HI-jacking PA or robots using psychic powers? Hows it work?

[slade2501]

A player brought this question to me, and after some research I am a little conflicted.

1. tm mental operation lets you basically wrestle over the controls with the pilot, and only works as long as the armor/robot is turned on. how do we roll or game mechanic the fight for controls? attacks per melee, roll for initiative?

2. how do we extract the pilot? can you command power armor to open up? does it remain "on" when cracked open? Do robots have ejector seats or computer controlled seat belts? can you cut the air to a cockpit or pilot's compartment?

3. TM mental operation and TM paralysis are mutually exclusive as it clearly states that one lets the psychic mentally grab the controls while the other says that it cuts the control signals to paralyze the machine, letting NO ONE control it. Am I wrong?

4. regular Telemechanics gives the player knowledge, but no ability to gain control unless the player REALLY thinks outside the box, like broadcasting a secret shutdown code from the manufacturer to prevent theft or rogue pilots. Does this make sense?

5. TM Mental Operation does not allow for VOICE COMMANDS does it now? Do many or any power armor or robots utilize voice commands? And if so, what functions?

6. we know that PA pilots can't carry weapons or wear armor inside their power armor, but what about robot pilots? do they regularly wear environmental armor when driving? how quick can they access storage for a weapon or explosive? could they scramble into armor if the air is shut off?

7. Am I over thinking this? have I read too many stories about tank crews in WWII defending their tanks from sappers, grenades, flamethrowers and satchel charges?

[Nekira Sudacne]

A player brought this question to me, and after some research I am a little conflicted.

1. tm mental operation lets you basically wrestle over the controls with the pilot, and only works as long as the armor/robot is turned on. how do we roll or game mechanic the fight for controls? attacks per melee, roll for initiative?

There is no fight for controls. There is no saving throw. At the same time, TM Mental Operation doesn't give them full control or let them shut out the pilot. all it means is they can manipulate one of it's features once per turn. The TM Operator can issue a fire command, a shutdown command, or activate the windsheild wipers. he cannot shut out the pilot from taking his turns, unless he tries to shut down the robot, and as TM is a widely known ability in Rifts, one can assume that Robots and Power Armor are made so there is no command to just shut them down in combat, there has to be a complex and multi-step proceedure.

In short, it's not useful for fighting for controls. both characters get to control the robot, and both always succeed on their turn.

2. how do we extract the pilot? can you command power armor to open up? does it remain "on" when cracked open? Do robots have ejector seats or computer controlled seat belts? can you cut the air to a cockpit or pilot's compartment?

Robots and power armor only have ejector seats if the writeup says they do: Almost no Rifts mechs do. There's sure to be an open command, so you could do that.

3. TM mental operation and TM paralysis are mutually exclusive as it clearly states that one lets the psychic mentally grab the controls while the other says that it cuts the control signals to paralyze the machine, letting NO ONE control it. Am I wrong?

Correct. The thing your wrong on, is thinking TM Mental Operation means that you can stop the pilot from using it. TM Mental Operation does nothing to prevent the pilot. rather you both have the controls simultaniously and cannot really interact with each-other.

4. regular Telemechanics gives the player knowledge, but no ability to gain control unless the player REALLY thinks outside the box, like broadcasting a secret shutdown code from the manufacturer to prevent theft or rogue pilots. Does this make sense?

also correct. the short range of regular telemechanics also makes it hard.

5. TM Mental Operation does not allow for VOICE COMMANDS does it now? Do many or any power armor or robots utilize voice commands? And if so, what functions?

It allows for any kind of command. Your simply tricking the voice receiver into thinking it heard the proper voice.

6. we know that PA pilots can't carry weapons or wear armor inside their power armor, but what about robot pilots? do they regularly wear environmental armor when driving? how quick can they access storage for a weapon or explosive? could they scramble into armor if the air is shut off?

