Bit of Analysis: Rifts II

[Ahriman238]

Back. So it looks like that part of Russia isn't really detailed. It might be a Dragonland, they're mostly just east of China but I think Mongolia might be one as well. It might be under largely the control of supernatural beings or unaffiliated villages. Isn't really on any maps, Mystic Russia and Heroes of the Celestial Court don't really go into Geography, Yama Kings' map of China doesn't go north enough and the easternmost power in Warlords of Russia is Alekseyevna, and he rules Yamalia.

[Simon_Jester]

Mm.

I had this insane image of the revitalized Soviets somehow forming common cause with the holy smiths, and of the New US Navy and New Red Navy ganging up on Larry the Leviathan with the New Navy's flocks of escort subs that have all these batteries of (comparatively) little bitty weapons keeping the monsters off the backs of the kill-squadron of MDC-alloy Akulas armed with nuclear torpedoes whose physics packages were formed out of sacred blessed plutonium.

[Ahriman238]

Note. Sometimes I am not smart. I completely forgot that Lemuria introduced some more Ocean Magic spells and came out after the Book of Magic. Oh well, when I get around to making a glossary I'll just make this OM 2 and maybe make a complete unified list right before it. Sorry, I really dropped the ball here.

Ocean Magic

I.
Capture Moisture- condense atmospheric water vapor into a gallon per level per minute of potable drinking water. Spell can be maintained for one minute per level, so kind of a huge difference between casting as a first level Ocean Wizard and a level fifteen.


II.
Depth Tolerance- lets you or one subject dive down to one mile or 150% your normal depth limits, whichever is greater.


III.
Buoyancy Blast- short ranged sell that makes things and people float up, whether they want it or not. Limit is 200 lbs. plus ten per level. Can be used to deflect torpedoes if you're fast, lucky and have good aim.


V.
Draw Water- make water rise into the air and pour itself over a target. Can be used for shower, laundry, putting out fires, definitively winning super-soaker battles or murderizing vampires. Skilled users can hide their identities behind a cloak of water.

Light up the Deep- conjure a light bright enough to see 50 ft./level. Startle and blind creatures used to the dark of the deep, underwater undead cannot enter the lit radius.


VI.
Manipulate Thermoclines- a thermocline is a sort of broad band of water at similar depth with similar temperature. Because of the different temperature and motion of the water, it's hard for sonar to spot things in a different thermocline and with limited current exchange scents don't carry over super-well. This spell lets you move a great deal of water a few miles up or down to create a hiding place a couple miles across. It's not perfect though, and nothing stops the enemy from entering the altered space and thus finding you.


VII.
Water Shield- invisible forcefield prevents people or objects from getting wet. Can also be used for instant drying off.


IX.
Current Curtain- Creates a 20 ft./level area either unaffected by current and wave, or alternatively so violently turbulent it's almost impossible to swim out of, you need high supernatural strength to manage, and anything held will be lost. Plus a hefty stack of combat and skill debuffs for being disoriented and unable to move in the direction of your choosing. Torpedoes lose a third their speed and are deflected 10-40% in a random direction. Ships and subs lose all commo and sonar and 2-12% of their speed.

[biostem]

Can any of these water spells be used to pull water out of a living being, or to force water into one? Do any chemicals/contaminants in the water get carried along w/ the spells that move the water, or are they left behind? For instance, some of these spells would be handy in cleaning up an oil spill, or they could allow controlled distribution of poisons, etc.

[SAMAS]

Some of what I've read and seen tossed around on the PalBooks forums is:

A band of warriors, brave and strong: A party of good-aligned murderhobos
A circle of wizards, wise and clever: The Council of Lazlo
the One Orb of Eylor: The planet Eylor, from which the Splug harvest the lesser eyes.
the Eternal Flame Blade: ???
the Fires of the Cosmic Forge: Either the forge itself, or a Cosmo Knight
the Largest War Machine: The mighty Tico.
the Strength of an Unbeliever: The Coalition States.
and a Hundred Year's War.
All these must be, and the Lord shall fall.

The Mauian Order (the Evil Atlantean-hating Lemurians) has heard legends of a powerful rune sword called the Blade Eternal, a flaming sword that can stay ignited even in the depths of the ocean (it boils the water it touches), burns even Demons and Deevils, can fire a beam of energy that hits like a Power Armor heavy weapon (and hits Demon Lords, Evil Gods and Alien Intelligences for double damage), and can cut anything, with only an artifact known as the Sun Scabbard able to contain it.

[Ahriman238]

Can any of these water spells be used to pull water out of a living being, or to force water into one? Do any chemicals/contaminants in the water get carried along w/ the spells that move the water, or are they left behind? For instance, some of these spells would be handy in cleaning up an oil spill, or they could allow controlled distribution of poisons, etc.

No to the first. Water magic has been designed to have very few offensive moves or exploits. It won't even let you drown a guy with Water Envelope. Pollutants will generally be carried along but can be filtered out by specific spells, or managed via current manipulation.

Now, when we get to Lemuria and psychic hydrokinesis, it'll effect all sufficiently light/thin fluids. I think most of these are only water because of specific associations with water.

[Ahriman238]

SAMAS has already spoken about the NGR/Triax Navy, some time ago and I see little need to embellish or expand further on his work. With one small exception.





This is an NGR Poseidon- class sub-carrier. Less than half the size of the Big T but with a comparable air-wing, the same MDC, but much less troops and direct firepower. Triax doesn't have air-subs, but it still carries 80 mini-subs. And they have multiple sub-carriers, unlike the New Navy. Five as of the time of Underseas, eight by the 'present' of UE.

But my interest is actually in the other ship, high and left. This is an XS-400 Escort Battleship, which SAMAS didn't get around to describing. Best image I can provide.

14,000 MDC, can do 60 mph/96 kph. 240 crew, and as many in troops, pilots and support staff. A large rear laser turret doe 40-240 MD, three smaller ion gun turrets, two on the front, one on the bridge tower do 20-80 apiece while six point-defense laser turrets, get 10-60 MD. Long-range missile launcher with nine missiles, either plasma (40-240 MD) or tactical nukes (100-600 MD) and four torpedo tubes with 240 medium and large torps. Also has an underwater ram, 20-40 MD per twenty mph the ship is traveling at.

But you see the weird helipad at the back? The Escort Battleship is also a mini-carrier for a single jet fighter, 40 Dragonwings, 96 lesser suits of flying power armor, 48 of those hovering artillery platforms, and a dozen mini-subs. Plus 72 large power armor or small vehicles for storming some beach somewhere if needed.

[Ahriman238]

But I've talked a bit about the Naut'yll, think it's their time to get a little love.

Naut'yll

Long, long ago, there was an oceanic planet called Yllera, where rose a race of amphibians. They looked much like humans, but for the skin which is hard and dark green, the hands and feet which are webbed and the head. Naut'yll heads look a bit like a conch or similar shell, with three eyes and three face-tentacles that split into three again midway down. 17-62 MDC, regenerating 1-6 every six hours, with supernatural strength and endurance, they can breathe water or air, but will eventually dry up on the surface. A full day on land with no drinking water will kill them. Their nightvision is good, their hearing superb by human standards, and their face tentacles are an awesome scent/taste organ. About 30% are psychic. They can endure depths of up to two miles, but much prefer a thousand feet, so that's where their underwater cities tend to get built, on the continental shelves.



Yllera's history is one of unending war for the rarest and most valuable prize, dry land. The fossil record shows the ancient ancestors of the Naut'yll came ashore to spawn, though that has long since ceased. For most of their history they had a more pressing motive to seize and hold the few islands. Only on the shore could they make fire. Only with fire could they smelt and forge metal. The tribe or kingdom with the ability to make new metal tools and weapons, or repair old ones, would prosper, and those without would one day falter and be destroyed by their rivals.

