the space colonies attack

[DhAkael]

The CODF is deadly, plain and simple.
Mach roughly comes to 300m/s.
If the CODF is in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), we are talking high speed death death at 200+km high.

Take the Boom Gun...
200 'slugs', each roughly 8 grams in weight, and about 5x25mm in size, going at a speed of 1500m/s, doing 3D6x10 MD.

Now, take LEO, the speed for stable LEO is 8km/s (8000m/s), or over 5 times faster.

Lets bring in the math.
Kinetic Energy = 1/2 (Mass x Velocity^2)

So, a single GB slug would do 15-90 SDC by itself, at a speed of 1500m/s.
We get a KE of 9,000,000
(how ironic, that comes out to a max SDC of 1 per 900,000 KE... maybe rounded to 1 mil for good measure)

Now lets that 8 gran slug was going 8,000m/s
It comes out to a KE of 256,000,000, or 28 times more KE. That's a good boost to 4D6+1 MD.

But weight, there's more!
The ship trying to get into space has to be going at least 1500m/s itself!
We then get a total effective KE of 361,000,000! Or 40 times more KE than at 1500m/s alone! That's a good 6D6 MD from a little 8 gram chunk of material!

Just for comparison, that's about as much KE as if you got hit by a 1 ton car going 96kph (60mph)...

Oh, what if something gets hit by a single 1 kg chunk of rock?
Basic KE of 32,000,000,000 (and effective 5D6x10 MD?), or if hitting something heading up at 1500m/s, an effective KE of 45,125,000,000 (an effective 1D4x100+50 MD?)
It's also almost as much KE as a a 150 ton train plowing into something at 96kph (60mph)

Name ANY single rocket or aircraft that can stay pointed up after being hit with that kind of force...

Toss in possibly being impacted by several KG worth of mass on the way through the CODF... not to mention what it's going to do to stealth coatings on craft, assuming the material doesn't contain trace elements that cause them to flash or spark when subjected to extreme impact force, and the effective heat energy generated by the forces...

As for the materials...
Asteroid mining...
Lets say the orbitals tend to take rock leftover from processed ore and used it for the CODF, that means they have a byproduct from one thing that gets reused in another thing.

Oh, at those speeds, materials don't matter, the impact will be so fast the impact force will likely be delivered faster than the rock has a chance to shatter. You get water going fast enough and it will punch through even solid steel. Certain materials can only deform/shatter so fast, meaning if they are going fast enoug, they could very well have already passed through whatever they hit before they even have a chance to deform in the impacted item.

At 8000m/s, a little debris could cover a lot of area, it could be "spread out" thin and still have lethal effects on anything that passed througgh it...

Oh, anyone seen the movie Pitch Black with Vin Desiel?
IIRC, in the opening, micro meteorites punch clean through the ship's hull like a hot knife through butter... Considering how intact part of the ship was after it crashed, it was made of some pretty tough stuff, and yet the micrometeorites punched through it so easily...
those are the kind of forces we are talking about...

Nice math..and I've never disputed the lethality of the CODF...just that it CAN be circumvented / defended against using non-standard means (I.E. ;magic) but yeah..anyone not using a specialy shielded vessel or just ignoring the whole mess and teleporting past it, would be so much hpyervelocity chaff once they hit the ring/field.

[Nightmaster]

R Ditto.

I am talking about area coverage not damage or the capacity of a ship to stay pointed after receiving a impact.

If spread thin the effective capacity of the debris field will get reduced even more.

Remember that we are talking about an area of hundred tousands of miles that makes up for the orbit of Earth. In space an area of this size is near impossible to fill. If spread, the debris field would get huge holes into it, allowing for further drop in effectiveness.

Also even if the orbital communities use leftover rocks from processing asteroids, those would never be enough to fill in the gaps that they are always filling. The gravity of Earth and decaying orbits of those debris make the need of replacements a constant thing and since in MiO the orbit communities are always sort in resources and meterials, I dont see how they can maintain a field like this one in the way it is stated.

By the way, LEO (Low Earth Orbit)would make that situation more problematic, since the pull of gravity would be much more strong there. The majority of the debris in LEO would end up into the atmosphere in a few hours since they cant maintain their own orbit.

That is why I say that a 35% efficiency is most reasonable for the debris field.

[Jefffar]

If and when the orbitals decide to make a move agains Earth, their first step will be to cleanse it of the supernatural and demonic.

Which, in my mind, means pluckign some fo those comets and asteroids out from deep space and steering them in int he hopse of creating a K-T level event.

In short, wipe the planet clean, wait a few decades and start fresh.

[cyber-yukongil v2.5]

anybody here, ever watch Cowboy Bebop? Earth in that Anime had a field similar in theory to the one in rifts. Getting through wasn't impossible, just really hard, hard enough to make travel planetside too risky

[DocS]

The CODF is deadly, plain and simple.
Mach roughly comes to 300m/s.
If the CODF is in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), we are talking high speed death death at 200+km high.

Take the Boom Gun...
200 'slugs', each roughly 8 grams in weight, and about 5x25mm in size, going at a speed of 1500m/s, doing 3D6x10 MD.

etc...