They can wear full body armor and such within the cockpit yes, and the majority of robots include a pilots compartment where they can stash gear and weapons explictly.

7. Am I over thinking this? have I read too many stories about tank crews in WWII defending their tanks from sappers, grenades, flamethrowers and satchel charges?

Naa, these are legit questions.

Quick breakdown:

Telemechanics is short range and limited

Telemechanic mental operation lets you fire a gun or change the targeting, but doesn't let you hijack the controls from a hostile pilot, just make his life miserable

Telemechanic Paralasis shuts down the robot, allowing neither side to use it except as cover

Telemechanic Possession hijacks the bot and turns the pilot into a helpless passanger, but leaves your body vunerable.

[slade2501]

an answer so good, no one has another comment. I like it. and it really hits the point. As a GM i always ere on the side of bastard in that the enemy or anyone who isn't a player character makes everything as hard as practical to deter said PCs from stealing everything not nailed down. in story telling, ocum's razor usually wins. the easiest answer is usually right. no psychic power should let a player outright steal a 10+million dollar war machine without a fight, risk or great planning. also in story telling, there is that break the characters seem to get where they get an opportunity to score. ill have to do some planning....

[Eagle]

My rule of thumb when dealing with creative players is to make them work for it, but not to screw them over. Enemy tactics should be decent, but not flawless.

A player's half-assed plan that they just threw together should not succeed, but NPC security measures are carried out by guys with 8s and 9s for stats. I don't think robots and vehicles are going to have built-in defenses against telemechanics. It's a fairly rare ability, and if you've got it you really should be able to bypass most protections anyway.

If I had telemechanics and I really wanted to steal valuable equipment, I'd just get ahold of a Coalition supply clerk's datapad and give it fake delivery instructions. "It says here we're supposed to give all this stuff to a sketchy guy we'll meet in the woods. Direct orders from General Goosestep. Top secret, tell no one. Okay, he's the boss."

[Shark_Force]

i would expect reputable manufacturers to provide at least some reasonable protection from telemechanic powers provided there isn't a significant cost increase. nothing super crazy, but if you buy a 20 million credit robot vehicle from northern gun... i would expect there is, somewhere, a place where you can just manually disconnect the reactor entirely to shut down the robot, probably tucked away in a covered box with a manual release to open it (ie not powered by a motor of any kind) or something like that. in a power armour suit, the joints are probably designed to prevent you from being bent the wrong way, though there probably isn't an easily accessible emergency shutdown button or anything. i wouldn't expect anything extreme unless specifically requested, however... it is theoretically possible to have a turret operated entirely by hand cranks and foot pedals and such, but unless it is for someone who is extremely paranoid about psychic attacks i expect they'll be using motors to do all that work too. something like, say, building your turret such that it is essentially a distinct machine from the vehicle (so that a single psychic could take over the steering but not the guns, or the guns but not the steering) would probably also be a step too far in most cases. having ejector seats be entirely distinct systems seems like a reasonable precaution to take (i can imagine all kinds of situations where you want the pilot and/or copilot to be able to control the guns from the main console, thus requiring the machines to be integrated into one... situations where a mass produced vehicle is going to want the eject controls for every seat built into the controls for operating the vehicle, on the other hand, seem quite unlikely).

of course, if you're buying from chipwell or one of the more shady black market knockoff companies on the other hand, well... bad news: your machine has no protections from this kind of thing at all. good news: hey, at least the equipment that just got stolen was less expensive, right?