So it went until roughly three thousand years ago, with the discovery of magic, followed shortly by another major discovery. Koral, a mollusk they had largely ignored, could be pumped full of magic or ISP and would churn out it's MDC shell material, called korallyte. Korallyte could be shaped by magic, converted back into magical energy as a crude fuel source, was hundreds of times stronger than nay metal they could make and regenerates over time. Suddenly, metal lost it's importance, as did the islands, and those too slow to switch over to korallyte were defeated and destroyed utterly.

Well, for all their history the Naut'yll have been warriors, and so the wars raged on until a single superfaction was able to annihilate all rivals and establish a world government. And then, just a few centuries ago, they discovered dimension travel and have been working overtime. They have conquered another six planets, and colonized a dozen more. The strategy is all the same, colonize the ocean floor first, raid the surface from time to time, dry land no longer holds intrinsic value for the Naut'yll, but it's the best place to find loot and slaves and reaving draws more eager young colonists, then when they have overwhelming numbers they boil up out of the sea and destroy or take everything.

Oh yes, the Naut'yll are a slave society, enslaving criminals and prisoners of war. Much of the menial labor is done by slaves, freeing up the Naut'yll such that at any given time 75% of the populace is under arms. Sure, surface-worlders need constant technological or magic support to survive, but the Naut'yll like it that way. When they shut the slaves up in their domed pens for the night, the slaves stay put. And any sort of abse against a slave is fine, in fact, the Naut'yll language has only one word, H'zeech, for evil/enemy/alien/criminal, and they learn from a very young age to never show sympathy or mercy to the H'zeech.

Naut'yll are born in groups of 1-4, and immediately turned over to be raised by the state in communal barracks and indoctrinated into the chain of command. Naut'yll society is rigidly hierarchical. Even if you aren't in the military, there is a system of social rank that maps 1:1 to military rank, though a master craftsman is barely a lieutenant equivalent, and your absolute obedience to those who outrank you is expected and required. Questioning the value of this system isn't a crime, the first time anyways. Keep it up and you get declared H'zeech and enslaved as a criminal. The Naut'yll do not appreciate or reward creativity and initiative, in fact most Naut'yll soldiers are pretty useless without orders. A form of philosophy is acceptable among mages and officers, but cannot contradict the orthodoxy.

Though, in a sense Naut'yll can be thought of as meritocratic, everyone quite literally starts at the same level and can go as high up the chain as their talents permit.

At the top of that chain is a military junta, the Military Council, headed by the General-in-Chief. Each Naut'yll city is ruled by a Governor-General with absolute authority, save his answering to the Council. On Yllera itself, the Governor-Generals are kept on a very short leash indeed. Colonial Governors have a lot more freedom, both because communications and transit across dimensions can be unreliable, and because the Council is frankly not that worried. No one has ever managed to successfully transplant the koral mollusk, so whoever controls Yllera controls all korallyte, which is the basis of their technology and economy. So a Governor-General on another world kind of has to screw up in a big way to get noticed, and a certain amount of empire-building is expected and frankly encouraged since they can never be a true threat to the motherworld.

In their centuries of expansion, the Naut'yll have encountered the Splugorth several times, had both skirmishes and major wars that killed millions, but it always ends the same, crushing victory for the Sploogs. However, the Naut'yll can engage in diplomacy, they've actually gotten quite friendly with the Naruni, bonding over a shared hatred of the Splugorth and a mutual interest in the other parties' exotic weaponry.

At this time, there are seven major Naut'yll cities on Rifts Earth, there was another that was destroyed by the New Navy, and over a hundred small outposts. Roughly six million Naut'yll, and slightly more slaves than that. Raids on coastal communities and shipping have increased by an order of magnitude in recent years, but most land-based powers still don't realize just how vast and organized the Naut'yll really are. They're pretty much the dominant power in the South Atlantic with some serious real estate in the Indian Ocean. For now, they're walking wide circles around Atlantis but have high hopes that if they build up enough numbers they can isolate and destroy it and maybe finally win one against the Splugorth. They keep running into problems in the Pacific but fling themselves into it like lemmings. The Lemurians, the New Navy, Tritonia, even the Whale Singers and the Milu, they hate them all. But even these are a pale shadow to how much the Naut'yll hate Larry.

Some Naut'yll who can't bear the over-regimented society flee. They can be found in pirate crews all over, and strangely enough, a large number in Tritonia.

The Naut'yll are pretty technologically advanced. Maybe a bit ahead of most powers in Rifts, though it can be hard to say because of things like, well, their metallurgy kind of sucks, aviation too, nor do they know anything about computers or cybernetics, but most holes they have are easily covered by magic.




Naut'yll have more casters, proportionally than most races. Those who show a talent at a young age are segregated away and set in the magic military academies. Naut'yll have most base caster classes, LLWs, Mystics, and Shifters, plus a fair number of Ocean Wizards, Sea Druids and their own unique caster class, the Korallyte Shaper. Mages occupy a weird place in Naut'yll society, a step outside the normally universal chain of command. On the one hand, magic has literally opened up whole new worlds to the Naut'yll, on the other, well... mages are, by definition, curious and imaginative people with a very strongly developed sense of self. They're very much distinct individuals, free-thinkers and you simply can't break them of that without crippling their magic. Yet free-thinkers are the last thing the Naut'yll want, because free-thinkers engage in thought-crime, sometimes literal crime, can sympathize with the enemy or simply leave. So they try and strike a careful balance of crushing discipline and making allowances for the eccentricities of spellcasters.

But the unreliability of mages is a known problem for all Naut'yll of command rank, and they tend to plan accordingly.


Three Naut'yll classes. Warrior, basically skills and gear. Devastators are elite special forces made up of mages and psychics, and the Korallyte Shaper.


Korallyte Shaping

Most of the core caster classes (LLW, Mystic, and Techno-Wizard) and anyone who can cast Ocean Magic can learn the magic of Korallyte Shaping. Here goes.

IV.
Shape Korallyte- shape 20 lbs./level of korallyte into a shape. Armor, weapon, sheet, bar, rod, whatever. Have to touch it.

VI.
Koral Blast- burn one pound of korallyte to create an energy blast, 1-4 MD.


Wasn't that exciting? Korallyte Shapers, the class, start out with these two spells, plus six spells from the standard or ocean magic lists and learn one new spell per level, plus six psychic powers. They can also sense nearby korallyte, naturally have a shaping ability more efficient than the spell and the ability to get a koral to start producing it's shell-stuff. They get their own armor of living korallyte bonded to them 15-150 MD, regenerates 1-6 per minute, with the ability to sprout blades, claws and tentacles, plus they can shoot energy blasts by destroying 1 MD of their armor.

Korallyte Shapers usually stay well back behind the front-lines as important specialists. With the exception of Devastators


Devastators, as I mentioned are the Naut'yll special forces comprised of a small number of elite warriors, with the rest being god soldiers AND casters or psychics. Breaks down to about 20% mystics, 30% psychics, 10% each LLW and Ocean Wizard, and 5% Shifter and TechnoWizard with 10% 'Other' presumably those warriors and/or Korallyte Shapers.

[Ahriman238]

*correction, the word for alien is actually 'H'keezh.'

The Naut'yll have alien sounding words for familiar formations, 8-man squads are called warbands. Then ten warbands makes a wartribe, a hundred warbands in a war-legion, three hundred for a war-front, and six hundred make a war-troop. The biggest army ever seen on Earth is a war-troops corps with 32,000 Naut'yll.



Naut'yll are armed primarily with Particle Beams, 4-24 MD for the rifle version, lower for the sidearms. They're also fond of sonic weaponry, probably because it does high damage, carries well through water and can have a stun setting. harpoon guns with magazines, officers get tridents with p-beams and korallyte energized nets. They have magic genades, sonic and blackwater (like the spell). Plus a smattering of Naruni arms.

The average Naut'yll goon is armored in a sort of lorica plate made from korallyte, 90 MDC with no special sensors or computer/life support systems.




The officers, non-coms and better units will wear this, shell armor. 150 MDC, highly customizable with korallyte shaping. Is typically full of water with a complex circulation and filtration system to keep it clean and the Naut'yll inside hydrated even if he winds up spending a week on the surface.




