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On an Earth in a different dimension inhabited by supers the war has begun. Who do you think will emerge victorious?

Ignoring the obvious trump card of orbital bombardment, is there anything limiting the number of mechanoids that can be fielded?

--flatline

A strike force of 3 mother ships, If every man, woman and child on the planet has super powers which is limited to the Heroes Unlimited 2nd edition revised main book seems an equal fight.

I would say that super heroes would win out.
They would have to wait out the aliens and protect resources not humans...
Ultimately humans would be slaves if they do not take up arms and have to fend for them selves as heroes are limited. Most aliens would want our resources... Mega heroes could attempt an orbital warfare and seriously cripple any mother ship.

Aliens could attack from the orbit and destroy the majority of the cities - that would reduce human life by 75%... forcing people into the wilds and under ground in many cases.

Since the planet is central, the aliens could circle quickly for more effective targeted strikes....

You now, the American Government has a contingency plan made by the military for these very threats... There is a link on line too! I read it on a couple of sites... You could also find additional ideas on conspiracy theory sites.

I just gave more food for thought.

Mechanoids.

Are you aware of the size, power, and troops that even a single mothership has?

Mechanoids don't take prisoners, except for experimentation/vivisection.
And they'd just eat the planet out from under the heroes. Surviving in the wilderness wouldn't do any good.

I read the mechanoid books a few months ago, and after seeing how doomed a planet of normal humans were by just one mothership. I wanted to see how a planet of super heroes would fair against three.

It'd certainly be interesting... but the mechanoids would win out, just through sheer number of warriors.
Assuming that the super powers would be randomly distributed, that the tech levels are similar to today's Earth (or even HU Earth, where super-high-tech exist, but is relatively rare), and assuming that this is SDC, the mechanoids would win out, quite possibly even if they only had one Mothership.

Mechanoids have one very great advantage over the supers. They aren't JUST high tech but they also have psionics to deal with those pesky invulnerable characters they will face as well.

ONE mother ship with its, if I recall, millions upon millions of troops, win. DO not pass go. DO not collect 200 hundred dollars.

It's not even just psionics: particle beams damage invulnerable characters.
A Mechanoid Wasp's forward particle beam cannons inflict 2d4x10 MD per dual blast, and has a range of 4,000', with unlimited ammo.
That's an average damage of 50 MD, dropped to 1/2 by Invulnerability (iirc), and that's still 25 MD per shot. At 700 MD, an Invulnerable character would be dropped in 28 shots or so, which makes them TOUGH to take down... but not all that tough.
And a mechanoid mothership has 1 billion Wasps on board.

Was it full Billion? I thought it was merely 100 million

Um no in an sdc setting Invulnerable characters are quite IMMUNE to energy. I see lots of MDC referances being brought to an SDC arena.

Actually Sexy it is stated, I believe in the description of the particle beam weapons for HU2, that hey do in fact harm Inv. Characters. I just have to double check as to how much for sure.

KC may know better than I,

I did explain the terms, so to repeat myself. All three original Mechanoids books vs Heroes Unlimited 2nd edition revised. So any references to anything other than these 4 books is INVALID.

And I believe the particle weapon reference is IN hu2 thus why I need to double check

My friend has the original Mechanoid books for sale I already own the Heroes Book. If I can get proper feedback that I am happy with, I may run this as my first adventure as a GM.

That's pretty ambitious for a new GM, but there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to pull it off. I hope you and your players have a great time with it!

--flatline

A strike force of one mothership is more than enough in your senario.

After studying the Mechanoids books i figured if the populance could fight back effectively wouldn't the Mechanoids would send more than one ship?

One ship is sufficient to start...
Should resistance prove to be too great then more can be sent for later.

If something posed a serious threat... but usually something as simple as devouring a planet only requires one Mothership.

Actually, you didn't state that premise.
You mentioned that you had those books, but you didn't tell us that those were ALL that were allowed for this thread, nor that you were planning on running this.
It seemed like a simple hypothetical thought exercise.