[Eagle]

i would expect reputable manufacturers to provide at least some reasonable protection from telemechanic powers provided there isn't a significant cost increase. nothing super crazy, but if you buy a 20 million credit robot vehicle from northern gun... i would expect there is, somewhere, a place where you can just manually disconnect the reactor entirely to shut down the robot, probably tucked away in a covered box with a manual release to open it (ie not powered by a motor of any kind) or something like that. in a power armour suit, the joints are probably designed to prevent you from being bent the wrong way, though there probably isn't an easily accessible emergency shutdown button or anything. i wouldn't expect anything extreme unless specifically requested, however... it is theoretically possible to have a turret operated entirely by hand cranks and foot pedals and such, but unless it is for someone who is extremely paranoid about psychic attacks i expect they'll be using motors to do all that work too. something like, say, building your turret such that it is essentially a distinct machine from the vehicle (so that a single psychic could take over the steering but not the guns, or the guns but not the steering) would probably also be a step too far in most cases. having ejector seats be entirely distinct systems seems like a reasonable precaution to take (i can imagine all kinds of situations where you want the pilot and/or copilot to be able to control the guns from the main console, thus requiring the machines to be integrated into one... situations where a mass produced vehicle is going to want the eject controls for every seat built into the controls for operating the vehicle, on the other hand, seem quite unlikely).

There's nothing at all in the rules to indicate that this is the case. Again, you're looking at adding huge layers of needless complexity to the design, all in the hopes of defeating one fairly rare type of attack. And it wouldn't do anything against Telemechanic Possession, so it's really pointless.

This is exactly what I mean when I say the GM shouldn't go out of his way to screw the players. Rather than trying to think about ways you can redesign equipment so that the powers the player selected don't work, instead use some common sense.

Use infantry. Keep a squad or two of Dog Boys outside Coalition vehicles. While the big robot the guy wants to steal is strolling along, they've got a dozen people nearby watching out for people just like the PC. They aren't necessarily thinking "telemechanics", but they're watching out for wizards or even just guys with some kind of mega-damage anti-vehicle charge. They don't want you throwing a fusion block on their nice robot. Try to get in while you're invisible and the Dog Boys will still bark like crazy, and then they'll use See Invisibility and shoot you.

Coalition field bases and patrols should be crawling with Dog Boys. The challenge should be in getting close enough to use your power, not in some surprise "haha, I'm not going to let your power work, you know the entire reason you wanted to play this character" GM trick.

[Shark_Force]

a button that cuts off electricity from the power plant to the rest of the vehicle is not a massive investment. all it means is that instead of running all the wires to the power plant, you run them to that button, and the circuit barely changes at all.

likewise, i'm not certain why you think it is some sort of major investment to not have a control panel on the dashboard that ejects every seat in the vehicle. you want to talk about adding complexity? making it so that the device underneath the seat of a person 10 feet away interconnected with another device on the pilot's control panel, *that* takes complexity. you have to add things in. *not* adding that wire accomplishes the desired purpose; instead of a device which is part of another device, practically speaking you are now simply carrying a device inside of another device, in a way that is not particularly different from storing a couple of fusion blocks in the weapons locker.

and you damn well better believe they ARE thinking telemechanics, at least as one factor among many. psionics have been around a long time at this point, and you better believe at some point along the way people were getting screwed over by psychics using the telemechanics family of powers when they tried using vehicles (robotic or otherwise) against those psychics. now again, i'm not remotely suggesting that they're going to put an absolutely massive amount of investment into this; they're not going to isolate every single system in a robot vehicle from every other system, because that would cost them the ability to have different positions cover for each other.

but stuff that is extremely low cost (i mean, we're talking probably less than 5 credits to add an emergency cutoff) or even no cost, and has few if any drawbacks, reputable manufacturers will include them. if nothing else, you don't want to miss out on the sale of a 50,000 credit exploration vehicle (let alone a 30 million credit robot vehicle) just because your competitor can point out that in the (unlikely) scenario that you are dealing with a psychic their vehicle has safeguards in place while your version doesn't. the moment *anyone* thinks to put these dirt-cheap protections in, everyone else either does that or they may as well go and flush some money down the toilet, because at a miniscule fraction of the cost of the vehicle you're looking at only needing to sell a single extra vehicle due to your added feature to compensate for the cost of adding it free of charge to tens of thousands of vehicles or more.