For the more high-tech, torpedo scout armor is actual power armor that lets the user lift half a ton, run at 44 mph on the surface, has sonar and sensors and targeting computers. Either 180 or 300 MDC depending on the version, and a water-jet pack that lets them shoot along at 69 mph/111 kph. Can also dive half a mile deeper than Naut'yll normally can, 2.5 miles.




The Leaper is a Naut'yll air-sub. It's a fine mini-sub combatant, but kind of crap in the air. It's a bit more fragile than most people's fighters, terribly slow and not very maneuverable. Sort of like Death Gliders: awesome at strafing the hell out of some village or freighter, but if anyone has an air force of their own or just real AA capability, they will die quickly and in large numbers. Especially if the enemy is the New Navy. The Earth Governor-Generals have been kicking around the idea of a major redesign to cope with how hostile Earth is to their fighters.

150 MDC, underwater speed is 51 knots (60 mph/96 kph) to a depth of one mile. Yes, a naked Naut'yll can dive deeper than this craft. In flight they can go 400 mph (640 kph). Two p-beams 10-60 MD, and two torpedo/missile launchers depending on loadout, carries eight medium missiles or torpedoes.




The Red Trident (with bonus map of Naut'yll's sphere of influence) is their main warship. It carries two hundred Naut'yll to assault a position, supporting as it can with missiles and the odd p-beam, then the troops largely swim home while the Trident is filled up with loot and slaves. Around 200 slaves or 400 tons of cargo.

1200 MDC, speed 25 knots (29 mph/47 kph) on the surface and 45 knots (52 mph/84 kph) submerged. Crew of thirty. Got eight torpedo/missile launchers, four heavy with 40 birds/fish, and four medium with 120 shots. The two prongs of the trident are large p-beam cannon 40-240 MD, and four bg laser point defense turrets, 10-40 MD

[Simon_Jester]

What's a p-beam? In the works of Dr. Edward Elmer Smith it was a ray that caused paralysis in human (and many nonhuman) subjects, which would certainly be a logical weapon for use by slavers and the like. But a paralysis beam would not cause Mega Damage to objects and armored vehicles...

[Ahriman238]

Particle beam, heats things by bombarding them with particles. Shorter range than lasers, but with more stopping power. In fluff, more effective than most weapons at burning through heavy armor, like power armor, tanks or boats, but there's nothing in stats to show this.

[Ahriman238]

The Naut'yll have two mecha/tanks, the Sea Hunter and Deathbringer, made from a combination of more mundane metals and circuitry with korallyte armor plating. Basically crab-walkers complete with pincers, and really big guns mounted on the back. An armored warband is 4-8 tanks, or they operate in platoons of 8-16 Deathbringers and 24-32 Sea Hunters.


Sea Hunters are the smaller version. Single pilot, 12x10x10 feet. 300 MDC, can run at 50 mph/80 kph on land or on the ocean floor or act as a more conventional sub at 39 knots (45 mph/72 kph) though it apparently loses a lot of maneuverability if it isn't planted on the ground. Main gun is another particle beam, 20-70 MD and four medium missiles/torpedoes in two launchers. The crab claws can rip and tear with considerable strength, the left has a mini-missile launcher with 8 birds, the right has a 6-36 MD laser.


Deathbringers on the other hand have a pilot and gunner, 20x25x30 ft. 500 MDC with a surface running speed of 50 mph/80 kph, underwater is half that and maneuvering by prop is 30 knots (35 mph/56 kph). Has a triple barreled particle beam similar to the smaller one on the Sea Hunter. Four torpedo/missile launchers, two heavy and two medium, each with eight torpedoes or missiles. Same arrangement with the mini-missile launcher and the laser in the claws.

[Simon_Jester]

Ah. Thank you.

Sorry; I can certainly understand how you've seen "particle beam" enough in the Rifts literature to start abbreviating it.

[Ahriman238]

Actually the shortening of 'p-beam' came from Triax, but it's been a long time since I used it, so I should have clarified. And yes, paralysis or stun weapons would be great for slavers, but it looks like those are the sonics or the nets.


Tritonia

In the time before the Rifts, a century ahead of our present day, an American-Australian Megacorp, OceanTech Inc. pitched the idea of a powered floating city. OceanTech was a global leader in underwater mining, drilling and salvage and wanted a dedicated platform for maritime research and a roving platform for salvage and underwater mining operations. And with the ability to carry and serve as a base for a fishing fleet, it would even be self-sufficient. The world's governments threw billions in loans and tax incentives into the project, hoping to try out a solution to population pressures.

The original Tritonia consisted of 36 barges the size of a city block. Most days, it was linked into a single raft system, but if storms threatened and the seas got rough, they'd uncouple a ways and bob freely, linked by a long and complex gimbal mechanism. There were 5,000 scientists, technicians, administrators, workers and support personnel, ruled by a council of corporate and government representatives.



The first year or two were tremendous successes. Much research was done, many minerals were dredged from the depths and the city sailed through a massive hurricane like it wasn't a thing. So the second phase expansion began. A special command center, a sphere 200 ft, in diameter with all the latest sensors was added on to the side, and around it grew a wealth of new barges, much bigger ones. A mile square, with buildings up to ten stories tall, and underwater towers reaching down twice as deep. But as the city expanded, there was one tiny problem-



See, after the second year of Tritonia's existence, there was a vast scandal when it turned out a corporation in Argentina, ShaperCorp, was kidnapping immigrants and vagrants and subjecting them to terrible medical experiments, rewriting their DNA to try and create humans who could survive indefinitely underwater. Thousands of people died from side effects, or drowning as their abilities were tested, and when the world learned of this everyone involved disappeared into deep dark cells. And after a discreet period disappeared again into a handful of secret super-soldier projects as the world's powers started to rearm. But what to do with the survivors?

Eventually it was decided to publicly hail them as heroes of SCIENCE! Who sacrificed greatly to advance human knowledge. As little mention as possible was made over how involuntary the process had been though frankly, everyone knew. And the Amphibious Humans, or Amphibs, were bundled off to Tritonia; where all this cutting-edge maritime research was taking place, where their skills could be used, where there was as well-educated and open-minded a population as could be found on Earth and, I suspect, where they could be out of sight, out of mind for much of the world.



Amphibs are basically human, with a degree of super-strength, not as much as a lot of the things out there heck not as much as twice a strong man and peak baseline human is better than minimal Amphib. Plus great eyes for seeing underwater and in the dark, about four times the sensitivity to hearing and smell. Also resistant to cold, immune to the bends and able to dive down to a mile without problems. About 20% are phenotypically indistinguishable from baseline humans, another 20% just have webbed hands and feet while a further 20% have frog-like skin, and 10% look like scaly fishmen. These still have to breathe air, but can hold their breath for 15-90 minutes, depending on their particular mutation. 20% have a giant-fish head and can breathe water or air indefinitely, about half of them have a weird skin too. The last ten percent are barely humanoid, more like giant fish or frogs with some human features.

Since Amphibs are creations of science, not magic, whether their particular mutations are inherited by their offspring is a crapshoot. Their rep as selfless and hardworking heroes holds, so it's not hard for an Amphib to find a date even if they've got a fish-head. They've really fully integrated into Tritonia, and maybe a part of that is how hard life can be for any Amphib who leaves.



Back on track, the Cataclysm came after twelve years of Tritonia roving the seas, when the population had topped 40K. In a lot of ways, they lucked out. No rifts formed right on top of them, no sea monsters immediately attacked, they were quite far from most of the worst activity, and the city easily weathered the storms caused by so many earthquakes, volcanoes, and the sea's rise from the return of Atlantis. But with news of the general collapse of civilization, there was massive panic and disorder and Rodney Wilzem, the city's head administrator since it's founding, stuck a pistol in his mouth and ended it all. Sheila Winters, the head of security, staged something of a palace coup, declared herself the Director and quelled the riots. They were okay for now, they had the ability to pull food and materials from the sea, and the machine shops and tools to arm up in a big way, so that's what they did.