I don't know that it's actually stated in HU2.
IIRC, it came up in Aliens Unlimited or somewhere later, much to the surprise of many people who believed that being impervious to energy made one impervious to all energy weapons, including particle beams.
And the ruling left something of a gray area, because now we know that particle beams do partial damage to Invulnerable characters, even though they're "impervious to energy," but I don't believe that it was ever addressed how this ruling affects other forms of "impervious to energy."
Like the super power, the spell, vampires' limited invulnerability, etc. etc.

So if Kitty wants to ignore that ruling, that's probably the simplest way to handle it.

Forces like the Transgalactic Empire seem superior to the Tarlok. I'm not sure where the Mechanoids measure up against the TGE in terms of total power, but I think they also trump the Tarlok. The world of Skraypers was essentially a world full of supers by the time the Tarlok got to it, and they still basically managed to conquer it, just with a few annoying pockets up uprising here and there.

Yeah but Tor, the Tarlok race itself are essentially supers.

You're right, it wasn't stated in HU2...mostly because there are no Particle beam weapons in HU2 I imagine. It's on page 216 of the GM guide where the equipment, vehicles and weapons available were expanded. Particle beams even damage invulnerable characters, but do half damage as you said above. I woudl rule Supers are just a "different" type of energy imperviousness than that of a spell or Vampire etc.

They're tough buggers but probably no more than the Kreeghor, even if they are more fleshed out in terms of biology. Super powers are more often about versatility and unpredictability and even the Tarlok with supers (Dreadlor) don't have much of that compared to their slave races.

Agreed but if you are tough enough to go toe to with minor supers, which in my opinion most tarlock could, then you have the advantage for sure except when dealing with the superman-esque types which aren't that common and seem to be down right rare (unless you're a player character )

I vaguely remember some reference to this too, but can't seem to find it in either CB1 or HU2 descriptions of Invulnerability. Would anyone recall where this was introduced?

HUGMG.

<Redacted at the Request of the Nigelian Confederacy Security Council>

well on page 96 of the mechanoid trilogy book an average mothership has
Assault Force and Crew
wasps 20,000,000
Brutes 2,000,000
Runners 1,400,000
Brains 600,000
Mantis 40,000
Diggers 10,000
Thinmen 280,000,000
Runts 600,000,000
Skimmer 100,000,000
Spider Fort 10,000

yah, that's gonna be....nasty, and since EVERY mechanoid is effectively a multiclass Psionic/Borg/Alien with gear supplied by a Hardware......ouch.

You're gonna need a bigger boat, friend. Lots of 'em.

Is the assumption that the mechanoids don't consume the planet/star/whatever until after all resistance has been dealt with?

--flatline

Normally, they "play with the humans" while setting the planet up for destruction. I suppose if the resistance was strong enough though, they'd target the planet's star or blow the planet early.

So if the resistance could disable the Mothership before the Mothership consumes the planet/star/whatever, the planet could be saved. The 128M mechanoid troops and 880M robots are actually incidental to the survival of the planet beyond their effort to protect the Mothership. Of course, they're still a threat to the residents of the planet.

Is there a combination of powers that would allow a super (or group of supers) to disable, maybe even destroy the Mothership before the Mechanoids can stop the super with their weapons or psionics?

It would be nice to know how long the process of consuming the planet/star/whatever takes. If the supers manage to fight off the troops and the Mothership decides to consume the p/s/w, how much time is there to stop it before it succeeds?

--flatline

if you use PU 1 and PU 2 and PU 3. Destroying the Mothership is easy as ... Haywire, Inhabitation...