if you have two cars being offered to you, both of which are identical in every way including price with the exception that one of them has a latch in the trunk in case someone gets stuck in there while the other doesn't, are you going to choose to buy the car that is very slightly better, or the car that is very slightly worse? whether or not you think that you, or anyone else, ever expects someone to get stuck in your trunk, it is worth spending the ZERO extra money to remove that extremely tiny chance that it does happen. if you are selling cars, do you want to be the salesman that can point out that for no extra cost, you get that extra safety feature, or would you rather be the salesman trying to sell the car that lacks said feature trying to explain why you should buy their objectively inferior car?

well, i dare say the chance of running into a psychic creature capable of controlling your vehicle is far more likely than ever getting stuck in a car trunk will be for most people. especially people who are buying multi-million credit war machines in a world full of supernatural beings, many of which have some measure of psychic powers. even more especially when you're explicitly buying (or in the case of the CS, building) those war machines for the express purpose of combating those supernatural beings. cheap, simple, easily-implemented defense systems *will* be in place. you're not going to run into someone installing advanced neural network AI into every big boss that comes off the production line just to protect it from telemechanic mental operation attacks, but a covered box with an emergency shut down switch inside it that would probably cost less than a dollar today? yeah, they'll be putting that in.

[Nekira Sudacne]

an answer so good, no one has another comment. I like it. and it really hits the point. As a GM i always ere on the side of bastard in that the enemy or anyone who isn't a player character makes everything as hard as practical to deter said PCs from stealing everything not nailed down. in story telling, ocum's razor usually wins. the easiest answer is usually right. no psychic power should let a player outright steal a 10+million dollar war machine without a fight, risk or great planning. also in story telling, there is that break the characters seem to get where they get an opportunity to score. ill have to do some planning....

There's several ways to defend.

One: fight fire with fire. a major dealer should employ multiple magical and psychic security folk. What if they have their own mind melter or Psi-Mechanic with Telemechanic possession? They would at least have the ability to fight for control of any possessed power armor by trying to take it back that way.

Two: Does the psychic actually have the pilot robot skill? They had better. Grabbing the controls psychically doesn't help if you don't know what the controls do. Telemechanics vanilla provides the skill at 80%, Telemechanic mental operation does not. I would think Telemechanic possession bypasses this because they're operating it through sheer will and ignoring the controls altogeather.

Three: It takes a minute for even trained people to get a suit of power armor ready to go, if you have a team helping you, and 1d4+4 melee rounds to get going if you do not have help. Presumably, Robots similarly require time to get started, even if you don't have to strap on each peice. It takes about as long for a pilot hopping into a jet to get it scrambled and into the air. These machines are complex and do not get going quickly, and most importantly it also means that no amount of psychic power is going to speed it up. One has to assume that robots and power armor are not stored with their reactors active, and it likely takes at least a minute if not longer for the reactor on a robot or power armor to fire up to full capacity for the first time. That alone both provides security as well as a way to detect it (Nuclear reactors, be they fission or fusion, emit certain radiation types that are impossible to fully disguise, especially if they're in a building you specifically designed to detect unauthorized activation). Right there you have a fun hook. They not only have to break in to get to the bot, but they have to hold off security for however long it takes for the machine to be ready to move

[eliakon]

a button that cuts off electricity from the power plant to the rest of the vehicle is not a massive investment. all it means is that instead of running all the wires to the power plant, you run them to that button, and the circuit barely changes at all.

likewise, i'm not certain why you think it is some sort of major investment to not have a control panel on the dashboard that ejects every seat in the vehicle. you want to talk about adding complexity? making it so that the device underneath the seat of a person 10 feet away interconnected with another device on the pilot's control panel, *that* takes complexity. you have to add things in. *not* adding that wire accomplishes the desired purpose; instead of a device which is part of another device, practically speaking you are now simply carrying a device inside of another device, in a way that is not particularly different from storing a couple of fusion blocks in the weapons locker.

