C.S. Version

[Rathorc Lemenger]

Here's the thing, I'm currently reading the Rifts Sovietski book, and the Vedmak got me to thinking: Would the Coalition States (or other country) come up with/use something similar and how would they handle it?

Signed,
Rathorc Lemenger,
President of Lemenger Biologics Unlimited.

[Curbludgeon]

I could see Triax attempting its consciousness transferal tech on a Cyber-doc within a medical-based robot such as found in the NG books. As for bionic-docs something like Reid's mods in Mexico should probably be a soft limit without side effects. Note the Vedmak have insanities and can't generally add additional armor.

[eliakon]

I honestly can't see any reason why not.
Tech is tech is tech.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that if a group got its hands on the tech from another group (Sovietski, Japan, China, Moon, Mexico, NGR, Mindworks, Australia, Coalition, Black Market, Et Multiple Cetera) that they would not incorporate that technology into their own technology barring a specific, unique and external reason. For example Northern Gun is careful about what CS technology they incorporate into their designs because they don't want to anger the CS where as the various Warlords don't pirate each others tech out of a sort of 'rules of the game'.

[kaid]

Some places like NG may lack some of the technical expertise needed to replicate some technology. Although the tech base is probably similar to the sovietski the warlords and sovietski even in the golden age were heavily focused on bionics much more so than the NA and NEMA and their allies. Triax probably could replicate something like a vedmak but given some of the mental side effects may not see a reason to do so.

CS are only now really willing to embrace more enhancement of troops with the minion war. Prior to that they had modified men but their numbers were pretty limited given the size of their military and mostly focusing on vehicles and armor a normal human pilots instead of becoming the military unit.

But as we have seen even in NA people knock off other manufacturers stuff like crazy. NG manufactures a lot of armors/vehicles/designs from other manufacturers as knock offs and visa versa. The C.S. seems to do this less but that is mostly because they had a bigger head start given the manufacturies they took basically intact with the original Chi Town nema stuff and the lone star base discoveries.

Triax again probably does look stuff they see from other manufacturers but basically everybody other than aliens is behind them as they have uninterupted golden age tech base to work with.

[eliakon]

Some places like NG may lack some of the technical expertise needed to replicate some technology. Although the tech base is probably similar to the sovietski the warlords and sovietski even in the golden age were heavily focused on bionics much more so than the NA and NEMA and their allies. Triax probably could replicate something like a vedmak but given some of the mental side effects may not see a reason to do so.

Northern Gun might be a bit behind sure.
And everyone is behind Japan in Nanotech...
But if you get the technical specs for a new kind of M.O.M. implant for instance... there is no reason why they should be unable to replicate it.

CS are only now really willing to embrace more enhancement of troops with the minion war. Prior to that they had modified men but their numbers were pretty limited given the size of their military and mostly focusing on vehicles and armor a normal human pilots instead of becoming the military unit.

But as we have seen even in NA people knock off other manufacturers stuff like crazy. NG manufactures a lot of armors/vehicles/designs from other manufacturers as knock offs and visa versa. The C.S. seems to do this less but that is mostly because they had a bigger head start given the manufacturies they took basically intact with the original Chi Town nema stuff and the lone star base discoveries.

Triax again probably does look stuff they see from other manufacturers but basically everybody other than aliens is behind them as they have uninterupted golden age tech base to work with.

Yeah.
Tier 1: Triax, Australia, Japan, China and the Orbitals all should be the cutting edge of Technology
Tier 2: Archie, New Navy, Republicans, Tritonia, Tundra Rangers and the rest of the "solid, intact pre-rifts foundations"
Tier 3: Coalition, Sovietski (possible T2), Warlords
Tier 4: Northern Gun, Wilks, Bandito Arms and the other 'big names'
Then: basically everyone else

[SolCannibal]

Some places like NG may lack some of the technical expertise needed to replicate some technology. Although the tech base is probably similar to the sovietski the warlords and sovietski even in the golden age were heavily focused on bionics much more so than the NA and NEMA and their allies. Triax probably could replicate something like a vedmak but given some of the mental side effects may not see a reason to do so.

Northern Gun might be a bit behind sure.
And everyone is behind Japan in Nanotech...
But if you get the technical specs for a new kind of M.O.M. implant for instance... there is no reason why they should be unable to replicate it.

