Rifts NA and the usefullness of AIRPOWER......

[slade2501]

So, teh vast majority of Rifts North America is running at about late WWI/early WWII levels of tactics and equipment. Most powers have very little actual Air Power. No one fields large amounts of fighters, bombers or even Ariel reccon. The Coalition covers this with skycycles and SAMAS power armor, but they are of anti-infantry bent, instead of true air power. They also field the stolen Iron Heart Arms designs, but in very poor numbers.

There are very few models of Flying Power armor available outside of the CS and NG. Also, most air vehicles tenf to be one person transports instead of dedicated combat jets or bomber platforms.

On the flip side, Anti-aircraft vehicles are few and far between, as well as AA guns or missile emplacements.

When used, Air power has multiple advantages over ground targets. They can deploy ordinance from a great distance, often out of range from ground fire. they can maneuver easily, and escape more often. They can flank, distract or pin down forces, giving their ground allies a marked advantage.

For example, a ground scout sees a sizeable raiding party of Brodkill demons heading out for a raid. The local town launched several fighters equipped with missile pods. At a mile up, these jets can dump their missile pods on the column of Brodkill and cause serious damage from out of a clear sky (at a mile up, jets appear as tiny specs).

[kaid]

Air power is always one of the oddities in rifts. In general the biggest problem for more traditional type of planes is lack of good air fields to land them. Sea planes have more leaway of picking landing spots but most fighter craft would need at least a reinforced concrete pad if they are vtol or some kind of runway.

I think that is a large part why a lot of the flying craft that is most widely used is either power armor or things like deaths head transports massive mid/high altitude hover type vehicles.

For the forces that have the bases to run aircraft I am sure they are very useful but given how so many areas are basically city states with one maybe two associated towns there just is not a ton of infrastructure for aircraft to operate.

The larger nations like the CS and triax have more military air craft although for triax 2 apparently gargoyles figured out that leaving air fields unmolested is a bad plan tend to go bezerk when raiding vs airfields so the only ones that remain tend to be well behind friendly lines.

[Freemage]

Also note: there are various other effects on Rifts Earth that limit purely technological air power. It takes one Ley Line storm to turn your entire sortie into a scrap pile hurtling towards the earth. Similarly, magical nations may make use of the nigh-unlimited power available to them on a Ley Line to give planes spotted crossing one a truly bad day, at little cost to themselves.

Now, some of the states that combine magic and tech could theoretically have a dominant position, but I believe most of those are currently too small to handle the infrastructure demands that kaid points out. Air power is quite likely to be a turning factor in individual battles under ideal conditions, but as a large-scale tactical element, it's been considerably dampened.

[kaid]

Also ley lines are known to sometimes cause chaos for navigational aids just look at the modern day bermuda triangle myths. Now if you are flying in most power armor a couple thousand feet up at most no big deal you can navigate by sight on the land until stuff fixes itself. But if you are flying through the cloud layers when your instruments go nuts that could make your day very bad very rapidly.

[Mack]

The main challenge of air power in Rifts is that it's an RPG. Air power just doesn't translate well into a game that's focused on small band of adventurers.

[taalismn]

The main challenge of air power in Rifts is that it's an RPG. Air power just doesn't translate well into a game that's focused on small band of adventurers.

"I pickle off a full six hardpoints' worth of laser-guided ordnance and pull up."
"Several hundred yards of terrain...and three orcs...go FHWOOOM below you. Collect ten experience points."
"Whu-whee! It's beer time!"

[Mack]

The main challenge of air power in Rifts is that it's an RPG. Air power just doesn't translate well into a game that's focused on small band of adventurers.

"I pickle off a full six hardpoints' worth of laser-guided ordnance and pull up."
"Several hundred yards of terrain...and three orcs...go FHWOOOM below you. Collect ten experience points."
"Whu-whee! It's beer time!"

Except in Rifts, you're more likely to be the Orcs.

[Library Ogre]

The main challenge of air power in Rifts is that it's an RPG. Air power just doesn't translate well into a game that's focused on small band of adventurers.