Aheh, Now here's another Palladium math problem for you.

Take the old Ninjas and Superspies, with the 'Ancient Master' who gets two martial arts at 10th level and one at 15th.... give him Akido, Tai Chi, and Snake Style.

Calculate his Chi, keep in mind 'Double Existing Chi' is cumulative..

Have him do that Tai Chi attack which sends the opponent back one foot for every point of chi the attacker has (Tai Chi is one of his martial arts, so he has the attack)

Assume the attack takes 2 seconds (your guy will have 7 attacks per melee).

Calculate the velocity,

And marvel at the 'Metaphysical Rail Gun', and just for fun, imagine this guy hitting Sumo Wrestlers and sending them flying miles at Supersonic speeds at an unfortunate target..

[Aramanthus]

That's rich! I love it!

[Prince Cherico]

The CODF is deadly, plain and simple.
Mach roughly comes to 300m/s.
If the CODF is in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), we are talking high speed death death at 200+km high.

Take the Boom Gun...
200 'slugs', each roughly 8 grams in weight, and about 5x25mm in size, going at a speed of 1500m/s, doing 3D6x10 MD.

etc...

Aheh, Now here's another Palladium math problem for you.

Take the old Ninjas and Superspies, with the 'Ancient Master' who gets two martial arts at 10th level and one at 15th.... give him Akido, Tai Chi, and Snake Style.

Calculate his Chi, keep in mind 'Double Existing Chi' is cumulative..

Have him do that Tai Chi attack which sends the opponent back one foot for every point of chi the attacker has (Tai Chi is one of his martial arts, so he has the attack)

Assume the attack takes 2 seconds (your guy will have 7 attacks per melee).

Calculate the velocity,

And marvel at the 'Metaphysical Rail Gun', and just for fun, imagine this guy hitting Sumo Wrestlers and sending them flying miles at Supersonic speeds at an unfortunate target..

Asuming a PE of 24 the amount of Chi he would start out with
is 42 before the doublings even start.
Were going to have Tai Chi as the level 15 martial arts with the
others acting as the charaters secondarys this means that the
charaters chi doubles a total of 9 times
The charaters Chi would be
43,008 thus the charater would be capable of launching some one
43,008 feet

[Kryzbyn]

244 mph?

[R Ditto]

I don't see the problem with making a CODF.
They deploy the debris in space, using advanced computers and very precise controls, to get it in a near perfect orbit. There's no air, so the devris will maintain its speed for a very long time.

That's what an orbit is, it orbits the planet, it's falling at the same speed it travels in, so it is stuck in a perpetual fall, not going fast enough to break orbit, yet not going slow enough to fall out of orbit and fall towards the planet.

Also, the CODF doesn't have to be the equivilent of a Great Wall of China in space, it just needs to "be enough" to cause major damage.

At those speeds, a single spec per cubic meter would be more than enough.
With each second ensuring hundreds of possible impacts.

If a single cubic centimeter of rock existed per cubic meter, then a single cubic meter of rock could possible have enough debris to cover a square kilometer area.

Ore is not pure metal, so to get enough metal to make a 50 ton shuttle hull, they likely will have gone through 5000 tons of ore, so they got 4950 tons of leftovers, whic is probably close to 2,000 cubic meters worth of rock.

A cargo ship weighs upwards of 500 tons, so we're talking 20,000 tons worth of leftover rock.

Once the CODF is in position, it will only need a little maintenaince over time, (taking years or even decades for something placed at the "top" of the CODF to get to the "bottom", assuming they couldn't put it in orbit despite all their experience and knowledge of orbits and whatnot) although the initial CODF probably took months to get in place.

Other numbers.
it would take 41,000 square KM of CODF to make a complete circle around the Earth. That means 41,000 cubic m of rock ore.
If you wanted full coverage (multiple belts/layers in different orbits), it might be a good 547,000,000 square km being needed.
If they had acquired a 1 cubic km chunk worth of rock over time, that would be no problem.
Since they mine asteroids, that is probably no problem for them.


Oh, for insult to injury, escape velocity for Earth is 11.186km/s, so if something is planning on not simply getting into orbit, and they plan to escape Earth's gravity... well, even more extreme pain comes to mind...


As for the sumo wrestlers, assuming a ballistic trajectory and 500 pounds per sumo, I would have to see speed close to the speed to sound, but no faster, they aren't designed to break the sound barrier.
Also, poor aerodynamics and drag would probably slow them down long before they got that far, , unless they were launched in a ballistic trajectory of 45 degrees...
(all this being rough estimates and guesses...)

[Nightmaster]

I dont have problems with the presence of the CODF just with the canon stating that it destroy 90% of everything that try to reach orbit.

Your number are sound and ok but the description in the book say that the space communities dont construct ships often due to lack of resources and manufactoring facilities. It states that most of the ships flying are very old, canibalized from other ships or the very few that have been constructed over the centuries.

Your numbers are something ok with space communities that dont have that sort of problems.

[R Ditto]

Just because they don't have many resources doesn't mean they aren't trying to get them in the first place.