The other thing they did, is take on every refugee ship they could find. Strength in numbers, right? Sometimes, when they didn't have enough space, they just lashed ships onto the city as new platforms. And with the experience of the Amphibs behind them, they took on plenty of D-Bee refugees too. Even a lot of Naut'yll have signed on. Trionia loves Whale Singers, and also whales, there's usually at least a thousand cetaceans swimming along with Tritonia, some of them PB-whales and dolphins. Every time, for a century and more, they approached land looking for survivors or salvage, they were attacked or Rifts formed or shore parties vanished and were never heard from again. Eventually they just stopped approaching dry land ever.

The following years were rough. Sea monsters, pirates, a full scale Naut'yll invasion that only failed because the New Navy intervened. Why, once Larry hit them with multiple Reachers and an army of his monsters and though they were fought off, he successfully and literally decimated Tritonia's population. But they endured.

The city is now pushing a million residents, where about 15% are D-Bees (a third of those are Naut'yll) and 12% Amphibs. All executive and most legislative power rests with a five-man a Board of Administrators, the department heads for Security, Maintenance, Finance and Science, plus a Director. The Administrative Board appoints it's own members and elects it's own Director. There is a democratically elected Representative Board, though it's function is purely advisory. The Hearing Board is effectively the court system, and Tritonian justice tends towards the swift and harsh, even if it's a long ways short of Judge Dredd. Life in Tritonia is pretty regimented, being it's a city under near-constant siege, and most of the population is highly technically literate, so they can assist in maintenance and repairs. Oh, and about 45% of the population has at least one cybernetic implant.

There's a dedicated harbor area with dry docks, and all the things a harbor needs. The New Navy is always welcome, and there are usually a few merchants and fishers stopping by. Tritonia stays a bit better informed on the world this way. There's also a dedicated Medical Center with probably the best hospitals on Rifts Earth. Along with marine bio labs, cybernetics centers, and cyberneticists specializing in working on aquatic life.

The old security force has evolved into a sort of combined police/military/expert salvage force called the Sea Wolves. Lot of Amphibs, lot of cyborgs.

[SAMAS]

Because of the original Admin's suicide, "Pulling a Wilzem" has become a Tritonian idiom for punking out.

Also, despite the Lemurians' dislike of Tritonian environmental practices (they tend to be rather exploitive), They can actually get along with Tritonian people, and especially Amphibs, pretty well on a one-on-one basis.

[biostem]

Is it difficult for a lone ship to approach and gain entry to Tritonia? Does the city maintain security patrols at all times, (surface, under water, and aerial)? Have any of these oceanic forces interacted with Naruni?

[Ahriman238]

Is it difficult for a lone ship to approach and gain entry to Tritonia? Does the city maintain security patrols at all times, (surface, under water, and aerial)? Have any of these oceanic forces interacted with Naruni?

In order: no, yes, and unknown. For most freighters and fishing boats, Tritonia is pretty much the only safe port in the Pacific without making it all the way across, and the Tritonians really are remarkably accepting of just about everyone. They aren't morons though, they do have patrols and enough psychics and mages to easily vet newcomers. The Naut'yll have tried many times to plant spies on Tritonia and always failed.

While I've never heard of the Naruni having contact with Tritonia, it wouldn't terribly surprise me.


Tritonian Sea-Wolves are armed mostly with the magic blue-green lasers that aren't diffracted by water, though they have a squad weapon similar to the "Beach-Stormer" used by New Navy Marines. Dress uniform looks like an Imperial Grand Admiral, combat has an armored (70 MDC) wetsuit and SCUBA rig. Heavier armor, 100 MDC for Amphibs.




The T-23 "Bottom Feeder" mini-sub is the core of Tritonia's patrols and their main ship of war. Not that warships are such a huge part of Tritonia's defense, they tend to rely on underwater power armor, combat sleds and particularly the power armor they've designed for dolphins and whales. There's actually three versions of the T-23 and they freely sell it, many small coastal kingdoms have a navy of a half dozen of these, and they're actually the standard light patrol/escort craft of the New Navy with a dozen usually escorting a high-value sub or sub-carrier.

600 MDC, surface speed of 58 mph/93 kph and underwater of 34 mph/54 kph, to a depth of a mile. Crew of 4-10, can stay submerged five days at a stretch and carries enough supplies to keep a 10 man crew in food and water for five weeks. Got two torpedo tubes, medium sized, and a dozen fish, plus two mini-torpedo tubes that can each carry two mini-torps. Two lasers, one on each of the 'wing' pods do 10-60 MD and the dorsal ion turret does the same. These are for the combat T-23CS, the AS is a recon/salvage sub with only the mini-torpedoes a pair of waldo arms and an advanced sensor suite. The T-23BS is a science ship that keeps the ion gun and has some limited laboratory facilities.

[Ahriman238]

Merbot Power Armor has 300 MDC. The major selling part is the design where in the water you stick your legs into a special compartment and trigger the motorized tail, but as you climb aboard you can easily pull your legs out, the tail swivels up some and you can walk with minimal effort. It's a Pre-Cataclysm design and while it's never said, I strongly suspect the original design came from OceanTech and probably from Tritonia itself. On the surface can run at 40 mph/64 kph for ten times as long as the wearer could normally run, in the water between the tail and jets it's 50 mph/80 kph, and can dive down to a mile. Has a wrist laser on the right arm, does 4-24 MD, plus four mini-torpedoes in shoulder launchers.

Tritonia produces roughly a dozen Merbots a month, or a gross in a year. About six years before Underseas (or 11 before the present of UE) they apparently hit some point of sufficiency and have been selling half their production ever since.




One of the biggest draws for dolphins to work with Tritonia, not even as military, they're happy for exploration, salvage and SAR help too, is getting a spin in Sea Snake power armor for dolphins and getting to swim really, really fast. Put in a few years, and they let you keep the suit, in fact Tritonia estimates there's upwards of 30,000 of these things floating aorund completely outside their control.

Armor for dolphins and whales, well, the inside is well-padded they swim in and tell the suit to grip and hold them in. Everything is voice-controlled, especially weapons and sensors, set to activate at the right combinations of screeches and clicks. Also has a deep air reservoir (90 minutes for all armor) it can jet air straight at their blowholes to let them breathe. Water still runs through the system and over the user's body. They can't do a lot of acrobatics while wearing armor but, eh, tradeoffs.

So, Sea Snake in particular. 145 MDC, can swim at 70 mph/113 kph and dive to 1.2 miles. Not sure if that's deeper than dolphins can dive, if so how it can let them dive that deep given how open it is or if that's just how deep before the suit is crushed and the dolphins just have to worry about their max depth. Air supply is 90 minutes, generally dolphins try and save it for emergencies and surface normally. Better sonar than dolphins normally have (2 mile range) laser rangefinding, radio, a Geiger counter and a distress beacon with a 400 mile range. Has a single blue-green laser, 2-12 MD that most dolphins not actually fighting for Tritonia use primarily as a cutting or welding tool. The armor can accept three modular launchers and thus a dozen mini-torps, but the vast majority of dolphins won't use them. Well, not unless fighting the Naut'yll, Horune, Milu or Larry and his minions, then everything is fair game.




Unicorn PA is another scout suit, this time for orca whales, PB-orcas and similar small whales. 450 MDC, speed of 38 mph/61 kph to a depth of 1.5 miles. Got a double-barreled version of the Sea Snake laser, an ion gun that does 5-30 MD, and a long pointy spear for ramming things. 5-30 if they just hit you, 20-80 for a full power strike from a running start.




Man-O-War armor is combat armor available in both dolphin and orca sizes. Most dolphins disdain it for being slower than the scout armor and they don't feel a need for that much firepower, but PB-dolphins and the more militant orcas love the hell out of the things. 225 MDC for dolphin amror, orcas get bigger and heavier suits, 330 MDC. Speed of 45 mph/72 kph to a depth of 1.2 miles. Instead of a single big laser, there are seven little (1-6 MD apiece) lasers over their visor that can be fired all at once, in sequential rapid-fire or single-shot. Two multi-barrel railguns in side pods, 10-40 MD per 40-round burst, 4800 rounds. 14 mini-torpedoes in the ventral (belly) fin, and four blades above that can be used for raking targets at speed, which I imagine must be really rough on surface ships.




