A Question About Juicers...

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LostOne
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A Question About Juicers...

Unread post by LostOne »

A question about Juicers. They have this harness with armored tubes delivering drugs to their extremities. But what happens when the tubes or harness get damaged? Say we have a normal juicer. He’s SDC but he loses a hand to a runesword swing. That sword is going to easily take the SDC hand off at the elbow and chances are that thin armored tube is going to be sliced too. Or maybe it's one of the MDC juicers and he's near an MDC plasma explosion strong enough to burn the tubing away. Now given the nature of the injection system is a pressurized injection system, is the harness smart enough to cut off pressure to that tube individually or did the juicer just suffer catastrophic pressure loss to his entire injection system? I would assume the one tube would be cut off, it's probably a common enough occurrence on the battlefield when you have SDC regular juicers only wearing armor on their chest. If the rest of the limb injection systems still function with pressure, he could probably still run away grasping his arm stump tightly enough to act as a tourniquet. If he loses complete pressure to all injection points, he’s in sudden withdrawal and assuming he doesn’t immediately have catastrophic problems like a heart attack he’s completely at the mercy of his attacker. In either case, what penalties might there be? Has this been written up anywhere? I don’t recall seeing it in the RMB or Juicer Uprising, but maybe in a Rifter? Now let’s take it further. Say the juicer is perfectly intact, but someone deliberately targets the hose (GM makes it a heckuva penalty on a called shot with a runesword, or maybe the juicer is restrained when this happens but soon after escapes). Now that limb is intact but isn’t getting the drugs. What penalties then?

Has anyone had the idea of an internal injection system? Still have the chest harness but it connects to subdermal tubing that has been inserted under the skin from chest to wrists and ankles. Is that written up anywhere? In that case you'd have to lose a limb to have this problem, someone couldn't target the tubing.
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Re: A Question About Juicers...

Unread post by Nightmartree »

I don't think the drugs would wear off fast enough for a combat to actually have an effect from a damaged harness, and its supposed to be a super tech from before the rifts with nanites and a medical computer smart enough to regulate your body chemistry at any moment. so chances are if you lose a hose in combat...it compensates with doses elsewhere while shutting down the severed hose.

and do they actually say how fast withdrawal hits?i don't think it will be instant just because his body needs time to process the drugs already in it, though if they somehow shoot or cut ALL of his injection tubes ect and strip the harness off him i figure he will enter it pretty fast but likely not IN combat, maybe a few hours?

so basically baring an extremely unlikely circumstance his harness should compensate and be okay until he gets repairs, and even if the harness goes bye bye he should at least have time to finish the fight and possibly be rushed to a doctor who can reharness or drug him up so he doesn't crash and die (though likely suffers bad) until his allies can find a new harness...or he dies of withdrawl (heck maybe he beats it you never know...)
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wyrmraker
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Re: A Question About Juicers...

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Personally, I think that the tubes running to the extremities are mostly part of the monitoring system and acting as a reserve spot-dosage unit. I would think that the grand majority of the drugs would be delivered through the main artery in the chest for faster distribution through the body. The bio-comp system would most likely deliver painkillers and clotting agents, and little else would happen.

I would also like to know how long withdrawal takes, Say, your juicer gets caught in the hinterlands when his six month supply runs out.
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Re: A Question About Juicers...

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So if the wrist and ankle bands are mostly to monitor drug dispersal and occasionally administer micro-doses to supplement, I think they'd be more effective as separate units using bluetooth or whatever better they come up with between now and the coming of the Rifts. Something difficult to jam. A few ampules of drug doses can easily be stored in each band. Because even if they're just monitoring there would still be a problem with the cable being cut.
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Re: A Question About Juicers...

Unread post by Nightmartree »

This thread is now making me think of how you could de-harness a juicer without dying, my favorite one is the mage spell "De-harness Juicer" better known as "Teleport without clothes" a super rare spell that is actually a lower leveled form of teleport for those who weren't quite sure they could teleport a person and their items...though this spell has been put to other uses over the years including its form as the "Juicer Detox". A surefire way to remove a juicer attempting to Detox from his "Relapse Harness". You wouldn't believe what a determined and nearly crippled from withdraw juicer can manage to smuggle into your local neighborhood detox center!
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Re: A Question About Juicers...

Unread post by Axelmania »

Wouldn't metamorphosis on a juicer cause problems with their tubes?
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Re: A Question About Juicers...

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

LostOne wrote:A question about Juicers. They have this harness with armored tubes delivering drugs to their extremities. But what happens when the tubes or harness get damaged?


viewtopic.php?p=1945122#p1945122
Killer Cyborg wrote:Alright, ya all done made me dig out my Rifts main book.

Juicers augmentation systems are composed of several parts (Rifts, 68-69):
1. The Bio-Comp(uter) that maintains the body at maximum levels of efficiency through controlling natural chemical responses (like adrenaline and hormones) as well as injection of artificial chemicals through the Drug Harness. A Bio-Comp is a postage-stamp-sized mega-computer implanted inot the subject's head and/or chest. There are usually two of them, in case one malfunctions.
2. The Drug Harness is a soft, padded harness that is worn under clothing and/or armor, consisting of tubes running from a central dispensary system to injection collars around the juicer's neck, wrists, upper arms, and legs.
3. IRMSS Housing units (one internal, one external). The internal IRMSS housing is located in the neck, and is controlled through the bio-comp system, and the nano-bots are rechargeable. The external system is a circular plate over the heart that can be activated by pounding on the plate. Unlike the internal system, these nano-bots are one-time use only, and refills must be bought as they're used.

