Rifts armor materials vs Robotech armor materials

[slade the sniper]

Quick question...does Rifts have the equivalent of Energy Conversion Armor that Robotech has (in fluff) to justify the prodigious toughness of their mecha? Or, is it just better materials science? I am not talking about force fields.

If it is mentioned somewhere, could you give me a page reference?

-STS

[Library Ogre]

I don't know about energy conversion armor, but the justification in the Robotech RPG stuff is that the ceramics used in ASC/CVR-3 armor reduced the damage of lasers by half.

[ShadowLogan]

Robotech doesn't have energy conversion armor, you are thinking about SDF: Macross which is a separate continuity from Robotech.

Rifts AFAIK doesn't either.

Edit:
I wouldn't take game mechanic values as straight indicators of material strength either given Palladium's inherent scaling issues.

[Nekira Sudacne]

We did get an actual answer to this in the origional first printing of Rifts Conversion Book One that was made while Palladium still held the Robotech licence the first time. ((If yours is missing it, it was cut from all printings after Palladium lost the licence for obvious reasons))

There it said outright that Rifts armor technology is leauges above Robotechs armor and that if a Robotech mecha found it's way to earth they could easially add hundreds of MDC to Robotech Mecha (With costs listed)

[glitterboy2098]

that was for 1st edition robotech. where it may have been (debateably) true. but 2nd edition robotech has earth mecha that appear on par if not even better than standard rifts types (in the case of small mecha like the cyclones, it is hard to view them as inferior, when a 6ft cyclone has armor comparable to 12ft+ heavy PA/Light robots in rifts.)

[slade2501]

I would definitely put Rifts armor technology (and most other technology really)at a mechanical level (generations and most likely a century of time) higher than robotech, who were reverse engineering alien technologies instead of using a native innovation. In Robotech, it tonally fits the setting better, mega damage being the province of large scale war machines in a military war drama, rather than a personal roaming RPG setting. Most anime watchers consider that the part II, the southern cross saga, was on the same general scale, while part III, the Genesis Climber Mospeada/Invid invasion made it more like Rifts with the Cyclone scale units and occasional Alpha fighter units. The battlepods were an analog of the Japanese Ho-Chi tank, a VERY thinly armored tank that could easily be penetrated front to back by the relatively low velocity gun of a Sherman tank.