Now the Sea Tiger is the preferred armor for most orcas. The flavor text says it offers them more speed and variety in weapons, but the Man-O-War is even faster and the only advantages in armament I can see are a bite attack (snicker) and more mini-torps. Now, the armor can take more punishment, 430 MDC, so maybe go with that? Speed is 40 mph/64 kph, again dives to 1.2 miles, same sensor and communication setup as all the cetacean armors. Got a double-barreled blue-green pulse laser under their chin (2-12 MD, double for a double-blast, 6-36 for a three-round burst) and railguns above and below the head, same damage as the above (10-40 MD per 40 round burst) but now with 9600 rounds. 21 mini-torpedoes in three belly launchers. The part ahead of the dorsal fin serves to protect the fin from attack (provided the enemy has a limited angle on it) but also canbe used as a ram/raking blade. And there's a motorized jaw with a few extra-length metal teeth to give the orca a truly inspiring bite strength, though I still feel like the meaty parts and exposing them is kind of a big weakness in this system.



Tritonia also has two water-sleds that are basically the same concept but for people. Swim up and jam your head, arms and chest into this bubble-cockpit with engines and weaponry in attached fins. Don't worry so much about the rest of your body just dangling back there, what are the odds the enemy would ever get a shot from the rear? Or sides? Above/below? Practically nothing! And it's not like you need your legs that badly. I'm starting to form a theory about the prevalence of cybernetics in Tritonia....

The Sea-Fin has 180 MDC and a top speed of 65 mph/104 kph, is armed with two laser turrets, front and rear, 3-18 MD each, plus six mini-torpedoes and an SD rapid-fire harpoon gun.

The Torpedo Sled is unarmed and slower, 50 mph/80 kph but is apparently super-stealthy at low speeds, very popular for recon, recreation or just getting around.

Tritonia has apparently sold thousands of Torpedo Sleds to various factions, including South America and the New Navy. Captain Nemo has apparently purchased over seventy Sea-Fins and lost over a third of them.



Retrospective: I like that so much effort was put into giving the Naut'yll a history and culture rather than being generic pirates/slavers, even if that's how the players will see and interacts with them 95% of the time. I keep envisioning them finally setting aside their xenophobia for a few days to join everyone in a joint campaign against Larry, the Lord of the Deep. Until the inevitable betrayal anyways.

Tritonia.... I feel isn't a true player. It's a place for the 'good guy' factions to meet, a safe port in a world rather lacking in them, a center of science and medicine to be sure, and a more enlightened, accepting culture than any but a tiny handful in the setting. But it doesn't have the ability to dive down and face Larry in his lair, (in fact, are the only good guy faction that isn't mentioned to have tried at some point) it can't stand up to the fleets of the Splugorth, and with a few thousand fighters, it simply doesn't have the manpower to destroy a Naut'yll city like the New Navy has. To say nothing of trying Davy Jone's Locker. So Tritonia can only defend, and never attack. And many times it survives by the skin of it's teeth and through the intervention of outside agencies, the New Navy, the Lemurians, the PCs. It's a city under constant siege, and the impression I get from the books is it's losing, which is a great setting for adventure stories.

Mind, they could still casually stomp the assembled Legions of the Phoenix Empire, so there's always that.


Next time: After almost three years and countless posts, the Coalition returns to these review threads.

[Ahriman238]

So, the Coalition. Quick review, the Coalition of States claims to be the political and ideological successor to the old American Empire which is pretty rich from a hereditary Empire with a de facto nobility. It began when the city-state of Chi-Town forged a political alliance with Iron Heart (the state, not Iron Heart Armaments) and with Quebec but has since expanded over a decent chunk of the American Midwest and become the single most dominant power in North America. The Coalition has virtually always defined itself by it's opposition to magic and D-Bees, and in particular the Federation of Magic that grew alongside it. The Coalition would love nothing better than for the world to return to how it was before the Rifts, when things made sense. In the meantime, they'll fight hard to keep humanity from being enslaved by aliens, destroyed, eaten, or seduced by dark powers. If that means death camps for D-Bees and summary execution of mages, so be it. Another defining moment for the Coalition was the burning of the Great Library at Chi-Town, which provided the impetus for all books to be nationalized and stuck in a high-security location accessible only to society's elite. The proles are actively discouraged from literacy and education, and all necessary information is presented in carefully sanitized video format. If anyone challenges their version of books, they get jailed. If anyone points out this is hardly how the Americans ran things they shrug and say that no one really knows what life was like Pre-Cataclysm. They have a fifty year plan to expand and reclaim the entire continent, crushing all b

Also they love skulls. A lot. Seriously, if there's some reason a thing can't be shaped like a skull, they'll paint it on.

So they're clearly the bad guys, right? Well, yes and no.

They're the default antagonists if your adventuring party holds anyone interesting, but that's not necessarily the same thing. The Coalition is responsible for terrifying war crimes, but so are their enemies, and they have generally brought peace and security where they've been. The average Coalition soldier is probably a decent guy who'd be a joy to knock back a cold beer with, but sill still kill you without a second thought. And a lot of the highest level command staff are sadists or psychopaths, but decent people are there too. When they say they're defending humanity, they're not just talking out their ass.

In a lot of ways, the Coalition is the Imperium of Man from 40K in microcosm. It is unapologetically a brutal totalitarian regime, as bad as any in our history. But it's also under constant siege from relentless horrors born of the worst nightmares of mankind and it's what's there, holding back the night, imposing order on a universe gone mad. Sure there are other, more noble and tolerant states, but none has the power or scale of the Coalition or anything like as good a chance of actually putting America back together again, and it's ruthlessness is a large part of it's success. There are death camps, but there are also soldiers who refuse to slaughter the innocent.

You can even play as Coalition soldiers, though that can be hard to work in unless everyone is doing it. So yes, there's a bit of complexity even if the Coalition can be pretty damn evil. One way to make Hitler look good is to have him stand next to a literal demon from hell.


The Navy

The Coalition Navy is the youngest (and fastest-growing! ) branch of the Coalition Armed Services, officially formed June 20, 100 PA, a week after the conquest of Port Horus. Though this came almost fifteen years after Quebec, moved by the pleas of naval booster Col. Marvin Halliday of the Chi-Town War College, built their own navy around a core of four cruisers purchased from Iron Heart.

The impetus for the navy came from the Anticosti Island Incident, where a small Quebecois patrol ship found a Splugorth sub in the Great Lakes, and called in two cruisers that managed to engage and eventually board the ship, which was smuggling weapons to enemies of the Coalition. So the Emperor demanded a navy, equal to that of the American Empire, giving them a decade and a 10 billion credit budget. This would have been quite undoable if the new CNO, one Fleet Admiral Travis Fisher, hadn't thought to run down all possible and rumored sources of ships, which led to a sunken part of Virginia where the company Golden Age Weaponsmiths was undertaking a massive salvage operation in a land once called Norfolk. They had found a number of 20th/21st Century American warships in sealed watertight bunkers, presumably they were being refit and rearmed as everything went to pot, including a handful of destroyers and cruisers, over eight nuclear submarines, and three carriers. A deal was hammered out where the Coalition purchased all salvage and the expertise of GAW in refitting and upgrading Golden Age tech, and GAW gained official recognition of them and their borders, and lots of technical expertise and manpower to get their own shipyards up and running.

That was a substantial upgrade in the Navy's capability. And if, as with most GAW products, the ships suffer from having MDC armor tacked on later rather than included in the design, well they plan to phase out the older ships eventually, but these are still early days.