Actually, I think those are just the forces in the "detachable assault unit and planet excavation head quarters."
The full numbers for the ship appear to be on page 124 of the Mechanoid Invasion Trilogy:
Overlord: 13
Oracle: 100,000
Brain: 12 million
Runner: 37 million
Mantis: 900,000
Octopus: 12 million
Battle Cruiser: 600
Wasp: 1 billion
Brute: 60 million
Black Widow: 2 million
Tunnel Crawler: 11 million
Exterminator: 12 million
Seeker Pod: 15 million
Digger: 30,000
Haulers: 88 million
Thinmen: 45 billion
Runts: 90 billion
Other Robots: 57 billion

Pretty much.
For the most part. But since it's actual mechanoids that carve up the planet (iirc), battling the right bots and mechanoids on the planet's surface could slow down their operations, possibly even prevent them. In theory.



That would be up to the GM.
My best guess would be that an APS: Fire hero that went Nova in the right area of the ship might be able to do some significant damage, possibly even cripple it.
But barring some kind of uber-vulnerability akin to the Death Star's, I don't see the ship being able to be destroyed.



The timeline on p. 50 of the MIT book states that it took the mechanoids 3 months to break down, gather, and remove Thalos, "the largest of Gideon E's sister satellites."

Of course, that 3 months is the time it takes them to devour a planet (or rather, a planet-sized moon) completely. It would take a lot less time to render the planet inhabitable to human life.
#19 on the timeline is "Mechanoids begin defoliation of planet Gideon E."
The vegetation casualty rate is 98.5%
The animal life casualties is 74.9%
So that would be the first major timeline- if the planet is successfully defoliated, then humanity is likely doomed whether or not the mechanoids are defeated or held off.

The timeline does not, unfortunately, include specific dates for each entry. #17 does mention "6 months til IF intervention," though, and the "current situation (which would be #20) states "five months til IF intervention." So the defoliation process seems to take less than 1 month.
The "Invasion Event Up-Date" on p. 73 describes "the second month," which re-enforces that picture, indicating that it was less than 1 month from the first Mechanoid attack to the "current" situation of the first book.
#1 on the timeline of the 2nd month is "Defoliation of planet Gideon E complete."

The first note on the timeline of the 3rd month states:
Massive Mechanoid device (cyborgs?) begin to carve the planet Gideon E into sections. Said devices cut an unbroken line/canyon 2 km deep and 1 km wide across entire planet. Bridge and for areas are built approximately every 1800 km.
The description of capabilities matches the description of a Mechanoid Digger. They appear to do the actual carving up of the planet.

The next note is:
Dissection of planet is final step in the Mechanoid mining operation, prior to the final blasting into small manageable sections and storage by mothership.

The next note is that the Mechanoids have tapped into Gideon E's molten core as a power source.

A note on page 75 of the MIT mentions that after defoliation begins, "entire oceans are drained and also sent aboard the Mothership."
And:
The Diggers then slice the planet from pole to pole as one might slice an orange to decorate a desert. After most of the fossil fuels, precious water supplies, and mineral deposits have been mined a series of explosions created by the bridge forts (forts are destroyed too) fragment, then shatter the planet's surface, hurling the pieces into space.
And:
The entire excavation of an earth-sized plnet is completed within three months, the power crystal conversion process requires an additional 2-3 weeks time.

So it looks like a planet's population would have 2.25-2.5 months before their planet was completely carved up, and a lot less time before it became uninhabitable.

I would think the best way to do a supers vs. mechanoids would be the way it was done in Rifts. A small group, maybe including a spider fortress, is stranded on the same planet. The supers must wipe out the Mechanoids before they can rebuild there ship or call for help.

If you make it a colony world with a few thousand colonists and a few dozen supers for protection you could do a war of attrition thing.

the invasion force that appeared in Mechanoids Sourcebook for rifts would be the right size for a superhero world could expect to deal with and have a chance to defeat. Anymore and it's game over.

The Mechanoids could eat the TGE for breakfast, even though TGE stuff generally has better stats than what we saw in Rifts Mechanoids (thanks power creep!). The TGE are legitimately big enough to call themselves transgalactic (which is pretty damn impressive) and they own a sizeable fraction of the Three Galaxies. They are without a doubt one of the most straight-up powerful forces in the entire Rifts setting.