If you look at the illustration on p. 70 of Rifts, you can see the above detailed.
You can see the injection collars.
You can see the tubes running to the central unit, a round plate located at the solar plexus, and you can see the external IRMSS plate located over the heart.

Answering the original post:
what happens if the Bio-comp system is damaged?


This is unlikely, because the bio-comp system is very small, and internal. In order for one of the chips to take damage from an attack, the attack would have to pierce the Juicer's brain and/or chest, in just the rights spot to hit one of the two chips.
In cases where this happens, the juicer is probably dead anyway.
IF the juicer survives, the bio-comp system will keep working due to the secondary chip.
IF somehow both chips are damaged, and the juicer is somehow still alive, then he'd go into detox, but this is unlikely to actually ever happen.

Can it be targeted?


Only if you're a really good sniper who has x-ray vision. The strike penalties would be incredible.

Are the tubes carrying the drugs targetable?


Yes, unless the Juicer is wearing armor that covers them.
Standard Juicer Plate armor leaves some of the tubes on the arms exposed, as well as what appears to be some kind of interface device (probably so that the Juicer can manually control his own drug input), so it would be possible to hit some of the tubes and damage/sever them.
However, due to the apparent elegance and redundancy of the system overall, I suspect that all that would happen is that the bio-comp system would shut off the drug flow to those tubes so as not to waste any drugs, rerouting the drugs through the other injection collars. Since the drugs enter the bloodstream through 9 different points of the body through five different tubes, only three of which tubes are exposed (arms and throat, going by the illustrations on p. 70-71), I'd say that destroying any one or two tubes wouldn't have any effect on the juicer; you'd have to destroy all of them.
Killing the juicer would likely be easier.
Hitting the tubes would require a Called Shot made at penalties, or the equivalent of a Called Shot in melee combat (something that may or may not officially exist).
Good luck with that.

Furthermore, even if you DO manage to wreck the drug harness, the Juicer won't really be slowed down much. There will already be drugs in his system, and the bio-comp system will still regulate the production of adrenaline and hormones, which is why removal of the bio-comp system is crucial to undergoing detox (Rifts 70).
There might be some long-term effects of going without the enhancement drugs, but I don't believe that there would be any penalties for the duration of combat. After a while, standard drug withdrawal penalties would kick in, and there might be some additional problems in specific cases where the bio-comp can't compensate for the lack of drugs through natural hormones.
(Although the withdrawal penalties themselves might well be entirely compensated for simply through increased dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and other hormones, at least for a while).

Edit:
Keep in mind, I never cracked Juicer Uprising once during the composition of this answer. There might be some information in there that changes things, but I'm not going to bother looking right now; I have other things to do. ;)
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Re: A Question About Juicers...

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I agree that any damage to the harness won't actually affect the Juicer until the effects of the drugs already in his system wears off. Though how long this would be may be open to interpretation.

In a recent adventure I had the big bad mage cast 'liquids to water' on the liquid in the drugs harness, cleansing it of all the drugs inside. Some folks might say this could be an abuse of the spell, but it was almost the end of the campaign and I thought it would be cool. The 'purification' spell might work for this too. The only initial effect was psychological - I had the juicer save vs insanity and gave him some penalties as a result of the failed save due to the distraction and fear that he might be losing his 'power'. By the time of the final fight with their (previously assumed to be dead) nemesis, the juicer was experiencing the first stages of withdrawal, as per the normal drug withdrawal rules, as I couldn't find anything specific regarding the removial of the Juicer harness. Because it was short term, I didn't reduce his attributes or have the proper effects of detoxification come into effect at that time. At the end of the campaign he had more than enough of a cash reward to get himself a replacement batch of juicer drugs no problem.

Also, how about a psychic using 'telemechanic mental operation' to cause the drug dispensors to inject the juicer with his sleepytime drugs? :twisted:
or would the harness count as a 'cybernetic device' (as is it controlled by the cybernetic bio-comp chip) and be therefore immune?
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Re: A Question About Juicers...

Unread post by LostOne »

Killer Cyborg, very well written and thought out response, thank you.

Soldier of Od, considering the microchips controlling the drug system are inside the body I'd consider them cybernetic.
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Re: A Question About Juicers...

Unread post by Nightmartree »

Soldier of Od wrote:Also, how about a psychic using 'telemechanic mental operation' to cause the drug dispensors to inject the juicer with his sleepytime drugs? :twisted:
or would the harness count as a 'cybernetic device' (as is it controlled by the cybernetic bio-comp chip) and be therefore immune?


as an internal part of the juicer i'd probably not count it, that said if you could do it why do sleep time?pump him so full of his hyper drugs his heart explodes
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Re: A Question About Juicers...

Unread post by Killer Cyborg »

LostOne wrote:Killer Cyborg, very well written and thought out response, thank you.


:ok:

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