Looking for ideas: Northern Gun in my table top game

[SycophantNagaraja]

Ok so I'm in the process of fleshing out some background for my game set in the New West and was hoping to get some ideas. What the players are going to stumble upon eventually is the remains of a Tactical Recon unit from the Army of the Southern Cross who have over the past 20 years rebuilt their numbers up to 300ish and have worked with Northern Gun to repair and produce the 3 mech units they managed to bring with them (TC Recon Battloid, CDC Heavy Battloid, and Tomahawk Destroid). And I have the first conversion book so using the notes from there for Robotech will be taken into account.

Now the Battloids were nuclear powered so they didn't have to have their power plants retooled but the Destroid obviously would (which would have taken them longer to finish). My thought initially would be that the Battloids could be marketed to lower income communities such as smaller kingdoms/domains or merc units and be specifically redesigned based on the original form but with potential modular upgrades that could be add-ons like a car dealership.

But what do you think about potentially upping the damage capacity of their main weapons just a touch? What would you do differently with the Tomahawk?

Thoughts?

[glitterboy2098]

1st or 2nd edition robotech? because the stats vary between the two versions, effecting the choices.

[SycophantNagaraja]

sorry forgot about that. I only have 1st ed

[boring7]

Well, I don't have the robotech books, but here are some random thoughts:

For defense units you're just selling, a nuke plant isn't necessary. Batteries charged by solar should have enough for a homebody of a mech that never goes too far and are a lot cheaper.

Having recently been looking at "how you defend a town" the best options are generally GAW tanks, they have a LOT of cheap-o tanks that get the job done without a hefty price tag. For the most part I don't think Northern Gun even TRIES to compete in that market, preferring to sell bigger tanks to bigger customers.

That being said, the big deal with merc groups and the "used car and mod shop" routine is going to be mobility and flexibility. Gonna be plenty of mercs want to trade the heavy laser they ripped off (literally, there's wires hanging off it) an Abolisher because it's a good part and they're short on actual cash. I know this because I've PLAYED those mercs, that's how it goes. And they'll want the thing they buy to be able to move long distances because they're on the run from the owners of that Abolisher.

Come to think of it, mounting brackets and/or a sort of "backpack" for the robot to carry things might be a thing that would make a regular appearance in the mod-requests. Bravo Company just spent all their cash buying the big, shiny robot vehicle before realizing they needed to buy a truck to carry their food and tents in.

[SycophantNagaraja]

interesting. I hadn't really thought of GAW in this sense because I figured Tactical Recon would likely avoid the low end items like the refurbished Abrams and stick to the vehicles they were more familiar with (such as refurbished Southern Cross Battloids).

I'll have to give that a thought.

[glitterboy2098]

breaking out my 1st ed stuff (i prefer 2nd ed *shrug*)

i'd say do an engine swap on all of them anyway. the 1st ed ASC used fusion systems, while rifts leans more towards Fission, with fusion being a more recent and less common set up. switching to a Fission or Solid Oxide Fuel Cell system would make the logistics and repairs a bit easier. armor and motors shouldn't be too different tech base wise, but the fusion powerplants in 1st ed robotech would likely be based too much on alien tech and thus harder to repair using rifts built parts. rifts fission tech seems fairly potent so i doubt that there would be too much of a performance difference.
also, whether the ASC battloids used non-protoculture systems at all in 1st ed is debatable, because there are contradictory statements in the RPG book. some entries indicated they do use PC, some don't. (the equipment and systems entries say they do, as do the introductory paragraphs for the mecha, but the powerplant entries on the individual mecha mention fusion.) the old Conversion book 1 claims the ASC mecha use protoculture as well.
so an engine swap to rifts tech could help bypass some of the issues with possible nitpickers.
the downside is that per the old conversion book 1 rules, the mecha lose 1/2 their extra attacks and bonuses when converted.


vehicle specific:
Tactical Recon Battloid: pretty good design to start with. good speed and it's weapons aren't too bad on an individual basis. the problem is that it just lacks sufficent weaponry to fight in rifts, and is very lightly armored. it is basically a mecha the size of a UAR-1 that is more fragile and has less firepower than a SAMAS. however it's sensors are pretty good.
the armor can be addressed using the old conversion book 1 armor addition/refit option, which would add another 200 MDC to the main body. the limbs and other parts would still be a bit fragile, but 350 mdc for the main body would make it somewhat more survivable.
firepower wise the issue is that relying on the gunpod and the head lasers means your limited. one way to resolve this would be to arrange the installation of packs of missiles, say minimissiles. box launchers like the SAMAS has on its arm, little more than a collection of tubes, should be easy enough to fit to the forearms, shoulders, and/or torso.