Unfortunately they're outnumbered a squillion to one, because the Mechanoids own a sizeable chunk of an entire universe. The TGE is big enough and ugly enough that it could probably give them a better fight than pretty much anything else that's been mentioned in the "Mechanoids vs" threads lately, but the result is still a foregone conclusion.

That made me .

Odd. I thought that it was from using parts from the lowest bidder.

I'd hand it to the Mechanoids as well. Most of your population is going to die off from bombardment. You'll have about a quarter of your people left after that. They'll be struggling to form any kind of defense, separated by long distances and have a lack of communication and next to no coordination. Where as the mechanoids will be completely organized the entire time and be able to stomp out the pockets of resistance en mass.

like i said, the only repulsible Threat of mechanoids is similar to what attacks earth in Mechanoids sourcebook, A Few Spider fortresses.
anything else and it's Extinction.

THAT makes me

As much as I love the HU2 setting, I cannot see any real chance of earth being able to survive, let alone the people. Numbers advantage. Even if the mothership is destroyed the other mechanoids not on the ship (which they would be out hunting away) will still be able to continue iirc. So it would only slow it down and the numbers is the biggest problem.

Even if all people had super abilities, what are the odds every person would have useful abilities for this situation. Lets say something which can be very powerful like mimic really means nothing when facing a mechanoid.

if going straight seting of earth vs mechanoids, the rifts situation would be good. Depending on the power level of the game, a few more mechanoids could be added.

If an entire fleet is wanted, I would suggest something like the mechanoids get into the HU2 universe by something like an enemy uses something like a rift canon which dimensionally teleports the whole fleet to the edge of the solar system, pluto distance perhaps. Now due to the possible side effects of the dimensional canon, the mechanoid mothership and a decent portion of the fleet are damaged and will take time to fix. Then earth can be alerted to them by some of the most powerful psychics and mages getting horrible dreams and visions, along with technology like the hubble telescope to see the fleet that came in.

So the undamaged part of the fleet can figure out from the few probes and the like that earth has these humanoid beings and they immediately take off toward earth. Some will collect matterials from the other planets and moons to fix the majority of the fleet, while the strikeforce heads to earth.

This way the people of earth deal with an initial force and that would be tough enough, but if earth prevails then they can learn a lot from them, and be able to try to put some plans on how to develop a defense for the planet.
Depending on how it is run, the damage to the fleet could take a short time or a longer time. So the earth may have more time to attempt to figure something out. have some strike forces sent toward the fleet andattempt to slow them down or hope to get lucky and totally disable them.
So there would be waves the earth would have to deal with but it would be a whole fleet.

An interesting idea would be that the mothership being stranded at the end of the solar system, and keeps working on mechanoids to destroy earth as well as to fix itself, maybe a new invention to attempt to get it power, something to go after the sun or the core of a planet and the earth would always have to be on the lookout for an invasion and look out for the mechanoids trying to take out planets or the sun. That would be an epic confrontation, if the earth could defeat the first wave and be able to stall the whole fleet.

Of course just my longwinded ideas.

Any of the Mechanoids vs. threads are going to depend on the number of Mechanoids. Just like any other threat. If it is one spider fortress and they are trying to be built up from scratch then the right group of heroes from any setting can stop them. But, if you're talking about empire vs. empire then be it TGE or Demons or pantheons the Mechanoids are always likely to win.

It would depend on when in their history they are coming from. In the time of Mechanoid invasion trilogy they are the dominant force in their galaxy wiping out all humanoid life they encounter. But if you are talking about the current timeline as described in the Rifts SB 2 and what seems to be the setting for Mechanoid Space they are smaller in number and just coming back. So in that case an Empire Vs. Empire battle would take longer but still got to go with the Mechanoids.

ok hope i dont get a warning but.... in a DC type hero world mechanoids would lose....all day everyday. now vs the lower power levels of a marvel type world, i give the victory to the mechanoids. since both power levels are capable in a HU game the final answer falls to the gm, in this case you.