If they have the ships for mining, then when ships are out mining for ore in the asteroid belt, they can tow back large chunks of rock while they are at it, or to take along pre-fab contaienrs they can assemgle to put waste rock in from their mining. If they have to do the processing of ore at the stations, then each ship is going to be having 500-750 tons of ore, which will probably be anywhere from 95-99% rock based on the concentrations of minerals and whatnot.

Oh, anything hit by the CODF is pretty much dead meat for one main reason.
The heavier something is, the more energy it takes to get it into space.
If you want to make something durable enough to survive at least the more common tiny bits in the CODF, chances are weight will have increased by a good deal, meaning you are going to need more power to get it into space, meaning needing an even bigger, heavier and more expensive rocket engine.

All that is needed is one pea sized chunk of rock and anything not classified as a flying tank is going to have some serious troubles.

The 10% of things not destroyed by the CODF are probably the lucky ones that didn't have a vital system blown out, or perhaps happened to have just narrowly been missed by the spread out pattern of the CODF, or otherwise only had to deal with the grain of sand size bits that would only put a lot of pits and dents in basic/thin/light MDC material.

Oh, for a side comparison... do you know what kind of nasty things happen when something is shot with a 5.56mm round from an assault rifle?
Magnifiy that speed by 10 times and you get something close to a micrometeorite or small chunk of CODF material. That rules out anything with SDC based protection (unless it's a lot of SDC...)

Now, if someone could get something armored up there (no such stuff really exists on Rifts Earth to achieve that in any "easy" manner, with the possible exception of the one contra-gravity Naruni fighter from Rifts Mercenaries) it would have a much better chance of surviving, although it will still probably take a beating and be in need of a serious new paintjob afterwards... (assuming it survives the killer sats...)

[DocS]

Asuming a PE of 24 the amount of Chi he would start out with
is 42 before the doublings even start.
Were going to have Tai Chi as the level 15 martial arts with the
others acting as the charaters secondarys this means that the
charaters chi doubles a total of 9 times
The charaters Chi would be
43,008 thus the charater would be capable of launching some one
43,008 feet

now finish the problem
Now, seeing as how that is 8 miles, traveled in one melee attack (roughly 2 seconds), that is shooting the poor guy at 14,400 mph....

since Mach 1 is 770 mph, this is the ability to shoot a fat man at someone at Mach 19. BEAT THAT MR GLITTER BOY!

So the ruling we made for rifts was, since Tai Chi Masters are not MD beings, this attack doesn't do MD, so a glitter boy can take the hit with the suit unharmed...........

but the pilot rolls falling damage.

[Kryzbyn]

lol i forgot to multiply by 60 again for hours.

[Qev]

There's a severe problem with the idea of the CODF in that you cannot have multiple orbits at the same altitude. Everything moving in the same direction must follow the (more or less) exact same orbit, ie. a ring. Otherwise the material will simply collide and fall out of orbit in short order (this is why the material orbiting planets, stars, and black holes almost invariably form into a single flat plane).

You would need an unbelievably complex network of orbits in order to not have massive, exploitable gaps in the field, if it's even possible at all. And, needless to say, someone can simply launch their would-be orbiter to co-orbit with their local debris, rendering it harmless.

Wait, didn't we have this discussion before?

[Nightmaster]

There's a severe problem with the idea of the CODF in that you cannot have multiple orbits at the same altitude. Everything moving in the same direction must follow the (more or less) exact same orbit, ie. a ring. Otherwise the material will simply collide and fall out of orbit in short order (this is why the material orbiting planets, stars, and black holes almost invariably form into a single flat plane).

You would need an unbelievably complex network of orbits in order to not have massive, exploitable gaps in the field, if it's even possible at all. And, needless to say, someone can simply launch their would-be orbiter to co-orbit with their local debris, rendering it harmless.

Wait, didn't we have this discussion before?

Thanks for the info Qev. I myself am not an astronomer or know much about orbits but after seeing what you have said I searched a bit find out that this is true.

The CODF would need to be like the schematics of a atom that is portraited in any chemistry book, only more complex and with a lot more rings around it.

That is impossible to create, let alone it to be created naturally when all the plataforms and other space stations were destroyed when the Rifts happened.

Again that is proof that the rate of effectiveness of the CODF need to be droped to around 35%. Let the Killer Satellites do the rest of the dirt work.

[R Ditto]

I don't see the problem with maintaining the CODF.
Have maybe 4 belts, the main one being around the equator, each of the others is 1km above the one before. It would give total coverage of the "easy" ways to get into space.

Technically, the equatorial CODF is the only one needed, because no "Earth" power has any way of getting stuff into space unless they launch from near the equator, to use the spin of the planet to aid in getting the craft into space. Anything else has the Kiler Sats to worry about.

If you put stuff in at the right speed, it can stay up there a long time.
It's not like they need to put out a cubic km of rock every year.
They got over a century of experience/data to work from with putting stuff in stable orbit.
The chances of layers impacting each other are practically nil, if there is only 1 cubic cm per cubic meter of space, it would be much like two people in at different spots in a large stadium, each throwing balls along a specific line, and actually having two balls impact each other.