"I pickle off a full six hardpoints' worth of laser-guided ordnance and pull up."
"Several hundred yards of terrain...and three orcs...go FHWOOOM below you. Collect ten experience points."
"Whu-whee! It's beer time!"

Except in Rifts, you're more likely to be the Orcs.

Sometimes, you have the fun, and sometimes, the fun has you.

[Mlp7029]

So, teh vast majority of Rifts North America is running at about late WWI/early WWII levels of tactics and equipment. Most powers have very little actual Air Power. No one fields large amounts of fighters, bombers or even Ariel reccon. The Coalition covers this with skycycles and SAMAS power armor, but they are of anti-infantry bent, instead of true air power. They also field the stolen Iron Heart Arms designs, but in very poor numbers.

There are very few models of Flying Power armor available outside of the CS and NG. Also, most air vehicles tenf to be one person transports instead of dedicated combat jets or bomber platforms.

On the flip side, Anti-aircraft vehicles are few and far between, as well as AA guns or missile emplacements.

When used, Air power has multiple advantages over ground targets. They can deploy ordinance from a great distance, often out of range from ground fire. they can maneuver easily, and escape more often. They can flank, distract or pin down forces, giving their ground allies a marked advantage.

For example, a ground scout sees a sizeable raiding party of Brodkill demons heading out for a raid. The local town launched several fighters equipped with missile pods. At a mile up, these jets can dump their missile pods on the column of Brodkill and cause serious damage from out of a clear sky (at a mile up, jets appear as tiny specs).

Read Coalition Navy, Sourcebook One, CS War Machine. All have true fighter/bombers in them.

[glitterboy2098]

aircraft are something that the setting has long established do exist, and in sizeable use.. though the non-military side of aviation is only recently being explored more.

i think the main failing is that PB does not have a truly useful system to handle air combat maneuvering and air combat in general, which makes an aviation focused game more difficult to run.

[kaid]

aircraft are something that the setting has long established do exist, and in sizeable use.. though the non-military side of aviation is only recently being explored more.

i think the main failing is that PB does not have a truly useful system to handle air combat maneuvering and air combat in general, which makes an aviation focused game more difficult to run.

Although a lot of the most common rifts aircraft are things that are either flying power armor which is all pretty low altitude stuff or things like deaths head transports and the NG/triax variants of them. Basically flying over brick transports that are more brute force flight than any sort of aerodynamic flying.

I do wish NG2 had been able to include some more bush plane/commercial plane options. They had the bush pilot in NG1 and I was hoping they would flesh out some of their options a bit more. Although again one of their listed main things they use is the skyking which basically is another slap a big enough engine on something and anything will fly sort of design.

[kaid]

I guess one thing I am kinda surprised we have not seen more of in rifts are float/sea plane designs. That kind of thing works pretty well in areas that lack infrastructure for more normal type aircraft.

[Shark_Force]

honestly, while you may not be able to pull off a golden age fighter jet (or really even an RL modern fighter jet) without decent runways, you could easily put enough armour and weaponry on something more like a WW II era fighter, and some of those were rated for landing in unimproved runways (which is to say, a more-or-less level field). and even if we ignore that, you could build perfectly functional helicopters that only need a small, clear, reasonably level area to land or take off.

so yeah, it's probably reasonable that nobody is using top-of-the line fighter jets... but i can't see much reason why a community couldn't have a converted hurricane fighter or something like that, loaded with half a dozen mini-missiles on each wing, maybe a couple of aerodynamic fusion blocks strapped to the bottom that are released electronically, and one or two laser rifles (or even just an MD machinegun, they do have those right in the core rifts book) mounted to it, covered with whatever lightweight materials they use for the very lightest of the body armours (if you're not picky about environmental sealing, i think there's one that's like 50 MDC for 8 pounds of material... not exactly a flying tank in rifts terms, but also probably not that expensive, all things considered.

probably the biggest problem is actually finding people who know how to make decent aircraft. the technology is certainly there.