CS are only now really willing to embrace more enhancement of troops with the minion war. Prior to that they had modified men but their numbers were pretty limited given the size of their military and mostly focusing on vehicles and armor a normal human pilots instead of becoming the military unit.

But as we have seen even in NA people knock off other manufacturers stuff like crazy. NG manufactures a lot of armors/vehicles/designs from other manufacturers as knock offs and visa versa. The C.S. seems to do this less but that is mostly because they had a bigger head start given the manufacturies they took basically intact with the original Chi Town nema stuff and the lone star base discoveries.

Triax again probably does look stuff they see from other manufacturers but basically everybody other than aliens is behind them as they have uninterupted golden age tech base to work with.

Yeah.
Tier 1: Triax, Australia, Japan, China and the Orbitals all should be the cutting edge of Technology
Tier 2: Archie, New Navy, Republicans, Tritonia, Tundra Rangers and the rest of the "solid, intact pre-rifts foundations"
Tier 3: Coalition, Sovietski (possible T2), Warlords
Tier 4: Northern Gun, Wilks, Bandito Arms and the other 'big names'
Then: basically everyone else

Personally, i would be tempted to put Archie into Tier 1 as his fluff as far back as the sourcebook goes into how he experimented with the teech he had available for a time and how some has been changed in ways that make it seem like alien tech to someone used to the hardware available in the north american market.
Meanwhile the NGR living as a continuous state through the interveninng years most certainly had to suffer through periods of research stagnation due economic and material issues related to its centuries in a embattled and besieged state, among other things.

[RockJock]

Archie also has some knowledge of alien tech from the Mechanoids, plus he is the authority on AIs.

[Shark_Force]

ARCHIE probably is also stealing research notes from the orbitals. they have their own ARCHIE up there, and they likely store a ton of information in that network, and ARCHIE 3 is able to access their satellites so he can probably also access a lot of other stuff. but seriously, he's got some danged impressive tech...

that said, while i don't know exactly what we're discussing (don't own the sovietski book) i suspect there is an important question that rather than *can* the CS do something, *would* they do that thing? the CS doesn't seem to be overly fond of crazies, for example, so if there's some procedure that can make an insane robot doctor out of a living sane doctor, they probably won't use it.

....


well, okay, fine, apart from the crazy megalomaniac doctor in lone star, they probably won't use it (he'll probably mostly use it on mutant animals, but i wouldn't be surprised if he rounded up some human undesirables and tested on them too).

(the rest of the CS might do some testing before they figure out what it is/does, though).

[SolCannibal]

ARCHIE probably is also stealing research notes from the orbitals. they have their own ARCHIE up there, and they likely store a ton of information in that network, and ARCHIE 3 is able to access their satellites so he can probably also access a lot of other stuff. but seriously, he's got some danged impressive tech...

that said, while i don't know exactly what we're discussing (don't own the sovietski book) i suspect there is an important question that rather than *can* the CS do something, *would* they do that thing? the CS doesn't seem to be overly fond of crazies, for example, so if there's some procedure that can make an insane robot doctor out of a living sane doctor, they probably won't use it.

....


well, okay, fine, apart from the crazy megalomaniac doctor in lone star, they probably won't use it (he'll probably mostly use it on mutant animals, but i wouldn't be surprised if he rounded up some human undesirables and tested on them too).

(the rest of the CS might do some testing before they figure out what it is/does, though).

You make a good point in that the CS is not all too fond of either MoM users or scholars/scientists even when having use for them. Bradford and other figures in Lone Star (or the defunct project that lead into the Juicer Uprising) would probably love an opportunity to get their hands on it, but the rest of CS leadership wwould be pretty leery of it. Not even going into the fact a number of scientist and scholars, CS-affiliated or not, might themselves object just as much to meessing with that kind of tech in their bodies.

Add to that the additional problem that the CS doesn't really have much in the way of contact with the Warlords & Sovietski - it's their NGR allies who do and they might be even more leery of such sort of tech - and the probability of such knock-offs ever happening in the Americas (except maybe through some sort of weird black markets' intercontinental cross-polination) drops vertiginously.