Today, there's probably still space junk up there from the last few decades.
Heck, in MiO it's possible to find satellites in orbit that are inactive but have been up there for a very long time, meaning they were in a stable orbit for a long time.

Heck, we can practically get a space probe to get itself in orbit of a planet millions of miles away, many years after the probed was launched.
With that kind of mathematical accuracy, getting an oversized sandbox to stay in orbit for decades or longer should be no problem...

Other things people consider "impossible" deeds, just because they can't figure out any "easy" way it could be done...
Stone henge
The Pyramids of Giza (and Pyramids in general)
The line drawings that can only have their images seen from high up.

Where there is a will, there is a way.
Like the Great Wall of China...

[Kryzbyn]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

What does that have to do with why the colonies haven't attacked?

[R Ditto]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

What does that have to do with why the colonies haven't attacked?

Because they are too busy being defensive isolationists to bother attacking a planet they have nothing worth fighting for and because they can't really achieve much with their present capabilities and manpower?

[Jefffar]

So where does it say it takes only 2 seconds for the aforementioned fat man to travel the distance?

Why isn't this fat man argument in another thread?

Is this fat man made of straw?

[Kryzbyn]

My vote would be:
Because in the book Mutants in Orbit, in the Rifts section, it plainly says that the colonies and other orbital inhabitants have written the Earth off.
That's why they haven't attacked, or helped, or do anything but stop things from going either way.

I liked the mach 7 sumo wrestler bit. That was entertaining.
But which would happen first...him go splat from sudden acceleration to mach 7 or whatever he hit going splat, well, because he is a sumo wrestler.

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

The one thing that most people never seem to keep in mind with threads like these and speculating about preparation for those that are trying to reach orbit is that there is really no way for anyone on Rifts Earth to know as much about the orbital defenses as we do (i.e. we who read the book) in order to formulate such preparations.

As for using impervious to energy, IIRC, that does nothing against nuclear weapons. So, if you run into a "Brilliant Pebble," satelite, you're screwed. The same can be said about rail gun K-Sats (or even a massive satelite bristling with boom guns), and K-Sats that use other weaponry that impervious to energy won't help.

Also, why would anyone on Rifts Earth want to get into space? The pay-off really isn't worth the cost, all things considered.

~ Josh

[DocS]

So where does it say it takes only 2 seconds for the aforementioned fat man to travel the distance?

Why isn't this fat man argument in another thread?

Is this fat man made of straw?

The fat man has to do with how fast a projectile can be launched... which kind of has to do with shooting things up and down from orbit.

as for why i only takes two seonds.... the tai Chi attack only takes on melee attack, which is about 2-3 seconds, much closer to 2 for someone with martial arts at the appropriate level... ( I don't remember if the person has enough attacks per melee to bring the time down to a point where the Fat man reaches escape velocity, at which point, it becomes an interesting way for the folks in China to defend themselves from the orbitals...

after all...

anything above a 7 hits, unless dodged....

[Jefffar]

So where does it say it takes only 2 seconds for the aforementioned fat man to travel the distance?

Why isn't this fat man argument in another thread?

Is this fat man made of straw?

The fat man has to do with how fast a projectile can be launched... which kind of has to do with shooting things up and down from orbit.

as for why i only takes two seonds.... the tai Chi attack only takes on melee attack, which is about 2-3 seconds, much closer to 2 for someone with martial arts at the appropriate level...

Yes, but that's the time it takes to launch him, not the time it takes for him to travel the actual distance.

[DocS]

So where does it say it takes only 2 seconds for the aforementioned fat man to travel the distance?

Why isn't this fat man argument in another thread?

Is this fat man made of straw?

The fat man has to do with how fast a projectile can be launched... which kind of has to do with shooting things up and down from orbit.

as for why i only takes two seonds.... the tai Chi attack only takes on melee attack, which is about 2-3 seconds, much closer to 2 for someone with martial arts at the appropriate level...

Yes, but that's the time it takes to launch him, not the time it takes for him to travel the actual distance.

Well, it certainly can be argued that the whole attack resolves itself in one melee action. After all, if it all doesn't happen in the course of one melee attack, when *does* it happen? Nowhere in either edition of Ninjas and Superspies is a 'speed' reported. However, the strike takes one melee action to do, damage is rolled that melee action, the effects (due to knockdown) last until the next melee action, everything is resolved in that one melee action. Conclusion, the throw and the landing all happen in the course of one action.

The rules are the rules, it's really quite clear, everything resolves in the time between you hitting him the first time and you hitting him the second time (Which means that because he's out of range for your Boom Gun, you'll just have to kick another fat man into him).

I think if you watch the movie Kung Fu Hustle, you can actually see this attack done.

[Kryzbyn]

The one thing that most people never seem to keep in mind with threads like these and speculating about preparation for those that are trying to reach orbit is that there is really no way for anyone on Rifts Earth to know as much about the orbital defenses as we do (i.e. we who read the book) in order to formulate such preparations.