the CDC heavy battloid is pretty much the same. it really needs the armor improvement (bringing it to 350 mdc main body) as well as some sort of additional weapons. again, minimissile packs would be the easiest to arrange, though since this battloid is slower and lacks the superior sensors, rigging up heavier missiles (SRM packs, or even MRM's) would be advisable.

the Excalibur/Tomahawk (1st ed called them Excalibur's) : a real powerhouse in robotech and rifts. the conversion book 1 refits mean it loses some bonuses and attacks, but it gains +300 mdc to the main body when rebuilt, giving it a whopping 600 mdc there. not quite as good as the handful of similar sized mecha in rifts, but the Excalibur has massive firepower with its SRM's, MRM's, gun clusters, and PBC's. the PBC's have range way better range than most big guns in rifts (on par with a boomgun!) although they lack the punch you'd expect. i can't suggest much of any real changes to the weapons, aside from making a ruling as to whether the Machineguns in the head and gun clusters use standard SDC rounds or special types. which would effect how easy or hard it would be to get replacement ammo in rifts. i do suggest that the Destroid always use a 2 man crew, so that you can maximize your number of attacks with its arsenal. (especially given the way the engine swap reduces the extra attacks and bonuses you get)
(though if you want capabilities not found in rifts, use the Raider-X from 1st ed.. those arm lasers have extremely long range, and the anti-aircraft sensors are very potent. with the extra armor it would still be fairly tough too)


one thing worth suggesting. if this ASC group has become a protective organization, akin to groups like the tundra rangers, and have recruited local recruits, it is possible they have adopted rifts hardware modified with custom appearances. Crusader armor for example, could probably be modified to resemble the ASC looks. they might have purchased Sampson Power Armor (which could also easily be modified with some of the quasi-knight design using false panels and the like), Ulti-max's (which already rather resembles ASC mecha), and perhaps Titan combat robots (can't really be modified to look ASC, but are very similar in role)

[SycophantNagaraja]

GB: Good stuff. And yes the idea is for the players to eventually meet these guys (The former ASC unit is an NPC entity that the players will likely join up with) when they finally come back to the location they first entered Rifts from. So by the time these guys come back they are much more ready for what Rifts Earth has to throw at them and have increased their forces up to low Battalion/cohort strength.

Brief background: The ASC accidentally rifted into the world during the initial Invid invasion (their spaceworthy ship attempted an ill-advised low atmo space fold and took a lot of damage mid fold, eventually blowing up) around 87 PA in the badlands of Utah. When they managed to collect themselves and what was blown through the Rift during the explosion this is what they ended up with:

50 total
2 civilian scientists (1 Botanist and 1 Thermodynamic)
30 Tactical Corp
15 Recon Escort Patrol
5 Civil Defense

3 Battloids (2 Recon, 1 CDC Heavy) stocked
1 Destroid (Tomahawk) stocked
2 VC-33s fueled and ready
A couple extra rifles and pistols plus what we came with
3 extra suits of T.A.F armor with forearm shields
2 APTs
5 hover cycles

By the time the game picks up it's 107 PA and the War in Tolkeen is already well under way and refugees are making their way westward. The ASC unit eventually found (32nd Tactical Corp) their way to Northern Gun and spent time working as mercs in exchange for money, supplies, and obviously refits to existing military hardware and possibly a few more added allowing them to become more of a Mechanized Battalion. They still have it stuck in their head that it's possible for more of their comrades to show up like they did out in the wilds of Utah so they opt to help forge a small settlement closer to the Arizona/Utah boarder and as you called it, take up a Tundra Ranger-esque like role but also helping refugees/D-bees.

I like the ideas about the rocket tubes and box rocket launchers. But do you think the gun clusters in the Tomahawk/Excalibur main body could be replaced with plasma ejectors similar to the C-27? Just thinking out loud really but I'd imagine they would be good candidates for some kind of upgrade/replacement. And I think the Battloids could be fit with some kind of rail gun akin to the SAMAS unit (shoulder mount perhaps)?

[glitterboy2098]

i'd be wary of doing gun swaps because a C-27 is about the size of the head MG's on a tomahawk. those gun clusters contain a 180mm mortar, a flamethrower, a laser, and a 30mm cannon. you could fit about 12 C-27's into that space with room to spare. and once you start going that route, you quickly get into difficult to balance territory, like any other "fire link large numbers of infantry guns together" scheme.

so i'd be careful with any weapon swap ideas. they might be fun.. but they could also be problematic. my suggestion would be to look at other systems of a comparable scale. so replacing a guncluster with an infantry rifle is probably not viable. but you might be able to replace one with a C-144 autocannon off a IAR-2 Abolisher, or something similar. though the gun clusters varied weapons types are so flexible and useful i don't know why you'd want to remove them intentionally.

