The Awkward Situation of a Power Armor Pilot

[kaid]

um...why wouldn't you load your power armor on the outside with the ability to carry more? It's not like it would be difficult...or it could even pull a small trailer. Though few packs would be easy, just need a harness and slap human sized backpacks that would be more like belt pouches to the power armor.

Really not seeing an issue.

Your a genius.

A U-Haul mini-trailer with the guns and spare PA in it would be quite with in the towing capacity of the main PA.....

really?
And just what highway do you plan towing this trailer down with said power armor.
That power armor is going to find overland travel in the realm of much suck.
As i mentioned before a trailer towed by that robo-Pegasus will work but the going is still not going to be very great over land but will be much better than the suit of power armor doing it.

This is why things like the bulldog in NG1 are super nice. Nice sleeping areas for a full group of people/kitchen/bathroom facilities and a decent sized cargo area for storing things like somebodies extra set of armor/ smaller power armor. It is about as all terrain as any normal non flying power armor so you can keep up with the big guns and if you get stuck in a fight it is a competent if not superb combat machine too.

Really if you have a power armor it is a godsend to have a support vehicle. Power armor space/cargo is at a premium so its nice to have some support vehicle to haul your extra armor/gear/ammo and also loot. A power armor is good for knocking the stuffing out of things but unless you are working out of a town they don't have the best way of carrying home any booty you may acquire in the field easily.

[cosmicfish]

Ok you absolutely can sleep in power armor and you wouldn't have any reason to turn it off while you did. In fact you have almost no reason not to sleep in your power armor because your muscles wouldn't atrophy any more than they would if you slept somewhere else. Before anyone suggests that sleeping in power armor would be super uncomfortable I want to point out that PAs are based on space suits they are not simply "plate mail with lasers" and space suits have to be designed so that they can be worn comfortably for long periods of time (yes I realize astronauts frequently mention that after spacewalks their hads are bruised and messed up but that actually almost proves my points as one NASAs highest priorities in spacesuit design and research is finding a gauntlet design that doesn't have that problem). The fact that only limiting factor concerning how long they can be worn explicitly set forth in the rules isn't lesions or cramps or joint pain attests to just how comfortable they are.

The analogy with space suits is way off - just because they look vaguely similar does not mean that one is based on the other or that they are structurally or operationally similar. Space suits are worn in zero gravity, for no more than 9 hours of activity, and provide minimal physical interaction with the wearer. PA is worn in full gravity, is recommended for no more than 24 hours at a time (causes muscles to cramp and stiffen, 3+ weeks causes atrophy by canon), and is constantly exerting forces (if only from gravity) on the wearer. If you wanted to spend 48-72 hours in PA you could but you would feel awful, you would smell like an old shoe, and if you made it a regular habit in a game I was running I would start to impose penalties.

You're absolutely right about jumping out of the shower though power armor specialists have some severe limitation, so too though do cyber-knights. If a cyber-knight is attacked by an airborne enemy like a Samas they not at 95% combat effectiveness; a power armor pilot on the other hand can just blaze away like he normally would.

The point was that the issue of start-up times is multiplicative of other factors. In the first 4 rounds (plus time to get TO the suit!) of combat, a kid with a slingshot is more effective against SAMAS than a PA trooper trying to start up his suit. After that, yes, the PA is more effective than the kid with the slingshot... assuming that the combat lasts more than four rounds!

There are MD melee weapons but every one of them contains a mechanism that will discharge energy into the target or do whatever it is that vibro-weapons are doing, etc. The perfect example of this is the NG-B50 "Thunderer" the crazy combat hammer that shoots bigbore shells when it hits things. If you look at its damage summary it explicitly states that the impact of the hammer itself (which is made out of MDC material) only deals SD its MD comes purely from the bigbore shells

Actually, any MDC robot or vehicle with a robotic strength of at least 16 is capable of inflicting MD to MDC materials using its own MDC hands - that the NG-B50 or other MDC weapons don't is actually really weird! It just goes to show that Rifts can be terribly inconsistent at times.

Just being made of MDC material has no effect on how much kinetic energy it imparts to things it hits or rubs against. If you made a bat out of MDC material and a bat made out of titanium they'll both cause the same amount of damage if you hit someone with them. MD weapons are made out of MDC materials because they have to be or the barrel/entire weapon would vaporize the first time you fired a shot.

There are two factors at play: the first is the forces being imparted on the materials and the second is both materials' ability to withstand stress. On the first, if a suit of PA has robotic strength of 30+ then whatever forces it deploys in combat are at least present within the suit itself, if directed less violently. On the second, see above - we have canonical cases where 2 MDC materials colliding with even modest strength can damage each other. If you put together those two things, I would expect there to be necessary maintenance and unavoidable wear and tear!

That having been said, Rifts is inconsistent on the damage done by MDC materials to MDC materials and the game doesn't actually HAVE any maintenance rules anyway, so canonically that is not an issue. Even if it was, the maintenance would be lower simply because there would not be any wear and tear from SDC materials, which are much more common.