[eliakon]

honestly, while you may not be able to pull off a golden age fighter jet (or really even an RL modern fighter jet) without decent runways, you could easily put enough armour and weaponry on something more like a WW II era fighter, and some of those were rated for landing in unimproved runways (which is to say, a more-or-less level field). and even if we ignore that, you could build perfectly functional helicopters that only need a small, clear, reasonably level area to land or take off.

so yeah, it's probably reasonable that nobody is using top-of-the line fighter jets... but i can't see much reason why a community couldn't have a converted hurricane fighter or something like that, loaded with half a dozen mini-missiles on each wing, maybe a couple of aerodynamic fusion blocks strapped to the bottom that are released electronically, and one or two laser rifles (or even just an MD machinegun, they do have those right in the core rifts book) mounted to it, covered with whatever lightweight materials they use for the very lightest of the body armours (if you're not picky about environmental sealing, i think there's one that's like 50 MDC for 8 pounds of material... not exactly a flying tank in rifts terms, but also probably not that expensive, all things considered.

probably the biggest problem is actually finding people who know how to make decent aircraft. the technology is certainly there.

The skills aren't all that hard to get either really.
The issue is, as has been said before, that from a game play aspect its not fun.

This is why we have hundreds of swords, and pistols lovingly detaild, several dozen suits of powered armor and scores of combat mecha...

And three or four pieces of Artillery.
Artillery isn't smexy. So while it is one of the major factors in military thinking and is a core part of military forces, it is more or less ignored in game because its not cool, its hard to implement and of course while it is realistic it isn't not much fun to be helplessly killed from a mile or three away.

Thus we get very little in the way of airplanes, and those tend to be single man fighters (because 'Knights of the Air') and not strategic bombers and the like. Very little artillery, very little heavy armor, or terror weapons. No stats for chemical weapons, or biological weapons, or other the other "realistic but not cool" stuff.

[Freemage]

Yeah, Rifts has been ruled by the Rule of Cool before the Rule of Cool was cool.....

[Mack]

Suppose for a minute that the CS conducted a forced marriage between a Death Head transport and a AC-130 Gunship. That ugly offspring would be the end of many adventuring parties.

GM: Bob, your Sixth Sense just went off.
Bob: Everyone take cover!
GM: Don't bother, everybody roll a new character.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

So, teh vast majority of Rifts North America is running at about late WWI/early WWII levels of tactics and equipment. Most powers have very little actual Air Power.

If by "Air Power" you mean "bombers", then... yeah. I guess. They also don't really need it since they have Surface to Surface LRMs capable of going 2000+ miles all on their own. There's absolutely no benefit to making a multi-million credit bomber that can get blown up.

As for other "Air Power" - ALL of the major powers other than NG field significant air power.

No one fields large amounts of fighters,

Other than the CS, FQ, IHA when they existed (and therefore merc companies), GAW.... and Triax and the New Navy.

bombers

For good reason (see above).

or even Ariel reccon. The Coalition covers this with skycycles and SAMAS power armor,

Which do the job just as well, so, im not sure what the point is.

but they are of anti-infantry bent, instead of true air power. They also field the stolen Iron Heart Arms designs, but in very poor numbers.

The CS does not deploy stolen IH designs (other than the surface navy ships). They have their own. They actually have a pretty impressive air force, all things considered:

Rifts Mercenaries - CS Nightwing (escort aircraft for DHTs)
CS War Campaign - Demon Locust and Black Lightning Helicopters (20,000ft operating ceiling); SF-7 Talon Stealth VTOL fighter
CS Navy - Sea Striker, Shrike Interceptor, Dagger Bomber, and a UAV; also use the F-14 Improved Tomcat, CS Navy Versions of both Army Choppers.

And that is supplemented by very fast (up to Mach 1) low-altitude combatants like flying PA, Sky Cycles, and the two Rocket Cycles.

There are very few models of Flying Power armor available outside of the CS and NG.

There are very few manufacturers of Power Armor outside of the CS and NG, period. Flying or not. (Speaking North America).

There's... Chipwell... and uh.. Titan. And Bandito. Triax imports.

Chipwell we can safely discount, but both Bandito and Titan have flying PA. (Bandito SAMAS and the Flying Titan). As does Triax, obviously.

Also, most air vehicles tenf to be one person transports instead of dedicated combat jets or bomber platforms.