[kaid]

Some places like NG may lack some of the technical expertise needed to replicate some technology. Although the tech base is probably similar to the sovietski the warlords and sovietski even in the golden age were heavily focused on bionics much more so than the NA and NEMA and their allies. Triax probably could replicate something like a vedmak but given some of the mental side effects may not see a reason to do so.

Northern Gun might be a bit behind sure.
And everyone is behind Japan in Nanotech...
But if you get the technical specs for a new kind of M.O.M. implant for instance... there is no reason why they should be unable to replicate it.

CS are only now really willing to embrace more enhancement of troops with the minion war. Prior to that they had modified men but their numbers were pretty limited given the size of their military and mostly focusing on vehicles and armor a normal human pilots instead of becoming the military unit.




But as we have seen even in NA people knock off other manufacturers stuff like crazy. NG manufactures a lot of armors/vehicles/designs from other manufacturers as knock offs and visa versa. The C.S. seems to do this less but that is mostly because they had a bigger head start given the manufacturies they took basically intact with the original Chi Town nema stuff and the lone star base discoveries.

Triax again probably does look stuff they see from other manufacturers but basically everybody other than aliens is behind them as they have uninterupted golden age tech base to work with.

Yeah.
Tier 1: Triax, Australia, Japan, China and the Orbitals all should be the cutting edge of Technology
Tier 2: Archie, New Navy, Republicans, Tritonia, Tundra Rangers and the rest of the "solid, intact pre-rifts foundations"
Tier 3: Coalition, Sovietski (possible T2), Warlords
Tier 4: Northern Gun, Wilks, Bandito Arms and the other 'big names'
Then: basically everyone else

Personally, i would be tempted to put Archie into Tier 1 as his fluff as far back as the sourcebook goes into how he experimented with the teech he had available for a time and how some has been changed in ways that make it seem like alien tech to someone used to the hardware available in the north american market.
Meanwhile the NGR living as a continuous state through the interveninng years most certainly had to suffer through periods of research stagnation due economic and material issues related to its centuries in a embattled and besieged state, among other things.

I think archie is very much a tier 1 power because he has something not even the splugorth on rifts earth can match and that is surveillance. He has access to the cyberworks sats in orbit so he is basically the only player on rifts earth that can really see what is going on everywhere other than maybe rifts china due to the mists or other areas with that kind of anomole. That and he can COMMUNICATE to his forces anywhere in the world basically instantly. His command and control abilities are unmatched and thats not even including the fact that every titan robot/power armor is a walking recorder collecting and transmitting basically everything back to him. He probably has the best overall picture of the exact state of the world and in NA his information network is incredible.

I think in the long run if the minion war gets won the biggest way that happens on rifts earth is if archie comes into the light to help directly. Hell pits would be stupidly visible to him on sat imagery that nobody else think anybody can possibly have. He could direct forces to target of hell pits being worked on with more than enough time to interdict them before completion.

[SolCannibal]

Damn, now that i think of it, CS operatives or diplomatic personnel might be just the right kind of people to mix up and forge weird connections between black market groups in the CS-sphere and neighbors of the NGR like the hive of scum & villainy (and knockoffs) that seems to be Rifts Earth's Poland...

[Shark_Force]

I think in the long run if the minion war gets won the biggest way that happens on rifts earth is if archie comes into the light to help directly. Hell pits would be stupidly visible to him on sat imagery that nobody else think anybody can possibly have. He could direct forces to target of hell pits being worked on with more than enough time to interdict them before completion.

no need to come into the light. all he has to do is have an agent report that an exploration team found a demon stronghold at <location> and barely made it back alive, and pretty much nobody has any reason to believe he got it from satellite surveillance.

[SolCannibal]

Speaking of Archie keeping its operations secret, there's this thing that has occasionally crossed my mind ....

How would you feel about the idea of Archie making some of the Shemarians by applying borg or MoM technology to brainwashed humans &/or D-bees for an extra layer of verisimilitude and to trick magic users & psychics about the group's true nature?

[HWalsh]

Speaking of Archie keeping its operations secret, there's this thing that has occasionally crossed my mind ....

How would you feel about the idea of Archie making some of the Shemarians by applying borg or MoM technology to brainwashed humans &/or D-bees for an extra layer of verisimilitude and to trick magic users & psychics about the group's true nature?