And there's another big reason to fear the CSN. See, those submarines had missiles, which led to a duplication program. Now, tactical nukes are well known in Rifts, but through this discovery the Coalition is the only faction with strategic nuclear capability, as in intercontinental missiles and megaton warheads, and they have loudly proclaimed this capability to the world, are banking on the nuclear deterrent to keep the Splugorth from invading. As the branch most involved in serving as a counter to the Splugorth, the nukes are all under Navy control. They have a bit over a thousand now, 960 Tomahawks, and 100 'Fireflies' plus a secret facility in what was once Iowa where 50 of their best physicists and hundreds of technicians produce 50 warheads a year. The Fireflies, by the way, are a sort of nuclear torpedo meant for one-shotting even the really hard nuts like major fortifications, Splugorth Arks, Horune Dreamships etc. It flies through the air for about a hundred miles, then drops into the sea for the last twenty, switching to a secondary drive, to make it harder to intercept. Every capital ship or cruiser in the CSN carries one or two Fireflies.



There are just over 600 ships in the Coalition States Navy, and another 700+ in the Merchant Marine. Forty 'capital ships' (little vague on what that means to them, but I think that's counting cruisers and destroyers) and 60 submarines, plus just under 400 light patrol/escort craft.

The Navy is divided into two official fleets, and a de facto third.

First Fleet is the Great Lakes command. All the Coalition's founding cities are near the lakes and several more major ones. Plus half-a-dozen other kingdoms and empires, including ones they're not to fond of, and at any given time 50-ish pirate outfits. Has the highest number of experienced personnel, drawing heavily on Quebec. Used to be based on Isle d'Orleans by Quebec, but when Quebec seceded from the Coalition, and took half their ships and personnel, the First Fleet relocated and is setting up their new headquarters in the newly established Fort Defiance, about 250 miles Southwest of the old base. Also has a base in Halifax, and now that peace has broken out with Quebec, there's talk of expanding First Fleet's duties into the North Atlantic, at least as far as the continental shelf.

Second Fleet is the big one, where most of the big Golden Age ships went, particularly the carriers, the Atlantic Fleet, responsible for keeping a wary eye on Atlantis and keeping the Gulf of Mexico clear. Operates out of the former Port Horus, now Fort Pinnacle.

The unofficial third is the Mississippi Brownwater Command. Any major Coalition cities that aren't on the lakes? Are on that river, which is also sort of the border with the Federation of Magic, Devil's Gate is right there, and so requires constant patrolling. Headquartered in Baton Rogue, with some three or four more bases up and down the river.


Command

Coalition Navy is a companion to the Coalition War/Siege of Tolkeen books, and like them gives us insight into the Coalition command staff.




Fleet Admiral Travis Fisher is the CNO. Humble beginnings, ran with a gang in the Burbs (sort of the Chi-Town underhive) before he decided to make something of himself. Sailed two years with a privateer as a teen, til he came home and enlisted in the Army. Had a distinguished fifteen-year career and made Colonel before serving under General Cabot in the Devil's Gate Crusade. When Cabot's Chief of Staff caught a bad case of enemy action, Fisher was tapped to fill in and was instrumental in wrapping things up, and so came to the attention of men in power. Had a bit of a meteoric rise, was on the Committee for investigating the possibility of a navy, then at the age of 53 was set in charge allegedly for his youthful experience, in actuality because of his political reliability. And oh, how every member of the Quebec navy pissed and moaned about an Army guy being set over them, apparently just to avoid naming a Quebecois as Fleet Admiral.

Fisher is one of those rarest of breeds, a self-made man. Which, in the Coalition, makes him an illiterate and capable of little more than basic arithmetic. Still he carries through, partly from sheer force of personality, partly because the Coalition is used to it and video tech is used for much paperwork, and in large part because he finds intelligent people to fill his staff and actually listens to them. Recognizing and nurturing talent is Fisher's primary strength as a commander and an administrator. Though he's a decent strategist and as one of Emperor Prosek's favorites has the political pull to draw lots of funding and get things done.

And yes, this is his picture in the book. Looks like a generic Military Specialist, but that's his actual class, so who knows? Maybe he hides in corners in his armor and waits to startle his secretary or something.




Admiral Rene LeBlanc, the son of fishermen is one of the most distinguished sailors the CSN has and CO First Fleet. He was captain of one of the original 4 Quebecois cruisers for a decade before the Coalition Navy existed, the hero of the Anticosta Incident and, since Quebec always went for public education, is a celebrated military historian with three books and dozens of articles to his name. It was LeBlanc who used diplomacy when Quebec seceded to get his men and half their equipment out unharmed and having always had some trouble connecting with les Anglaise many of his subordinates expected him to jump ship too, but he swore an oath to the Coalition Navy and that's that. End of story.

Leblanc is meticulous, logical and perpetually calm under fire. He can be charismatic and enthusiastic, but normally he comes across pretty damn cold. Still, he's the sailor's sailor and his men love him.




Vice Admiral Nathan "Navy Nate" Copeland is the commander of Second Fleet, he was originally an armor commander who won some notoriety at the Battle of Death Creek. He traded on his celebrity status to transfer to Quebec and their navy the day he heard about it being formed. He paid his dues, started at the bottom, earned command of a patrol boat after a few years, and in three more sat in the captain's chair of one of their precious cruisers. When the CSN was formed, he was tapped to take over Second Fleet.

Nate Copeland is a rarity for the top echelons of the Coalition, a very friendly and easy-going sort of guy. And his men love him for it, that and his perfect win record. Nate is excited in a fight, loves nothing better than matching wits with a worthy opponent, life and death on the line. He also hates his office, and can usually be found on his flagship Joseph Prosek hiding from paperwork and making sure his ship is well-cared for at all times.


Captain Fletcher Saunders is the ranking officer on the Mississippi, he's the only captain. Ran a freighter up and down the river for a bunch of years, enlisted in the NSS (Nautical Specialist Services) to try and fix the messed-up system where NSS troops would cycle in for a brief tour protecting trade, then get packed right off to the Great Lakes bringing in more recruits to die like redshirts because they had no idea what they're doing. The Mississippi has always been a low-priority but as Captain he's made a lot of changes for the better, and he's done it on no funding with third-rate personnel.


Finally, Major-General Jean-Pierre Moreau is the commandant of the Coalition States' Naval Infantry. Grew up in the woods til his family was killed by a D-Bee attack, and found city-life unbearable. Enlisted, lated joined the special forces, did well, earned a commission. Hit a ceiling at colonel as a half-savage hick from the woods, and so transferred to the Quebecois Marines, who are a much rougher crowd, then eventually was plucked from a short list of candidates to command the 'marines' for the CSN.

[Simon_Jester]

That was a substantial upgrade in the Navy's capability. And if, as with most GAW products, the ships suffer from having MDC armor tacked on later rather than included in the design, well they plan to phase out the older ships eventually, but these are still early days.

Also, ships are physically large, so you can fit a lot of MDC materials onto them. And there is plenty of room to mount all sorts of energy weapons as 'extras.'

If I were in charge of taking ancient pre-MDC ships and 'refitting' them in the Rifts era, I'd probably start by ripping out most of the VLS missile systems (possibly replacing them with more compact mini-missile systems). Then I would create the successor to the Phalanx turret- a self-contained beam weapon turret, with integral power supply for a very large number of shots, that you can just bolt down to the deck, run a datalink to a central fire control system, and have be ready to go. The beam weapon doesn't have to be much more powerful than what is already man-portable in Rifts; the important part is that you need enough power to keep firing indefinitely on a gun mount that is no larger than, say, a car.

Then you tack on a lot of those beam turrets. There would be soooo many of those.

The remaining VLS cells, I'd have to design something to fit them, but they'd be very capable missiles because a VLS cell can carry a fifteen-ton missile. Those nuclear torpedoes with a glide phase to extend the range sound like a good example, I like those.

And there's another big reason to fear the CSN. See, those submarines had missiles, which led to a duplication program. Now, tactical nukes are well known in Rifts, but through this discovery the Coalition is the only faction with strategic nuclear capability, as in intercontinental missiles and megaton warheads...

You know, I honestly don't know why, since strategic nuclear warheads are a straightforward scaling-up from tactical ones. And since building a re-entry vehicle for a missile is hardly difficult by Rifts standards; I imagine there is personal body armor that can withstand meteoric reentry pretty well.