As for using impervious to energy, IIRC, that does nothing against nuclear weapons. So, if you run into a "Brilliant Pebble," satelite, you're screwed. The same can be said about rail gun K-Sats (or even a massive satelite bristling with boom guns), and K-Sats that use other weaponry that impervious to energy won't help.

Also, why would anyone on Rifts Earth want to get into space? The pay-off really isn't worth the cost, all things considered.

~ Josh

Amen, brother.

I think if you watch the movie Kung Fu Hustle, you can actually see this attack done.

[Jefffar]

Well, it certainly can be argued that the whole attack resolves itself in one melee action. After all, if it all doesn't happen in the course of one melee attack, when *does* it happen? Nowhere in either edition of Ninjas and Superspies is a 'speed' reported. However, the strike takes one melee action to do, damage is rolled that melee action, the effects (due to knockdown) last until the next melee action, everything is resolved in that one melee action. Conclusion, the throw and the landing all happen in the course of one action.

The rules are the rules, it's really quite clear, everything resolves in the time between you hitting him the first time and you hitting him the second time (Which means that because he's out of range for your Boom Gun, you'll just have to kick another fat man into him).

Except that, a melee action is apparently 3 to 5 seconds, if you have 1 or 14 of them every 15 seconds, so using them as a gauge of real time is meaningless.

Incidently, most game master's I've seen tend to resolve missile launches in a single melee action, even when it might have taken more than a melee for the missile to reach the target.

[DocS]

The rules are the rules, it's really quite clear, everything resolves in the time between you hitting him the first time and you hitting him the second time (Which means that because he's out of range for your Boom Gun, you'll just have to kick another fat man into him).

Except that, a melee action is apparently 3 to 5 seconds, if you have 1 or 14 of them every 15 seconds, so using them as a gauge of real time is meaningless.

Incidently, most game master's I've seen tend to resolve missile launches in a single melee action, even when it might have taken more than a melee for the missile to reach the target.

Well if you use the 3 second rule, the "Chi-Gun" fires at a scanty Mach 10, not as good, but still a pretty nice fastball (Add a little Newtonian physics, and it's also a pretty good thruster for a spiritual rocket, provided your fuel tank is filled with kick-able fat men).

I like the melee attack division better, it's more intuitive and it's funnier. And it certainly works for gunshots/punches (Jet Li throws punches faster than I do, I'm perfectly ok with admitting that). Assuming the attacks get faster is much more meaningful than assuming that your character is somehow dialating time to a point where he can do 30 seconds worth of activity in only 15 seconds, although relativity does allow for this to happen, I doubt that even Jet Li is moving his hands that fast.

Missilelaunches also tend to resolve in one melee action, usually they're fired at targets close enough that calculating speeds and distances is more trouble than it's worth. I don't remember, doesn't the missile table also give missile speeds for the rare occasion when it becomes needed?

[Jefffar]

The missile table does give speeds, but thsoe seem to be generally ignored.

A Mach 1 Missile (ie SRM) can travel about 3 miles per melee
A Mach 2 Missile (ie MRM) can travel about 6 miles per melee
A mach 4 Missile (ie fastest LRMs) can travel about 12 miles per melee.

Yet, no matter how far they are launched from, they almost always have their attacks resolved in the same action they are launched.

[Qev]

Also, why would anyone on Rifts Earth want to get into space? The pay-off really isn't worth the cost, all things considered.

Access to potentially unlimited energy and resources? Freedom from horrible supernatural monsters trying to eat your face every Tuesday night?

[rat_bastard]

Also, why would anyone on Rifts Earth want to get into space? The pay-off really isn't worth the cost, all things considered.

If Tolkeen had just one satilite giving a birds eye veiw of the Seige, the CS would not have stood a chance, All missle/artillery strikes would have been guided by orbital computers, troops could be teleported exactly in the proper troop strengths to exactly the proper locations, the CS would not be able to keep troop strength or bases secret at all.

[Kryzbyn]

Yeah...just ask ARCHIE 3 how convenient it is just to have the use of one communications sattelite...

[R Ditto]

Also, why would anyone on Rifts Earth want to get into space? The pay-off really isn't worth the cost, all things considered.

If Tolkeen had just one satilite giving a birds eye veiw of the Seige, the CS would not have stood a chance, All missle/artillery strikes would have been guided by orbital computers, troops could be teleported exactly in the proper troop strengths to exactly the proper locations, the CS would not be able to keep troop strength or bases secret at all.

They could have gone to Civil War/WWI/WWI tech, a hydrogen or hot air baloon, with a TW twist, like invisibility.
Or a small blimp.
It could be high enough that Dog Boys couldn't sense the TW stuff on it easily, and being made of mainly non-metallic stuff, most types of Radar wouldn't be able to detect it.

They could also just have an Air Elemental carry a gryo-stabilized camera package in a transparent ball and fly high up into the sky.

Not exactly as good as an orbital spy satellite, but still very usefull.

[rat_bastard]

which makes you wonder how they lost the thing in the first place.... probably lack of orginisation and manpower...