[SycophantNagaraja]

I've never found those gun clusters too terribly useful, primarily because of the SDC component. Like the grenade launchers could be useful (explosive, smoke, large flashbang, etc) but this unit wouldn't be used primarily in civilized urban settings and given all that Rifts can throw at you I would think it would be smarter to close that gap.

But I'm open to ideas. I mean that's the whole reason for this thread

[guardiandashi]

with the gun cluster I would say the simple answer is replace the guns with a "similar" rifts equivalent.
the autocannon, and machineguns could be replaced with railguns, but the grenade launcher.... unless its damaged I would just replace the ammo, I figure you could fit a missile or other grenade warhead in as a "grenade" because a 180mm grenade is pretty huge

[boring7]

Further disclosure: My experience with robotech is the americanized anime as it played on scifi channel 20-ish years ago and the novel "the end of the circle" (which I have just found isn't even canon anymore).

More wild, random, (probably bad) ideas:
-SPAAAAAACE! I don't know if any of those vehicles can reach orbit, but if any of them can fly high enough they might attract the attention of the killsats and the mutants in orbit.

-Cheating: Specifically the rule that NPCs and NPC stuff can cheat or exploit rules that are forbidden to PCs. A missile launcher that replenishes its ammo magically (and now has a personality, and the Techno-wizard who made it is still running around being a plot element) can be fun, but you want it only getting use when properly cinematic. Other options might include taking that "engine conversion halves attacks" rule and reversing it. The Battloid Fusion Plant can be stuffed into anything in the Northern Gun catalog and double its relevant stats. Now we have a very exciting macguffin.

-You have a botanist? You may have protoculture. Going from my dusty (bad) memory protoculture was literally a magic plant (or products made from it) that was unleashed upon the earth writ-large (after Haydon blahblahblahnoonecares) right before the Invid Invasion. S/he could have spores that grew quite well in Robotech Earth and could grow well/better on Rifts Earth.

Oh wait, that's in the conversion book:

Ironically, protoculture plants can grow on Rifts Earth, though not within 100 miles of a ley line, but RDF and Southern Cross characters don't even know how protoculture works and don't know they could grow the crucial plants if they had some seeds.

So...it COULD happen, but it would be a surprise discovery.

-The plot you have sounds interesting. If the ASC is expecting (hoping) for more ASC to arrive they'd have set up supply stores, housing, defensive fortifications, and scouted the area (among other things, hoping to set up listening posts and whatnot to keep an ear out for more survivors) and gotten some lay of the land. Basically they'd have constructed a community with a big empty space for people to be slotted into just in time for a completely DIFFERENT band of refugees to come stumbling in and begging for help. Now presumably the big flash mega-mages are all dead or elsewhere, but there could be plenty of hedge-mages and weaksauce magic experts adding wyrd to Ascii Base.

-There are a lot of (seems to me) under-utilized power groups and their amusing (and sometimes offensive) toys in the New West. From giant snakes to the War Chief power armor. NG won't be the only player meddling in the affairs of the ASC and vice-versa. Vampires like the desert.

[SycophantNagaraja]

Boring: exactly! Usually when I run a Rifts game its either been in North America proper (in and around the Coalition) or east of there. Delving into the New West I thought would be an interesting change of pace.

Regarding some of your other comments

-Space: ASC in my campaign does not have any space-worthy vehicles and the only one they had resulted in their appearance on Rifts Earth.

-Protoculture: I don't think I'm going to go down that route but I may later on. I haven't decided if I want another Rift to accidentally rip open near the PCs and NPCs just yet. My plan right now is to let the new characters get acclimated with Rifts Earth and this new Tactical Recon Battalion and start using Psi-Stalkers, Native Americans (specifically the Utes), Simvans, and bandits/slavers hounding refugees. As the PCs are from Phoenix in 2017 I'm sure they will want to recon that area soon enough which means vamps

guardiandashi: yeah that's similar to what GB was saying above and I think they are all good ideas. Probably more suiting to look at what has been made prior on mech or vehicles of similar size and shoehorn in something from there. I like it and I may try and find someone artistically inclined to help me make visuals

[glitterboy2098]

make sure that you factor in the relative sizes. the typical Rifts piloted bot runs 20-30 feet.
ASC battloids tend to be about 18-20 feet tall
the old destroids run about 50 feet.

it can be easy to forget that that Tomahawk is going to tower over the typical rifts bots.

