Robot Dog Pack

[RockJock]

Has anyone run a character with several dog to lion sized animal robots under their control? It was something I was thinking about and I couldn't recall much discussion about this sort of thing.

[Hunterrose]

This sounds cool. Is there a pre-generated version of this somewhere?

[RockJock]

Not really. I can come up with several animal type drones/robots in Rifts. Off the top of my head Archie/Shemerrians have the bottweiler and Shemerrian wolves, Chaos Earth has a couple of dog sized drones, Triax 2 has a couple as I recall(not sure), and the Black Market has a few between the Black Market Book and New West.

I could see the animals being convincingly real, or obviously mechanical, or even mounting weapons. Just depends on the feel.

None of these are exactly what I'm talking about, but could be decent guides. Chaos Earth has a skill set for commanding drones, which is similar to a Packmaster for Splicers. Just really thinking out loud here.

As for the human component I could see a slightly modified Secret Operative, Robot Pilot, or even Genius working well.

I've had this idea in the back of my head for ages, but the JL thread brought it back up.

[Hunterrose]

I'm intrigued.

[andyskyhawk]

I have a character in my current group that uses a team of small animals and monsters to do his fighting for him. We used the Rifts conversion book and the PF animals and monsters book. The human character is essentially a wilderness scout with PSI-stalker animal empathy.

[RockJock]

Andy,

That's sort of what I was thinking of, but being tech based. The Jungle Lord thread talks about something similar to your Psi-Stalker, but I've seen PF Beastmasters, and regular HU characters with things like Animal Brother and Beast Master that can be tons of fun.

[Sir_Spirit]

The original Rifts Vampires book had a robot dog in a circus. Looked like a golden retriever IIRC.
Or am I thinking of the cowboys book(New West)..?
So, robot dogs seems doable.

[RockJock]

I know there was one in New West, along with the robot horses. I haven't read Vampire in ages, so there could be one in there a well.

[Pepsi Jedi]

There's something... remotely akin to this in Rifts Heroes of Humanity. A new CS Class for controlling Skelebots.

The character is basically a robot pack leader, but those robots are like 8 foot tall with rail guns. Still you could data mine if if you wished.

[eliakon]

The Chaos Earth book has the NEMA Intel-Agent
One of the variants starts with the skill Command Robots...
...and a selection of robot drones.

Sounds like it might be something that could be easily turned into what your looking for.

[Pepsi Jedi]

There's also a drone jockey OCC in Dead Reign

[RockJock]

Between the above and the Splicers version there is plenty to base a character on. I didn't know the Drone Jockey in Dead Reign, but had been playing with elements of the others.

Thanks everyone.

I really think something like this could be fun, and not overpowered in HU.

[Sir_Spirit]

Hmm, might try making a robot dog in HU just to see what costs you come up with. Then use that as a guildline for what having a Pack of those would cost.

[Fermat]

Ironically, I've been working on something similar. If it works well in playtesting, I'll either post it here or submit it to the Rifter.

[Nightmartree]

Hmm, might try making a robot dog in HU just to see what costs you come up with. Then use that as a guildline for what having a Pack of those would cost.

The real expense is the HU micro fusion reactors you'd need.

I think the last time I was considering mass produced robots for HU I got annoyed at the lack of just plain old battery powered ones...and so used the prices for liquid fuel and claimed it required charging from an outside source.

and the price for a basic canine unit following heroes unlimited rules (with fudging liquid fuels into a battery) is 1,428,000. So with high rolls on cash 5 or 6 of them should be doable and still have cash to improve them. So...don't forget to pay your electric bill.

[RockJock]

Nightmartree, that battery switch is exactly what I used. I've only had the pack in a few sessions so far, but it is fun. If I do it again it will be more of a government or NPC type player because the book keeping is a bit extreme.

[Nightmartree]

Nightmartree, that battery switch is exactly what I used. I've only had the pack in a few sessions so far, but it is fun. If I do it again it will be more of a government or NPC type player because the book keeping is a bit extreme.

Glad to hear it, and most good minion based character take a good chunk of book keeping

[eliakon]

One thing to remember is that mass production should cut the prices significantly.
Look at how much the 'cost' of one of the suits of 'of the shelf' power armor is vs. how much it would cost to build it. In Rifts you can see this even better by using SB1r to 'reverse engineer' the various robots and power armor suits... they all end up vastly more expensive when built as custom one off designs...
...which makes sense of course. A one off scratch built prototype is always hideously expensive to build since you have to often fabricate custom parts for it, and sometimes even have to have custom parts made for the machines making those custom parts...
...but once you get a design set up? I would assume that prices will go down by a factor of 5 or 10 easily, and higher multiples are not out of the question. Especially for things like programing which would realistically only need to be 'bought' once and then simply copied into each unit (assuming that it is being custom programed for the unit by the design team. Licensed copies of a commercial program will be more expensive, but will still run into economies of scale.)

I realized this when I was replicating some robots from various web comics and real life using the game materials (I will say no more so as to not even get near the No Conversion policy) and realized that while most of them theoretically cost millions of dollars... as a commercial 'no frills' robots that I could get the prices to get closer to real world numbers by assuming production costs were lower than development costs.

[Nightmartree]

I would assume that prices will go down by a factor of 5 or 10 easily, and higher multiples are not out of the question.

So the first robo dog costs about 1.5 million, the second and third robo dog packs combined also costs 1.5 million

now you know why the bad guys are robbing banks, first to finance development, then the second round to finance robot army production (and explains why the first time you meet markX13 robo destroyer its a one of a kind prototype, and then you fight a dozen, two dozen, a cities worth ect.)

[eliakon]

I would assume that prices will go down by a factor of 5 or 10 easily, and higher multiples are not out of the question.

So the first robo dog costs about 1.5 million, the second and third robo dog packs combined also costs 1.5 million

now you know why the bad guys are robbing banks, first to finance development, then the second round to finance robot army production (and explains why the first time you meet markX13 robo destroyer its a one of a kind prototype, and then you fight a dozen, two dozen, a cities worth ect.)

Exactly.
The down side of course, is that they are mass produced. That means that all their choices have already been made for them. So every Kanine Robo-Rottweiler Mk 3 will have the exact same frame, programs, weapons, armor, speed, etc.
Which means once you figure out a weakness for one unit you figure out a weakness for all of them.
And if you want to do any modifications of that robot at all your back to the "one off customizations" and then "costs involved to set up a new mass production line"
This is one reason that they don't replace fighter planes and warships and the like all that often actually. Its much cheaper to just keep making 30 year old models and just swap out specific modules and programs than it is to redesign a new unit from scratch...