[Rockwolf66]

which makes you wonder how they lost the thing in the first place.... probably lack of orginisation and manpower...

Nope it's because the writer of that series decided that the Collition must survive to keep menacing everyone else so the Mages lost.

[Kryzbyn]

I dunno. One look at the revised magic rules, and I can see why the Coalition won.

[Mech-Viper Prime]

which makes you wonder how they lost the thing in the first place.... probably lack of orginisation and manpower...

Nope it's because the writer of that series decided that the Collition must survive to keep menacing everyone else so the Mages lost.

Tolkeen was just building itself up for a fall, when you start gathering allies and you starting bringing in demons, which makes part of your troops uneasy, is a bad thing

[Mech-Viper Prime]

I dunno. One look at the revised magic rules, and I can see why the Coalition won.

no , its the simple fact , most magic casting beings have egos , something most around here seem to forget that.

[R Ditto]

Uhm...actually RADAR can detect anything solid in the sky. It's the filters in the computers that are what people try to fool with all the stealth mumbo-jumbo.

That's why I mentioned that most types of radar won't detect it.

I know Doppler radar will easily detect such things, but we're talking about stuff that normal radar doesn't display on screen and of a small hard to spot item in the air.

Which is why I suggested the angle of a camera in small plastic sphere carried by an air elemental.
The camera has a 'ball' like frame with ball bearings that allow it to roll around and constantly aim down, with a lense that counters the curve of the sphere. The camera itself is also small.
It will be slow moving, so the software of most radars filters it out as a big bird.

It will be to small to easily spot in the air if someone goes up after it, it will probably be to small for most missiles to get a lock on it, and it will be a pain in the butt for any type of jet to engage something the size of a hampster ball with a small digital camcorder type camera package in it.
If trouble shows up, the air elemental carries it quickly to safetly, and if above friendly territory, simply drops it.

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

Also, why would anyone on Rifts Earth want to get into space? The pay-off really isn't worth the cost, all things considered.

If Tolkeen had just one satilite giving a birds eye veiw of the Seige, the CS would not have stood a chance, All missle/artillery strikes would have been guided by orbital computers, troops could be teleported exactly in the proper troop strengths to exactly the proper locations, the CS would not be able to keep troop strength or bases secret at all.

Tolkeen gets the satellite up... it gets destroyed...

On the thirtieth try.... it gets destroyed again...

The waste of resources and manpower it would take to get one working, would, in the end, be more of a negative than the satellite could ever be a positive.

"We can see the Coalition troop movements, now we stand a chance!"

"Uh, sir, our army and defenses are ill equipped because we spent so much money and resources on getting that one satellite up their."

"Umm... wow. Well at least we can see the CS coming to kill us..."

"Uh, no we can't sir, our satelitte has apparently been destroyed... again."

~ Josh

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

which makes you wonder how they lost the thing in the first place.... probably lack of orginisation and manpower...

Nope it's because the writer of that series decided that the Collition must survive to keep menacing everyone else so the Mages lost.

Actually, they lost because they though they had won after the Sorceror's Revenge (SR).

After the SR, nearly everyone that had come to help, left (there was ample enough time for them to do so, the celebration after the SR lasted a week), leaving the defenders of Tolkeen behind, weakened by their own losses in the SR.

When the second CS invasion force (made up of troops from the Quebec warfront and those who had escaped the SR) came in, Tolkeen was caught with its pants down, thinking they had won the war. The Tolkeen that CS troops faced post-SR was a lot weaker and a lot less capable than the one they had faced before and during the SR.

------------

Now back to your readily scheduled topic... free from horse goo...

~ Josh

[R Ditto]

Tolkeen: 101 ways to snatch Defeat from the jaws of Victory.

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

Tolkeen: 101 ways to snatch Defeat from the jaws of Victory.

If this was Sound Off!, I would have a comment to follow about politics, but since it's not, I'll leave it with just

~ Josh

[rat_bastard]

actually, as effec tive as the anti-surface satilites are, they have no real protection against magic. Techno wizardry can give it invisability and teleport lesser can put a small satilite in orbet for cheap.

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

actually, as effec tive as the anti-surface satilites are, they have no real protection against magic. Techno wizardry can give it invisability and teleport lesser can put a small satilite in orbet for cheap.

Though what are the chances that they won't teleport it into something, destroying the satellite?

They don't know about the CODF or the K-Sats, and thus they would be shooting blind with their teleportation, which is always a dangerous thing to do.

~ Josh

[rat_bastard]

actually, as effec tive as the anti-surface satilites are, they have no real protection against magic. Techno wizardry can give it invisability and teleport lesser can put a small satilite in orbet for cheap.

Though what are the chances that they won't teleport it into something, destroying the satellite?

They don't know about the CODF or the K-Sats, and thus they would be shooting blind with their teleportation, which is always a dangerous thing to do.

~ Josh

Oh gee, first satilite is not responding, good thing it only cost 100 grand, launc h the next one. THe most expensive part is launching it, and teleport lesser takes that away. The first few tries teach them that things are shooting down their satilites, then it takes malik savent about a week to come up with an invisable satilite (or one that looks like space junk), as for teleporting it into an object, you take a 2000$ telescope and eyeball your shot. Space is vast and empty, matter is rare, there is more space to teleport into then there is junk.