The Fireflies, by the way, are a sort of nuclear torpedo meant for one-shotting even the really hard nuts like major fortifications, Splugorth Arks, Horune Dreamships etc. It flies through the air for about a hundred miles, then drops into the sea for the last twenty, switching to a secondary drive, to make it harder to intercept. Every capital ship or cruiser in the CSN carries one or two Fireflies.

I picture this as a two-stage missile- it's got wings and booster rockets to carry it through the air (longer range really ought to be possible with RIFTS technology, if anyone wanted to bother), then the 'real' torpedo drops into the sea.

The hard part would be acquiring the target after the torpedo hits the water, which is what killed air-dropped torpedoes in real life. A homing torpedo that's just fallen into the ocean won't find it easy to locate the target.

Better sensors could fix that, especially if the target is very large and very slow. On the other hand, it means the correct counter to these is to kill your sensor signature before the torpedo hits the water.

[Ahriman238]

There are two divisions (bit under 12,000 men) of CSN Naval Infantry.

Your average CSN marine/naval infantry is equipped pretty much the same as other Coalition forces, lots and lots of lasers. Plus a harpoon gun that carries three harpoons; conventional, exploding, plasma, frag, flare and tracking device, with a light (2-12 MD) laser attachment. They also get a sort of mini-torpedo luancher (though the CS nomenclature is torpedo-grenades) with a 10 round drum magazine.

The CSN just loves mines for area denial, they have dozens of mine-layers that don't really get a stat block or description in this book. Three basic types, HE (20-80 MD) Plasma (20-120 MD) and fusion block (60-360 MD) all anchor themselves when a coded signal is sent, and detonate by proximity passive sonar. Limpet mines are sometimes placed by divers.



There's some specialist armor I'm not really getting into, dive suits for Dog Boys, some special operators have a SCUBA conversion of the Old Dead Boy armor. This is Shark Boy Armor, the standard for Naval Infantry. 100 MDC, five-hour air supply and can dive down to 400 ft. (122 m.) with a gyro-compass that keeps them constantly aware of compass directions as well as up/down, a depth gauge with an alarm for when they get close to their limit. Has a universal socket and electromagentic anchor on the back that can swap out: an air tank (extra four hours!) a watertight backpack, a water-jet pack capable of doing 30 mph/48 kph and a flying jetpack that can do 120 mph/192 kph. Also, it's covered in short vibroblades for cuting free if trapped by kelp, weeds, or underwater debris that also make decent melee weapons, 1-6 MD.




And here's the Sea SAMAS, designed for the Navy since the Coalition's New Model Army was already redesigning. Since a SAMAS is already decent underwater, they mostly reinforced it for more depth, add sonar and rethought the weapons and propulsion systems. They gave it a pack with propellers, but also a single small jet for flying and jumping, though it's limited compared to the traditional SAMAS and is lacking the wings. 295 MDC, can run at 60 mph/96 kph ten times as long as the pilot normally could, can jump fifteen feet high/long on muscle alone, 100 ft. high and twice as long with jet assist. In the water, 55 mph/88 kph and can dive down to a mile. In the sky, 150 mph/240 kph with a ceiling of about 200 ft. and far less maneuverable, "wobbley" compared to traditional SAMAS. Needs to land every two hours or so, can stretch it to five if it stays below 50 mph/80 kph. Can lift most of a ton (1800 lbs.)

Weapons, instead of a railgun has a large BG laser as the standard carried gun, 5-30 MD. A modular weapon mount on the left gauntlet can mount either a light railgun (4-24 MD, ammo for 50 bursts) or an ion gun (6-36 MD, unlimited ammo but half the range of the railgun.) 16 mini-missiles in shoulder launchers, 12 mini-torpedoes in the calves and ending with a vibro-blade fin on each arm.




The Sea Spider is basically just their standard Skull Spider Walker desgined to double as a mini-sub. Can dive down to one mile, either walking on the bottom or folding it's legs up and going on props at 25 mph/40 kph. 670 MDC, can run at 80 mph/128 kph on land, 30 mph/48 kph on the ocean floor. Just like the original, it has a crew of two but can transport a dozen troops. Same armament as the classic, except they swapped the 48 mini-missiles in the teeth for 48 mini-torps, two big railguns 10-40 MD apiece with enough ammo for 200 bursts, and two laser turrets, frount and rear doing 6-36 MD. Oh, I guess they can forgo the troops and carry and deploy up to 30 mines, so that's new. But it really is fundamentally the same Skull Spider, just underwater.

This is still a semi-experimental unit, the Coalition has only built 50 so far.




And they have jet-skis for patrols. No stats this time, I'm just amused how dedicated they are to their theme, even their jet-skis need skulls.


...

Actually, who knows anything about how well railguns should work underwater? I know there's no reason they shouldn't be able to fire, but shouldn't moving through water cost the projectile speed, quickly?

[Ahriman238]

The Wave Demon is sort of no-frills, a giant turbojet on a hydrofoil with a two-man cockpit, some weapons and all made as aerodynamic as possible. Originally the one new thing the Mississippi NSS got, but as that service is now defunct, the Navy is loving the hell out of these tiny, super-fast patrol ships, wants dozens in every port and naval station. There's even talk when enough are built of adding them as smallcraft to every ship big enough to carry smallcraft. Alas, the aerodynamic design meant giving up on a skull-shape, but Mississippi Command has a history of using shark-face instead.

150 MDC, top speed of 130 mph/240 kph. Two man crew, pilot and gunner sit in their seats the whole time and get a single cubic meter of locker space. Weapons include a nose laser 6-36 MD (in fact, the same laser from the Sky-Cycle) a railgun turret that combines two of the guns carried by every SAMAS, 30-70 MD per 40-round burst, carries 4,000 rounds. Plus 24 mini-missiles in side pods and 2 medium torpedoes hanging from hydrofoil struts, 10 mile range and 30-120 MD. Has a 'short-range' 80 mile sonar, though I imagine the noise of it's own engine creates a hell of a blind spot.

This is the one light patrol/escort craft that doesn't explicitly say how many there are. If we assume this counts as a ship, which is probably subject to change once it becomes a general smallcraft, and we assume it encompasses all unaccounted-for such ships, then 260. Keep in mind this is my best guess and it's not impossible there are more light ships unmentioned in the book.




The Barracuda is a modular patrol craft, meant originally for the rivers and lakes, but it serves in all CSN fleets. There are two light torpedo tubes that are integral, otherwise it has two swiveling turret mounts that can accommodate a variety of heavy weapons, and three such mounts for lighter guns. An experienced crew with the right equipment can swap them out in 15-20 minutes tops. Six-man crew, headed by a Master Chief Petty Officer, got six bunks, a small mess with video screen and movies/games, a cramped galley, head and shower, and the bridge. Supplies for three-week deployments. Can carry a squad of infantry or four power armor troops at need, but it'll mean hot-bunking and getting pretty cramped. 300 MDC and a top speed of 55 mph/88 kph. Enhanced radar, can track 56 targets at 150 miles, medium range sonar, 120 miles.

So I mentioned the torpedoes. Two tubes, only light torps so 20-80 MD with a 5 mile range. There's a magazine with 40 torpedoes, auto-loading system, it takes the tubes five seconds to cycle and be ready for the next shot. Options for the three light weapons include; the same laser as the Wave Demon (6-36 MD) the same railgun turret though now billed as an AA weapon (30-70 MD, 100 bursts) or a heavier Enforcer railgun that inexplicably does less damage, 10-60 MD per 80 round burst, again enough ammo for 100 bursts. Heavy weapons include; the same railgun as the Coalition's MBT (20-80 MD, 35 rounds) a box launcher for 24 short-range missiles (10-60 MD) a mortar with 50 bombs, plasma (20-80 MD) frag (10-60 MD) or smoke, but must be manually aimed, fired and reloaded by the crew. In the relatively rare case of firefighting or anti-vampire patrol, there is also a large water-cannon.

