly possible.
Insanity doesn't always make sense.

Sometimes, that's even an interesting bit of character flavor to explore.
If your character's friend's head gets ripped off by a Xiticix, and the character ends up with randomly rolled fear that doesn't make linear sense, come up with a fun/interesting reason why:
Undead--because he thought the corpse still moved after the head was removed, perhaps.
Reptiles--because they're cold-blooded, and it was such a cold-blooded murder.
Mutants--because his murdered friend had a minor mutation, and the friend was murdered, which goes to show that you can't count on or trust mutants.
Snakes--because he saw a snake earlier in the day, thought it was a bad omen, then his friend was murdered, so he thinks that snakes are always terrible news.

And so on, and so forth.

[Eagle]

you seem to have some mistaken ideas about the number of xiticix in north america. killer cyborg has a post where he did a ton of research somewhere on the forums, but it's a bit of a pain to dig up. long story short, i believe the absolute minimum number of bugs in north america should be something like 1.2 billion (200 million per hive). but more probably it's up around 2 billion or more. and the numbers are climbing fast.

you're going to need a lot more than 30 fighters to make any significant progress. and you're going to need to have an answer ready in case the bugs just decide to send out a couple hundred million warriors to destroy anything they think might possibly be the source, or if they just start striking out blindly at anything near them.

Let them strike out at anything near them. You're the Coalition, what good is being the bad guy if you have to care about what happens to others? You can fire LRMs from Texas and still hit the hivelands. I'm just pointing out that with 30 stealth fighters, you can launch 180 LRMs (proton torpedo, nuclear multi-warhead, whatever) from anywhere on the continent in a span of about one melee round.

I think a billion Xiticix is way too high, but I'm willing to look at the numbers. In the end, while they're dangerous in man to man combat, they have massive weaknesses when it comes to strategic warfare. The CS can strike basically with impunity.

[glitterboy2098]

also worth noting that 90% of the xiticix population is deep underground, in hives that go over a mile deep. which is why everyone underestimates their population.

not even the multi-hundred kiloton city-killer nukes from SB4 could make much a of a dent (even if your doing ground bursts. the tunnels are reinforced with MDC level resin, go way deeper than the blasts could reach with destructive shockwaves, and their worker bugs can easily dig whole new hives fairly fast from what is untouched.)

the CS is unaware of exactly how extensive and deep these hives go.. but they do know they can't just nuke them off the map, that they will have to fight the bugs tunnel by tunnel.

[Axelmania]

Missiles seem costly. If younare going to have millions of nuclear reactors capable of powering unlimited laser beams for years, may as.well exploit it. Save missiles for more dangerous enemies. If 6000ft lasers and railguns are enough to outshoot the Xiticix, I would use those resources.

Even from the main book, the humble spider skull walker could do it. Although this was before I knew what rail gun ammo cost.

[Ed]

Pump the hives full of mdc butane. Massive fuel air bombs.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

I think a billion Xiticix is way too high, but I'm willing to look at the numbers. In the end, while they're dangerous in man to man combat, they have massive weaknesses when it comes to strategic warfare. The CS can strike basically with impunity.

Low side, honestly.

Read Xiticix Invasion.

The main hive (Duluth) didn't even spawn a new hive until it hit over 300 million. And it has spawned FIVE TIMES.

The new hives are about to hit the population where they will spawn new hives (meaning they are each approaching 300 million).

There are a staggering number of bugs on the continent.

[Incriptus]

Have a buddy with supress fear handy?
Take the Mega-Damage equivelent of Xanax?
When I get home I have have a psychic therapist?

[Jefffar]

Removed the off topic posts. Just a reminder, derailing threads with off topic posts, especially when there are already other threads set aside for such discussions, is considered Spam and a violation of the forum rules.

[Axelmania]

1.5 months later... going to figure this is what the warning I got was about because the link wouldn't work probably because it was to a deleted post. Although I'm not sure if you can derail a thread you created..