Salvage in Rifts

[random_username]

Sometimes theft is a more effective strategy than salvage.

Just food for thought.

--flatline

Psi-Ghost locates, boards, and flees with fastest enemy vehicle. (or equivalent abilities combo to a Psi-Ghost)

[Alrik Vas]

TW could do the same with invisibility, eh? theft is indeed the fast track.

[random_username]

RMB 205-209 discusses the Black Market, and selling to the Black Market.

Looting fallen enemies is Standard Operating Procedure for pretty much anybody I've ever talked to, not just in Rifts but in virtually every RPG I've ever played in.

Black Market Book
- BM Merchant Item Availability: page 106-107. A few specific items have set (non %) values, others are very low to virtually nothing.
- Selling to BM: page 107 - 108. Of vital importance is knowing what item or items are in highest demand as per last paragraph in Market Value. Such high demands are short lived yet typically in the % players would prefer
- 100 Random Black Market Contraband Finds: For 'stumbling into' a hidden cache of supplies. Also possible use for general random loot/caches/bases/bunkers for many plausible scenarios or even to jump start a campaign/adventure. Careful examination has some very interesting listings D100 with 02 result: last armor type = jackpot winners with the right contacts and bartering skills

[torjones]

For the longest time on these boards, I've read about people salvaging their enemies for gear, which they tend to turn into money.

Can I get some anecdotes about how this has gone? What have your experiences been?

The group I'm running for has a TW who is all kinds of tech skills, he's an operator with magic, essentially. Though even he's like, "meh, we can leave most of this crap."

And I tend to agree with him, above board. The act of salvage itself is dangerous, you tend to be on a former battlefield and literally anything could go wrong with the damaged equipment laying about. Not only that, but the vehicles you'd need to transport it, the contacts needed to sell the components, the haggling over value...I mean, if you NEED the money, and have the means, it's great. Though it's very time consuming.

Anyway, just curious how you guys go about it, not how you theoretically would go about it, but how it's actually been done in your games.

I've played Operators with the Salvage skill (almost always have that skill...). So, as a player, you know what you damaged on the targets that you destroyed. You know this so you know what bits you can salvage after the fight. (I've had GMs that will say you can salvage a percentage of the MDC value of the remaining armor, and others say "Ok, you killed the main body of that SAMAS, so you've got two legs, an arm, and one of the thrusters is salvagable") Most GMs I've played with go with the opinion (much like I do) that the nuclear reactor is only salvagable on a critical success on your salvage roll, otherwise, you're looking for how much of the remaining target you get to salvage. Usually, you're looking for MDC values (for repairs), reactors, weapons, and "misc spare parts".

As for a "Typical Scenario" kind of thing, say you've just managed to defeat a company of mooks in EBA with basic gear. Very few grunts are going to take the precaution of booby trapping their own gear in case they get killed, so that's almost never a concern. I'm usually more concerned with "Stragglers" to the battle field, or things being drawn by the sounds of combat, so the combat-types get to maintain a "CAP" or similar, while the less combat-y characters do the salvage (with the Operator doing actual "Salvage" type work, the rest are doing things like grabbing grenades, e-clips, weapons, other easily identifyable gear).

Ok, so now that you've done the work of looting the bad guys (they're dead, they don't need it any more, and I might), what do you do with it? Well, over and above whatever I intend to keep for my own usage (ie: repairs, mods, and upgrades), you're most likely to be selling to the black market or salvage yards. Some places, if you've got a good reputation with them will take whole suits of EBA and Power Armor, even when badly damaged, and treat it like a Honda in a chop-shop, pulling it apart in a garage for every functioning component they can pull out of it, then melt the rest down for spare materials.

Either way, most black market shops will be able to buy at least some of your salvage, especially if you're willing to take some of your value in trade or in BMC (assuming they're affiliated with the Official Black Market, or whoever backs the BMC)

When I'm running games, I've become a lot more fuzzy with things like salvage. I don't really see the need to micromanage salvage as a GM and tend to generalize, a lot. "Ok, you just killed a squad of CS soldiers, your loot is 12 firebreathers, 2 light plasma guns 7 grenades, and 60 e-clips (all but 3 are discharged)." "Ok, salvage check passed by 36." "Good roll, after two hours of salvage work you manage to scrape together 4 spare parts kits, and (does some rough guestimate math) 200 points of MDC material. You also find two heavily used NG survival kits. The parts are all there, it's just that the consumables have all been consumed. They'll need refurbishing and restocking before being useful."