On the flip side, Anti-aircraft vehicles

Dedicated anti-air platforms, sure. But again, are they really needed? Any giant robot with decent ranged weaponry is an AA platform. Most robots also have missiles, usually of the MRM and LRM variety. Which means they can shoot you down the moment you pop up on Radar.

are few and far between, as well as AA guns or missile emplacements.

Almost every combat vehicle in Rifts has missiles. Im also not sure where you get the idea there aren't missile emplacements, since NG details them, and the CS info we have says that their space is covered in bases and non-friendly aircraft (anything they decide) gets shot down with extreme prejudice.

When used, Air power has multiple advantages over ground targets. They can deploy ordinance from a great distance,

In Rifts, so can Robots, Tanks, and other ground vehicles. Aircraft have no particular advantage here.

often out of range from ground fire. they can maneuver easily, and escape more often. They can flank, distract or pin down forces, giving their ground allies a marked advantage.

All of which are easily covered (better than jets) by air-mobile Power Armor.

For example, a ground scout sees a sizeable raiding party of Brodkill demons heading out for a raid. The local town launched several fighters equipped with missile pods. At a mile up, these jets can dump their missile pods on the column of Brodkill and cause serious damage from out of a clear sky (at a mile up, jets appear as tiny specs).

Same exact thing can happen with Flying Titans. You dont need fighters for this. Or even aircraft, since a single Samson Missileman parked a mile back could saturate the area.

Air power is always one of the oddities in rifts. In general the biggest problem for more traditional type of planes is lack of good air fields to land them. Sea planes have more leaway of picking landing spots but most fighter craft would need at least a reinforced concrete pad if they are vtol or some kind of runway.

I think that is a large part why a lot of the flying craft that is most widely used is either power armor or things like deaths head transports massive mid/high altitude hover type vehicles.

For the forces that have the bases to run aircraft I am sure they are very useful but given how so many areas are basically city states with one maybe two associated towns there just is not a ton of infrastructure for aircraft to operate.

The larger nations like the CS and triax have more military air craft although for triax 2 apparently gargoyles figured out that leaving air fields unmolested is a bad plan tend to go bezerk when raiding vs airfields so the only ones that remain tend to be well behind friendly lines.

Given golden age tech, (or more advanced, in the case of Triax), runways should be a thing of the past. Everything should be VTOL (for the modern powers).

I guess one thing I am kinda surprised we have not seen more of in rifts are float/sea plane designs. That kind of thing works pretty well in areas that lack infrastructure for more normal type aircraft.

Because in the Original Vision of Rifts(tm), Air Travel was simply Not A Thing.

There were no airports anywhere, no civilian aviation of any kind. Travel was meant to take days and weeks between towns.

Almost all of the aircraft were later additions. Then we jumped to Merctown having a freaking commercial airport with daily flights all over the continent.

[eliakon]

So, teh vast majority of Rifts North America is running at about late WWI/early WWII levels of tactics and equipment. Most powers have very little actual Air Power.

If by "Air Power" you mean "bombers", then... yeah. I guess. They also don't really need it since they have Surface to Surface LRMs capable of going 2000+ miles all on their own. There's absolutely no benefit to making a multi-million credit bomber that can get blown up.

Well other than cost?
And firepower?

Each LRM costs 200,000 cr (fragmentation or HE) 500,000 (AP or plasma) or 1,500,000 (Multiple warhead/smart bomb) We don't even get a book price for Proton Torpedo's and nuclear warheads.
Bombs are, presumably cheaper as they don't need the expensive motors and targeting gear. (I am looking for the exact cost, I recall it being in one of the books)

Then there is the advantages in accuracy, according to Rifts: Mercenaries bombing automatically hits immobile targets and is +6 to strike a moving target!

Or the advantages in payload as there are all sorts of bomb loads that are not avliable as LRMs such as mine clusters or the various TW bombs

Bombers can also be used to deliver paratroopers (this was used in WWII and we know Paratroopers are a thing there is a whole OOC for them)

Or the fact that you can put on point-defenses on a bomber to shoot down incoming missiles (which are the only thing that can get to a bomber from the ground) which you can't mount on a LRM

And frankly its a wonder more people don't have Bombers...
...until you realize that bombers are so insanely deadly that they make the game really, really, not fun if they get used a lot.
So they get ignored.