And, I will absolutely agree that Rifts MDC vehicles are going to be far more durable and ready-for-action than role-comparable modern day combat vehicles. Where I am disagreeing is with the idea that they are more durable and ready for action than Rifts psis and mages.

[Falsor Wing]

Your a genius.

A U-Haul mini-trailer with the guns and spare PA in it would be quite with in the towing capacity of the main PA.....

I have to say I do think the Power Armor Rickshaw is kind of awesome

[kaid]

Your a genius.

A U-Haul mini-trailer with the guns and spare PA in it would be quite with in the towing capacity of the main PA.....

I have to say I do think the Power Armor Rickshaw is kind of awesome

And honestly a pretty legit idea not super all terrain but it is one way for a power armor trooper to lug some booty around or other gear god knows even light power armor is more than strong enough to haul a pretty sizable rickshaw/wagon/cart/sled.

[Alrik Vas]

Cosmic fish pointing out that Palladium is inconsistent is one of the few consistent things about Palladium. This is why canon rule arguments fall apart

[glitterboy2098]

given the scenario described, i can think a few different approaches a PA pilot stranded in the wilderness could use.

i'm assuming that you have some Rope and maybe a survival knife though.

if you have some large metal scraps from the train you fell out of, you could use the PA's strength to bend a few into a toboggan/sledge and work out a way to attach some ropes to let you pull it along with the sampson.

if you don;t have large metal pieces to work with, you can knock down some tree's (smaller, thinner ones) and build a sledge using them, lashing them together with rope (or thin strips of bark, if they are smooth-barked tree's) for the same idea. a tree based sledge may not carry as much, and likely you'd have to rebuild it every so often.

note that these will work just as well in summer as winter, if you have a strong enough thing pulling them. (like a PA)

if your limited on rope and don't have much treebark to work with, a Travois would work just as good. basically two long poles (you can trim tall thin tree's) strapped/held on either side of the pulling animal/vehicle, with smaller poles lashed on between them to create a place to carry and secure cargo. it's easy to make and pull.


these methods make it easy to move larger cargo's without limiting you by the surface area and strap down limits of the PA. it also makes it easier to defend yourself in a fight.. you can drop the ropes/poles fairly easily if your attacked (where as if you have cargo strapped all over your suit, it's likely to take damage in the fight no matter what, and may hinder movement and weaponry)

[kaid]

Yup kludging together some kind of travois would not be to hard and even the lightest power armor is still freakishly strong compared to a person so you could go old school trapper mode and even size it up to lug a pretty sizable amount of stuff. It would slow you to a crawl and probably be a real PITA in some terrain but doable. If possible though I do tend to still recommend a support vehicle.

One thing tend to forget about power armor is that although it makes physical movements really easy and lowers the strain you are still actually walking/hiking/running lifting and that can get tiring especially over long journies. A cheap MDC truck or hover vehicle can add a lot of long distance mobility and carrying capacity. Generally if one can afford a power armor some low end MDC truck is likely more than doable cost wise. Honestly selling off a second set of armor to acquire a truck and spare parts for your main armor is also not a bad call.

[glitterboy2098]

support vehicles are preferred, but remember the situation put forward by Falsor_wing. he's not creating a character that needs to move this stuff around, he's already got one and they've lost their transport, stranding them in the wilderness with a bunch of cargo to move.

so he needs suggestions on backup plans that can be used in the event the transport is lost. ones that can be done without having a full marketplace available.

[Alrik Vas]

Yeah, use them survival skills and lash a litter to power armor to drag it back to civilization.

[Hotrod]

In my opinion, most travelling groups should have a Millennium Falcon, a Serenity, a means of getting themselves and their stuff from one place to another within the setting. Rifts has no shortage of candidates. The most versatile tend to be hover vehicles or low-altitude fliers with plenty of space for cargo.

[eliakon]

In my opinion, most travelling groups should have a Millennium Falcon, a Serenity, a means of getting themselves and their stuff from one place to another within the setting. Rifts has no shortage of candidates. The most versatile tend to be hover vehicles or low-altitude fliers with plenty of space for cargo.

Which is great.....
....but when someone shoots it down then what is your plan B?
That is basically the point of this thread. These people were in their transport, their transport was blown up. Now they are walking. They can't use a transport because the transport they had comes as a 18,000,000 piece some-reassembly-required 1:1 model kit and they are fresh out of craft glue.

[Blue_Lion]

In my opinion, most travelling groups should have a Millennium Falcon, a Serenity, a means of getting themselves and their stuff from one place to another within the setting. Rifts has no shortage of candidates. The most versatile tend to be hover vehicles or low-altitude fliers with plenty of space for cargo.

Which is great.....
....but when someone shoots it down then what is your plan B?
That is basically the point of this thread. These people were in their transport, their transport was blown up. Now they are walking. They can't use a transport because the transport they had comes as a 18,000,000 piece some-reassembly-required 1:1 model kit and they are fresh out of craft glue.