[R Ditto]

Teleport an invidible satellite into orbit?

Problem 1
Teleport Lesser:
Sub-Problem 1A: Caster won't "know" the destination... and it can be hard to estimated a point in space with no referances to distance and such. As has been said, it's going to be a "shot in the dark" of sorts. The chances of teleporting into something is scare at least. Go spread a Snday Nespaper out all over the floor of a large room, and throw a dart without it landing dead center onto a period...
Sub-Problem 1B: Low Earth Orbit is 150 miles up and requires a speed of 8 km/s (5 miles/s)... Rough estimate, that's mach 25... If the spell maintains any motion the item had, it's just going to fall and burn up, unless someone can get the satellite and the level 30 mage teleporing it to speeds of "really freaking fast".
There is also the problem of getting it going the right speed and into the right orbit, so it doesn't fly out of orbit or end up crashing and burning.

Problem 2:
If Invisiility Simple:
Not going to work against more or less every sensors the K-Sats and stations will have.
If Invisibility Superior:
The spell is not going to hide any radar/radio emissions coming from the satellite, and won't hide any exhaust gases coming from thrusters, as such things are not hidden from detection if they leave the area of effect of the spell. So, the satellite transmits data to the surface, the K-Sats detect it and open fire at the source area.
If they detect sudden thermal energy of exhaust coming from something, they will detect it and open fire at the source area.


Also, there is magic up there, just very uncommon at best, so they likely have some clue about such things.

Whatever the sat does to get detected, the K-Sat will likely assume a possible stealth craft due to no radar contact and blast it to bits, possibly just by queing up the nearest brilliant pebbles to be deployed and detonate at the source of the emissions.
Another thing is triangulation, several sats pulse radar beams from above the area at a frequency that will bounce off of the upper atmospheres, they will look for the "void" in the radar images, triangulate where that void is, and blast it to bits.

Due to the funny stuff going on at the remains of the Sino-Japanese station, there is always the rare chance of someone in the orbitals developing their own version of the Japanese SNARLS...


One thing I do wonder about. Invisibility Supoerior lists all sorts of sensor/detection types it hides stuff from, except for radar and sonar. That makes me wonder if passive systems are useless, but active scanning systems such as radar might actually work.

[rat_bastard]

lets see, teleport problem is no problem "up as far as I can throw it" is fine for teleport lesser, and with telescope you can see where you are sending it.

two I was thinking more along the lines of invisability to machines and supernatural invisibility from the combat magic section of merc adventures.

three sorry magic is unkown in canon orbit, I don't know why mystics don't appear, ley lines apear in all sorts of places in the solar system.

four, tolkeen is during the seige is the last place on earth to have naruni merch, slap a contra-grave pack on theat bad boy and you have no problems with falling.

[R Ditto]

lets see, teleport problem is no problem "up as far as I can throw it" is fine for teleport lesser, and with telescope you can see where you are sending it.

Except maybe the part where it says range is 5 miles per level of caster... minimal orbit is at least 150 miles up, so a magic user of level 30+ would be needed... so that makes it effectively impossible unless they got a god/goddess ranked at level 30 in magic.

Also, knowledge of how to get something in orbit will be needed. As I said, unless the spell throws it into orbit going something like mach 25, it's not going to stay up there.
As for a contra-gravity system, lets hope they cannot detect that kind of thing.

two I was thinking more along the lines of invisability to machines and supernatural invisibility from the combat magic section of merc adventures.

Don't have that book, but it's probably not going to hide any emissions the satellite gives off, otherwise ground communications couldn't detect it and you got a satellite that is sending out signals that nothing can pick up.
One other factor would be how long the spell lasts.

three sorry magic is unkown in canon orbit, I don't know why mystics don't appear, ley lines apear in all sorts of places in the solar system.

Where does it say that?
The closest thing I can find is "Magic is NOT generally known" thing under Outcast Station. Which means it is known, just... a bit on the rare side.

My guess is a few self taught mages or perhaps a few that found their way up there somehow...1

But the point is, energy is energy. Japan developed tech that can detect stuff like magic or the supernatural. I'm sure that 300 years in space after the Cataclysm, someone will have come up with a way detecting the 'big rivers of blue light' on the planet while trying to figure out what those rivers of light were.

four, tolkeen is during the seige is the last place on earth to have naruni merch, slap a contra-grave pack on theat bad boy and you have no problems with falling.

That would work, only possible problem being to rig it so the satellite can control it, which might be a little tricky, and possibly void your warrenty on the contra-gravity pack.
Also no telling what kind of sensors that system might show up on, and what kind of emissions it might put out, but it seems like a kind of pricy approach, but it should work fairly well over all.