Too risky I'd say.

The Shemarians are supposed to be aliens. That is their cover story. So to make a Shemarian out of a human would break the entire illusion should it come to light. Right now everyone thinks they are just mega-tech'ed alien barbarian cyborgs.

[SolCannibal]

Speaking of Archie keeping its operations secret, there's this thing that has occasionally crossed my mind ....

How would you feel about the idea of Archie making some of the Shemarians by applying borg or MoM technology to brainwashed humans &/or D-bees for an extra layer of verisimilitude and to trick magic users & psychics about the group's true nature?

Too risky I'd say.

The Shemarians are supposed to be aliens. That is their cover story. So to make a Shemarian out of a human would break the entire illusion should it come to light. Right now everyone thinks they are just mega-tech'ed alien barbarian cyborgs.

True for humans, but sticking to one kind of D-bee or artificially produced mutant for consistency would cover for that overall simply enough.

[Mack]

ARCHIE probably is also stealing research notes from the orbitals. they have their own ARCHIE up there, and they likely store a ton of information in that network, and ARCHIE 3 is able to access their satellites...

I going to disagree with this. ARCHIE 3 has access to a single comm satellite in Geo-sync orbit. (SB1r, p92 and Shem Nation, p32 & 33). He does not have access to the orbital's information.

And keep in mind that ARCHIE 7 is more sophisticated than ARCHIE 3 (MiO p62).

I think archie is very much a tier 1 power because he has something not even the splugorth on rifts earth can match and that is surveillance. He has access to the cyberworks sats in orbit so he is basically the only player on rifts earth that can really see what is going on everywhere other than maybe rifts china due to the mists or other areas with that kind of anomole. That and he can COMMUNICATE to his forces anywhere in the world basically instantly.

ARCHIE 3 doesn't have access to any surveillance sats, just a single comm satellite. And his comm coverage area is limited to the eastern portion of North America. (SB1r p92)

[eliakon]

Some places like NG may lack some of the technical expertise needed to replicate some technology. Although the tech base is probably similar to the sovietski the warlords and sovietski even in the golden age were heavily focused on bionics much more so than the NA and NEMA and their allies. Triax probably could replicate something like a vedmak but given some of the mental side effects may not see a reason to do so.

Northern Gun might be a bit behind sure.
And everyone is behind Japan in Nanotech...
But if you get the technical specs for a new kind of M.O.M. implant for instance... there is no reason why they should be unable to replicate it.

CS are only now really willing to embrace more enhancement of troops with the minion war. Prior to that they had modified men but their numbers were pretty limited given the size of their military and mostly focusing on vehicles and armor a normal human pilots instead of becoming the military unit.

But as we have seen even in NA people knock off other manufacturers stuff like crazy. NG manufactures a lot of armors/vehicles/designs from other manufacturers as knock offs and visa versa. The C.S. seems to do this less but that is mostly because they had a bigger head start given the manufacturies they took basically intact with the original Chi Town nema stuff and the lone star base discoveries.

Triax again probably does look stuff they see from other manufacturers but basically everybody other than aliens is behind them as they have uninterupted golden age tech base to work with.

Yeah.
Tier 1: Triax, Australia, Japan, China and the Orbitals all should be the cutting edge of Technology
Tier 2: Archie, New Navy, Republicans, Tritonia, Tundra Rangers and the rest of the "solid, intact pre-rifts foundations"
Tier 3: Coalition, Sovietski (possible T2), Warlords
Tier 4: Northern Gun, Wilks, Bandito Arms and the other 'big names'
Then: basically everyone else

Personally, i would be tempted to put Archie into Tier 1 as his fluff as far back as the sourcebook goes into how he experimented with the teech he had available for a time and how some has been changed in ways that make it seem like alien tech to someone used to the hardware available in the north american market.
Meanwhile the NGR living as a continuous state through the interveninng years most certainly had to suffer through periods of research stagnation due economic and material issues related to its centuries in a embattled and besieged state, among other things.

The reason I put Archi as tier 2 is that he doesn't innovate.
He has a solid Pre-Rifts foundation to build on... but he doesn't build off of that. He can't come up with new novel applications, or new technologies. He's stuck with his toybox, what he copies from others and a very slow advancement by his idea men who are not trained techs.