Use well aimed shots to pick off a pack of bandits and leave their transport intact.
Normally when I am in a group that gets stranded our goal is to get transport from the next sucker we fight. Typically this sticks you with low storage vehicles but beats walking. (had one charter acquire and loose 147 hover cycles, 7 atvs, 2 peddle bikes, and a stolen CS deaths head transport.)

[Nightmask]

In my opinion, most travelling groups should have a Millennium Falcon, a Serenity, a means of getting themselves and their stuff from one place to another within the setting. Rifts has no shortage of candidates. The most versatile tend to be hover vehicles or low-altitude fliers with plenty of space for cargo.

Which is great.....
....but when someone shoots it down then what is your plan B?
That is basically the point of this thread. These people were in their transport, their transport was blown up. Now they are walking. They can't use a transport because the transport they had comes as a 18,000,000 piece some-reassembly-required 1:1 model kit and they are fresh out of craft glue.

Generally at that point plan B is 'salvage what little you can and press on', rather than try and do the impossible of transporting everything without the vehicle required to transport it. So in this case you just pick the best power armor (based on whatever you feel is 'best'), important supplies (food, water, etc) and abandon the rest. A staple of fiction, characters having it all comfy with their transport only to have it destroyed and forced to press on with just a few essential items (and sometimes not even that).

[Hotrod]

In my opinion, most travelling groups should have a Millennium Falcon, a Serenity, a means of getting themselves and their stuff from one place to another within the setting. Rifts has no shortage of candidates. The most versatile tend to be hover vehicles or low-altitude fliers with plenty of space for cargo.

Which is great.....
....but when someone shoots it down then what is your plan B?
That is basically the point of this thread. These people were in their transport, their transport was blown up. Now they are walking. They can't use a transport because the transport they had comes as a 18,000,000 piece some-reassembly-required 1:1 model kit and they are fresh out of craft glue.

First off, if something as big as a transport is blown to smithereens, how did any of its cargo survive? If its main body MDC is depleted, that makes it shut down, but it's not necessarily scrap. Things as big and tough as a M.D.C. transport are rarely destroyed outright. Jury-rigging offers all kinds of possibilities. Is its power-plant dead? Jury rig the power armor power supplies in. If it's a wiring issue (more likely), you should be able to improvise a solution with the proper know-how (and if you're a power armor pilot, then someone in your group should have that kind of know-how).

Assuming that somehow all your stuff was removed from the transport and then the transport was blown to smithereens, here are some options in no particular order:
1. Acquire or make a new transport:
1a. Make a river boat to carry your stuff and take it up or down-river to a settlement.
1b. Make a big, crude wagon and haul it with horsies
1c. Send someone to a vehicle seller and have them deliver one to you.
1d. Snag one off local bandits.

2. Use alternate means of transportation.
2a. Put it all in a dimensional pocket.
2b. Have a magic user teleport it and you somewhere better.
2c. Tame a Fury Beetle and have it haul your stuff.

3. Settle down
3a. Create a new settlement building with the ruins of your transport. Start planting crops and herding critters.
3b. Use the wreckage of your stuff as bait for scavengers and bandits. If someone in your group is a comely female, make her appear to be tied up in little or no clothing in a very visible place to draw in your prey, then pounce!
3c. Become the protectors of a nearby community.

[Axelmania]

I don't see why a roaming GB isn't realistic. Yes, carrying around expensive equipment by yourself that people will want to steal is a risk. Traditional ronin had to deal with that too didn't they? People wanting to steal their expensive swords or armor if they left them behind to grab a nap or take a plop?

Doesn't power armor have security codes and stuff to prevent theft?

Perhaps they got around this issue by rescuing people and people valued keeping the PA pilot alive and not stealing from him so the pilot could protect them. Not everyone knows how to pilot PA and even if they did, probably wouldn't be able to hack past his security code to enter the PA.

To be able to sell the PA, they would need to guarantee that whoever they sold it to couldn't just steal back whatever they paid for it. Most towns would not be able to incur that risk so they're better off treating the PA pilot well.

It's probably much simpler to rob people of smaller things like MD laser rifles. Easier to defend against if the one you sell it to turns on you, easier to use for yourself.

[Alrik Vas]

This board balks at your common sense, sir! Balk I say!

[Axelmania]

It's still a reasonable concern of course. Like if you went to bed in what you thought was a friendly town and it turned out to be a bunch of murderous thieves who rob people who stay with them, that's a problem. If they had other securities of their own to counter a Glitter Boy then they could engage in a safe transaction with someone. Or just keep it for themselves.

It's all about weighing who you're with and their own internal politics. I think a Vagabond would be best suited to be a travelling Boomer pilot since he could eyeball his innkeepers to tell if they're trustworthy.

Also do you think there might be enough room in the storage compartment to keep a dog? A dog could help bark to wake you up if anyone tried to get you in your sleep.

Also maybe you could wire some heavy fusion blocks around your PA so that to access it they would have to succeed at Demolitions Disposal. Or set a self-destruct which you could only stop by entering a code every 12 hours or so.