Other problems.
Possible lack of knowledge of building that kind of stuff in general.
They will need...
Data on the thickness of the atmosphere, size of the planet, effective gravity of the planet, the spin of the planet, etc.
Data on the effects of space (realy cold, vacuum, steller radiation, radiation from sun, effects of Earth's magnetic field, how motor oil turns into the consistency of mollases n cold vacumm, etc)
Data on how to build a satellite (designs, materials needed, systems needed, providing power in space, shielding it from the effects of stuff in space).
Data on how to put stuff in orbit, how stuff stays in orbit, etc.
How to get a teleport spell to teleport a stationary object that is sitting still so it is moving at high speeds whereever it is teleported to.
A sextant and precise longitude and lattitude of their position on the planet, so they can calculate the angle to point a big telescope at. (assuming the altered perception of the telescope does mess things up... probably will mess things up, stick with naked eye and the sextant, those things can be precise...)
Data on how to build really big ground arrays for sending/recieving signals to/from space (I bet the orbitals will be just thrilled to spot someone building huge comm. dishes aiming up...)
Data on what type of lense or filters will be needed for a camera in orbit to see properly without being warped or otherwise affected by the Earth's atmosphere.
Yep, this is indeed something they will need a Rocket Scientist on hand to make things a whole lot easier so the orbitals don't decide to drop a rock on Tolkee for all the stuff that keeps popping up in space above the area of Tolkeen while Tolkeen tries to get something to stick up there...

Alternate ideas that focus on the fact that you don't need to be hundreds of miles up to see stuff from above...
Strap a camera system on (or put it in) a multi-warhead style MRM or LRM sized rocket and shoot it strait up.
Don't need it to get into orbit, just high enough that they can get a very long distance view of things. It beams images back to base, good enough. A little pricy in the long, but it could work, and the losses it prevents would be really handy.

Or just teleport a camera strait up with similar effect (as high as a normal "can't usually go higher than level 15" magic user can get it, which is very far from getting anywhere near orbit), have the invisible superior and invulerable spells on it, so it isn't detected and shot down by missiles, and so it doesn't go splat when it hits the ground, so it can be reused.

Or just use invisible superior on a weather baloon with a camera system, have it used a focused burst transmission system to limit the chances of the CS detect radio transmissions from it. All the parts would be cheap, so there would be minimal loss when the spell wore off and the balloon got detected.

Give some magic user a big cluster of cameras, strap the contra gravity pack on him/her, toss invisibility superior on them and let them fly around up high for a little bit...

Take the original 'teleport a satellite into space' idea.
Forget teleport, just have a contra-gravity pack equipped satellite fly itself places up to high for the CS to easily detect, and just low enough it won't get shot at by the K-Sats (might loose a sat at first finding the max safe altitude). For extra fun, use remains of a CS stealthy jet (they have one type at least IIRC) and make a satellite that is hard to spot on radar. If small enough and with stealthy materials, most radars will filter it out, thinking it is a bird or something.
If possible, TW the satellite to have a long lasting Invisibility Superior effect (perhaps using some sort of PPE battery of some sort?) Then the stallite can cruise around a few miles up with contra-gravity, take pictures, and either transmit them or transport the data back to base, before the invisibility wears off.
Besides, most orbital "spy sats" have very powerful camera systems that Tolkeen might not be able to easily recreate, so the above options would probably work a lot better in some ways.

[DocS]

I would think there would be a lot of orbital interest in the more advanced empires. After all, "Whatever is up there, is nasty enough to destroy anything we send..... perhaps we should try to get information about it in case it decides to come down and visit us".

Oh, conversely, "Whatever is up there, is big enough to turn CS ships into confetti, We'd like to know what could do that."

I can't imagine the CS and the Fed of Magic both having small groups given a little resources simply to keep and eye up there and find out what could be up there.

[R Ditto]

I would think there would be a lot of orbital interest in the more advanced empires. After all, "Whatever is up there, is nasty enough to destroy anything we send..... perhaps we should try to get information about it in case it decides to come down and visit us".

Oh, conversely, "Whatever is up there, is big enough to turn CS ships into confetti, We'd like to know what could do that."

I can't imagine the CS and the Fed of Magic both having small groups given a little resources simply to keep and eye up there and find out what could be up there.

Considering the Federation of Magic most likely has absolutely no clue what space is all about, let alone satellite usage, I doubt that ever crossed their minds. We're talking about people who regularly summon demons and open rifts. To them, going into space is below their capabilities and has probably never been even considered.

I also severely doubt anyone knew of the CS space program outside of the CS...let alone Lazlo or the Federation. So the whole "I'd like to know what's blowing up the CS attempts of space travel" thing just doesn't seem to work for me.

To back that up.
If anyone did see the launches from a distance away, they might just think of it as the CS doing tests on a new type of missile, or testing just how high their big missiles could go, or otherwise to see how their big missiles handle a strait vertical climb... because as far as anyone would know, there would be no other reason for the CS to be shooting rockets strait up.
The CS would never bother with large manned rockets or even shuttles if they couldn't even get their own version of Sputnik up there in the first place, so there would be no apparent evidence of any attempts to get into space.

Another angle.
Didn't Erin Tarn herself say that effectively nothing can get into space? If so, why would the CS even be trying in the first place?