and you damn well better believe they ARE thinking telemechanics, at least as one factor among many. psionics have been around a long time at this point, and you better believe at some point along the way people were getting screwed over by psychics using the telemechanics family of powers when they tried using vehicles (robotic or otherwise) against those psychics. now again, i'm not remotely suggesting that they're going to put an absolutely massive amount of investment into this; they're not going to isolate every single system in a robot vehicle from every other system, because that would cost them the ability to have different positions cover for each other.

but stuff that is extremely low cost (i mean, we're talking probably less than 5 credits to add an emergency cutoff) or even no cost, and has few if any drawbacks, reputable manufacturers will include them. if nothing else, you don't want to miss out on the sale of a 50,000 credit exploration vehicle (let alone a 30 million credit robot vehicle) just because your competitor can point out that in the (unlikely) scenario that you are dealing with a psychic their vehicle has safeguards in place while your version doesn't. the moment *anyone* thinks to put these dirt-cheap protections in, everyone else either does that or they may as well go and flush some money down the toilet, because at a miniscule fraction of the cost of the vehicle you're looking at only needing to sell a single extra vehicle due to your added feature to compensate for the cost of adding it free of charge to tens of thousands of vehicles or more.

if you have two cars being offered to you, both of which are identical in every way including price with the exception that one of them has a latch in the trunk in case someone gets stuck in there while the other doesn't, are you going to choose to buy the car that is very slightly better, or the car that is very slightly worse? whether or not you think that you, or anyone else, ever expects someone to get stuck in your trunk, it is worth spending the ZERO extra money to remove that extremely tiny chance that it does happen. if you are selling cars, do you want to be the salesman that can point out that for no extra cost, you get that extra safety feature, or would you rather be the salesman trying to sell the car that lacks said feature trying to explain why you should buy their objectively inferior car?

well, i dare say the chance of running into a psychic creature capable of controlling your vehicle is far more likely than ever getting stuck in a car trunk will be for most people. especially people who are buying multi-million credit war machines in a world full of supernatural beings, many of which have some measure of psychic powers. even more especially when you're explicitly buying (or in the case of the CS, building) those war machines for the express purpose of combating those supernatural beings. cheap, simple, easily-implemented defense systems *will* be in place. you're not going to run into someone installing advanced neural network AI into every big boss that comes off the production line just to protect it from telemechanic mental operation attacks, but a covered box with an emergency shut down switch inside it that would probably cost less than a dollar today? yeah, they'll be putting that in.

I would like to add that such cutoffs are already standard on many military vehicles.
Power cutoff switches are considered a vital safety feature. That way in the event of battle damage that causes a short you can cut out the various power packs in the vehicle so that your not risking electrocution when you go to recover the vehicle.
I know that they exist because I had to make sure that they were installed on every battery box that we installed on every powered device that was attached to any vehicle in my Squadron.
So if they are routine, today with out the risk of psionics... there is literally no possible way that such things will not be in use in a world where there is more energy, more battle damage, and one of the known active threats is psionic attack of this nature.

[Shark_Force]

I would like to add that such cutoffs are already standard on many military vehicles.
Power cutoff switches are considered a vital safety feature. That way in the event of battle damage that causes a short you can cut out the various power packs in the vehicle so that your not risking electrocution when you go to recover the vehicle.
I know that they exist because I had to make sure that they were installed on every battery box that we installed on every powered device that was attached to any vehicle in my Squadron.
So if they are routine, today with out the risk of psionics... there is literally no possible way that such things will not be in use in a world where there is more energy, more battle damage, and one of the known active threats is psionic attack of this nature.

though i would again add the caveat: unless you're buying from a super-discount supplier, like chipwell or a company that makes black market knockoffs, where they're cutting corners all over the place to make their equipment as cheap as possible.