[SycophantNagaraja]

I should probably give it a HF rating

[guardiandashi]

re the protoculture thing.

in the old (decanonized) robotech thing the protoculture plants history is a lot more complicated.
the plants originally evolved on earth, but proto humans would never have gotten anything from them.
Haydon, the original, being a crazy busybody got ALL of those plants and removed them from earth, and spread them to a number of other planets. the Invid, developed a symbiotic relationship with them and then became dependent upon them.
Zor (the original) thought they were cool and managed to get some of the secrets of the plants from the regis, the robotech masters then went and stole all of the "special" plants from optera (the invid homeworld) and basically defoliated it, then tried to spread the plants to a number of other planets at which point they discovered that the plant is "touchy" and mutates when outside certain environments.
Zor then stole his last or only? true protoculture matrix, loaded it in the ship that was/became the SDF-1 and sent it to earth "because visions"
the robotech masters deprived of the main reason for their power, sent their slave troops (the Zentradi) to retrieve the matrix, and the events of "Macross" followed.

the big mind game in "End of the circle" is that you find out that Rem, (a Zor clone) and Minmei are somehow the original Zor's parents, and that part of the matrix's containment requires musical harmonics to work properly, and Minmei's songs for some reason work the best.

with all that said the protoculture bioenergy from that version is at least in caused by preventing the plants from going through part of their reproductive cycle.

its all a big mind twist.

[boring7]

Yeah, I kinda liked that novel. Tied everything in a bow and still managed to not stink.

[SycophantNagaraja]

I'm glad they de-canonized them. I never read them all but I knew a guy who did who infrequently told me about them and tried to bring up stuff in the books for the game.

So then follow up question to the comments above: so the merc group/defenders will be about 300 strong not counting the PCs. In addition to what I listed above as what they started with, what would you bolster their forces with knowing that you were on a budget (but likely had a preferred customer status with NG). The idea being that they will probably need at least 1 mechanized division and hopefully 1 close air support wing.

[SycophantNagaraja]

also does the Coalition or anyone in Rifts have an AWACS style plane for advanced observation/coordination? I went through the books I have and I'm not seeing anything like it

[glitterboy2098]

Yeah, I kinda liked that novel. Tied everything in a bow and still managed to not stink.

opinions widely differ

So then follow up question to the comments above: so the merc group/defenders will be about 300 strong not counting the PCs. In addition to what I listed above as what they started with, what would you bolster their forces with knowing that you were on a budget (but likely had a preferred customer status with NG). The idea being that they will probably need at least 1 mechanized division and hopefully 1 close air support wing.

a division is 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers. a Wing is 200 planes organized into 10 squadrons. i assume you mean "a mechanized unit" and "a close air support unit"
i did make a few suggestions earlier. but if you would prefer NG products. though you might want to be specific about the timeframe your using. will help figure out what stuff from say Mercops and NG1 and NG2 might be available.

for airpower, the NG Sky King ought to be fairly common. with twin railgun-MG's and minimissiles it can do a decent job of light air support. and it is VTOL and rough field capable. if your looking for a bigger option, the NG Dragonfly hover-chopper from MercOps might fit.

[SycophantNagaraja]

I was only using the terms to denote the unit not the actual size but thank you for clarifying

As for your comments before GB: no I read them and I like them a lot. I probably should have clarified more and said "what else". Because it seems like mechs would need some kind of additional support around it to make it effective. I don't normally use actual military unit sizes and I'm wanting to for this particular game and with capping them currently at 300 I'm trying to figure out what would be the best way to divvy them up into units. I'm also trying to take into consideration the type of military they are coming from. TC is supposed to be like the US Marines according to the book and REP is similar but more specialized. Finding the military unit sizes is easy, knowing how to break them up without actually having that experience isn't (at least for me). And the timeframe is now 107 PA so I think some of the stuff from the NG books should be available as well as Merc Ops (I only have NG 1 and Merc Ops)

Plus I don't want to overdo the available units either. So if I add the Ultimax and Sampson power armors I'm thinking maybe 2 at most or do you think there would be more?

[boring7]

Might be fun to have one or two "piecemeal" items that were battlefield salvage. Like an NA Warchief that is missing its legs (retrofitted with a Dalek-style "skirt" and only used for localized defense because it can barely move perhaps) or something else. Aside from their friendship with NG they're essentially refugees, even if they are well-armed.