Loadout is the captain's preference, with some allowance for the vagaries of military procurement. Standard suggested mission-loadouts are 1.) Convoy escort: 2 missiles, 2 AA railguns, 1 laser. 2.) Recon/patrol/anti-piracy/search & destroy: missile launcher, tank gun, 2 lasers, 1 AA gun. 3.) Fire-support: mortar, tank gun, an AA gun and two either lasers or heavier railgun. 4.) Firefighting/SAR: Water cannon, missile launcher (?!) three lasers. 5.) Anti-vamp: 2 water cannon, 2 heavy railgun and 1 AA, silver-plated rounds.

There are 96 active-duty Barracudas, the majority (50) in the Great Lakes area, 28 on the Mississippi and 18 in the Atlantic with Copeland. Free Quebec has 24 of their own.




So as the Coalition was building up it's navy, it noticed a general build-up in the Great Lakes, seems every company/kingdom was churning out a hundred disposable little torpedo boats or equivalents a year. So the CSN designed a limited run of ships designed to casually wreck any similar-sized ship and dominate the Lakes, at least until a destroyer or cruiser came by. The Mk IV Hurricane was this boat. Six-man crew, similar setup to the Barracuda. The main feature, besides being overgunned, is being sneaky. Stealth materials in the hull absorb both sound and radio waves, the engines are very quiet, silent if kept below 40 mph/64 kph. It's also a sub, though it's kind of back-to-WWII in capability. Same enhanced radar. sonar has 200 mile range. Stealth systems make undetectable at over 50 miles, and there's a large penalty for trying to find one at close range.

290 MDC, surface speed is 70 mph/112 kph. Underwater it's 23 mph/37 kph, max depth is 600 ft. and it can only submerge for ten hours tops. Main armament is two short-range rapid-fire missile launchers with ten birds (10-60 MD) each and 40 more in the ammo-locker. Single medium torpedo tube, with five fish. The large turret has a double-barreled particle beam, 20-120 MD, while the smaller is that same AA railgun (30-70 MD, 100 bursts).

Exactly 25 Hurricanes were built, and they ALL operate in the Great Lakes, mostly doing anti-piracy missions and search & destroy. A lot of the time this involves submerging near some crucial chokepoint before letting them have it. The p-beam and railgun work underwater, though doctrine is to charge the enemy and unload all missiles/torpedoes at them as rapidly as possible. In the even of serious war with any of the other powers of the area, the plan is to use the Hurricane as a fast submersible commerce raider.

[Simon_Jester]

Technically, a ship that is designed to wipe out piddling little torpedo boat attackers is a destroyer; that category of ship originated as a "torpedo boat destroyer," and then became shortened to 'destroyer,' especially after they started taking over the torpedo boat's tactical role.

And as to the railgun thing... Oh yes. Railguns would lose speed reallly fast. Also, having water between the rails would tend to short-circuit the gun, so you'd have to somehow prevent water from getting inside the barrel.

Honestly, any viable projectile for use underwater has to be self-propelled. You can get surprisingly fast, though, with things like the Shkval supercavitating torpedo.

[Ahriman238]

That was a substantial upgrade in the Navy's capability. And if, as with most GAW products, the ships suffer from having MDC armor tacked on later rather than included in the design, well they plan to phase out the older ships eventually, but these are still early days.

Also, ships are physically large, so you can fit a lot of MDC materials onto them. And there is plenty of room to mount all sorts of energy weapons as 'extras.'

If I were in charge of taking ancient pre-MDC ships and 'refitting' them in the Rifts era, I'd probably start by ripping out most of the VLS missile systems (possibly replacing them with more compact mini-missile systems). Then I would create the successor to the Phalanx turret- a self-contained beam weapon turret, with integral power supply for a very large number of shots, that you can just bolt down to the deck, run a datalink to a central fire control system, and have be ready to go. The beam weapon doesn't have to be much more powerful than what is already man-portable in Rifts; the important part is that you need enough power to keep firing indefinitely on a gun mount that is no larger than, say, a car.

Then you tack on a lot of those beam turrets. There would be soooo many of those.

The remaining VLS cells, I'd have to design something to fit them, but they'd be very capable missiles because a VLS cell can carry a fifteen-ton missile. Those nuclear torpedoes with a glide phase to extend the range sound like a good example, I like those.

These sound like good ideas. Oh man, are you going to be disappointed.

And there's another big reason to fear the CSN. See, those submarines had missiles, which led to a duplication program. Now, tactical nukes are well known in Rifts, but through this discovery the Coalition is the only faction with strategic nuclear capability, as in intercontinental missiles and megaton warheads...

You know, I honestly don't know why, since strategic nuclear warheads are a straightforward scaling-up from tactical ones. And since building a re-entry vehicle for a missile is hardly difficult by Rifts standards; I imagine there is personal body armor that can withstand meteoric reentry pretty well.

This is something of a mystery yes. In my headcanon, Geofront, Triax et al. can make big nukes but choose not to, for much the same reason the Coalition keeps theirs mostly as a Splugorth deterrent. Namely, they're afraid of starting a cycle of escalation they won't be the ones to finish.

Technically, a ship that is designed to wipe out piddling little torpedo boat attackers is a destroyer; that category of ship originated as a "torpedo boat destroyer," and then became shortened to 'destroyer,' especially after they started taking over the torpedo boat's tactical role.

I didn't know that. You really do learn something new every day.

And as to the railgun thing... Oh yes. Railguns would lose speed reallly fast. Also, having water between the rails would tend to short-circuit the gun, so you'd have to somehow prevent water from getting inside the barrel.

Honestly, any viable projectile for use underwater has to be self-propelled. You can get surprisingly fast, though, with things like the Shkval supercavitating torpedo.

That's what I thought, less the short-circuiting. Yet the whale armors, the Skull walker, even the Sea SAMAS all use railguns underwater, apparently with no effect on range.

[Ahriman238]

Among the haul from Norfolk were six Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. After refitting them, the Coalition renamed them the Revenge class. CSS Revenge, Conqueror, Victoire, Glorieaux, Sabre, and Samuel de Champlain. See if you can guess which of these were named by French-Canadians. Since they're so comparatively unarmored and underpowered, even post-refit, the plan is to phase them out over the course of a decade in favor of the new James Bay-class. It did, however, provide them with the designs for the truly excellent Mk. XII Aegis.

Complement of about 340 total, roughly the same as ours. 30x66 feet good so far, length 504 ft. I don't think they've been that in a while, could be an older model. Displaces 83,000 tons, now I know it's based one a Flight I or II. 520 MDC, top speed of 30 knots (35 mph/54 kph) so it hasn't been noticeably slowed by the armor.

Weapons, primary armament is still 96 missiles in VLS tubes, 4 Tomahawks, 2 Fireflies the rest a mix of HE (30-120 MD) and plasma (30-180 MD). Six torpedo tubes with 60 medium torpedoes in the magazine, unlike most modern ships they have to be physically hauled out and loaded manually. One five-inch gun, 30-120 MD with a ten-mile range and 50 shells. 2 railgun CIWS turrets, 30-120 MD with a hundred bursts each.

Also carries two helicopters, mainly for anti-submarine purposes.




When the Coalition stormed Kenoa and seized the facilities of Iron Heart Armaments they saw three of these new ships tied up and said "ours now!" CSS James Bay, Mactier, and Citadel. They've been impressed enough with the design that all new DD construction is based on it. Crew of 120, only 30 Marines but they compensate by putting 10 in Sea SAMAS and 20 in Super-SAMAS armor. Was originally there to bridge between IHA's patrol ship and their Sea King cruiser.

1450 MDC, top speed is 42 mph/67 kph. Weaponry you have 192 medium missiles in tubes, plus a full set of reloads but it takes about 30 minutes to reload. 2 heavy torpedo tubes, 40-240 MD with a 20 mile range, and 80 fish for them. Like the Revenge has both a five inch gun and a single heavy CIWS railgun (30-120 MD) though it has ammo for 200 bursts. Also carries a hundred depth charges, and two helicopters.