[boring7]

Yes and no.

Real-ish world, but still following Rifts setting "themes" a bomber should be cheaper (because you can do multiple runs) and easier (missile guidance is hard, droppin' a rock that happens to explode is easy). BUT:

-If you can shoot down a missile, you should be able to shoot down a bomb; it falls slower.
-a majority of explosive devices have incredibly (and ridiculously) short blast areas.
-Pretty much every weapon is auto-hit, you dodge or soak.
-A quick skim suggests the bombs are just as expensive as missiles because #riftslogic

But it's like the existence of the Rhino-buffalo. THey should be extinct from fliers needling them to death because they don't have ranged weapons. Same with a LOT of melee-only threats (especially the big ones).

[eliakon]

Yes and no.

Real-ish world, but still following Rifts setting "themes" a bomber should be cheaper (because you can do multiple runs) and easier (missile guidance is hard, droppin' a rock that happens to explode is easy). BUT:

-If you can shoot down a missile, you should be able to shoot down a bomb; it falls slower.

That actually doesn't follow
You can't shoot down arrows, bullets, grenades, or any other ranged attack except missiles. They are not the standard, they are the exception.

-a majority of explosive devices have incredibly (and ridiculously) short blast areas.

And thus make great bombs

-Pretty much every weapon is auto-hit, you dodge or soak.

Um no. That is what the "Strike roll" is for.
Bombs though don't need to make one.
you skip the "roll a d20 to hit" phase and go straight to "take damage" phase.

-A quick skim suggests the bombs are just as expensive as missiles because #riftslogic

I haven't found the price of them yet so I can't say.
Off hand I want to say that they were supposed to be 1/10 the price of missiles, but I'm not sure. I'm checking the books but, frankly, its not a huge priority of mine and there are a lot of books (Underseas? Triax? Japan? lot of places where they have weapons it could be)

But it's like the existence of the Rhino-buffalo. THey should be extinct from fliers needling them to death because they don't have ranged weapons. Same with a LOT of melee-only threats (especially the big ones).

[/quote][/quote]
Yep
Melee though is cool. Thus it is king.

[glitterboy2098]

in regards to the whole "airline" issue.. i have generally been assuming (even before merctown) that civilian aviation is roughly at the Golden Age of Aviation level of economic development in rifts.. basically, it is not the highly polished industry we have today, but instead has a lot more independent operators, bush flying, and small scale businesses. most large communities would have at least a basic airfield (outside the major cities, probably a literal field that just has a radio, control shack, and maybe some barns for smaller planes to park in, and which the town keeps flat and clear), and you'd see aviation being used to move smaller or more perishable batches of goods around between these places. you'd get the bigger planes (like DC-3 to 727 sized) operating between these airfields for the most part.
but outside these larger communities, airfields would be rare.. and the planes involved would generally be much smaller.

a dedicated airline would thus be a rarity outside someplace like the CS (which i could see having one for their citizens.. though like with 30's and 40's, it would mainly be something only the upper classes could generally afford), but you can probably find a freelancer with an old cargohauler or prop puddlejumper for hire if you really need ot get to an area fast and don't mind the weight and space limits. i say general area, because outside the settled areas, your stuck trying to find a sufficiently open and flat location to land and take off.. and even in the new west, those aren't all that common. so while a plane might let you get from say, Lazlo to the area around Char in a day's flight, you'll probably have to land dozens if not a hundred plus miles from your goal.

some examples of the kind of flying i'm thinking of would be like Air America, Disney's Talespin (though that one had seaplanes), parts of Indiana Jones, etc.

[Library Ogre]

I guess one thing I am kinda surprised we have not seen more of in rifts are float/sea plane designs. That kind of thing works pretty well in areas that lack infrastructure for more normal type aircraft.

How often do those get folded into VTOL designs, though? Or even straight-up hover-capable designs?

[Blue_Lion]

If I recall correctly there is air power in rifts but it is likely over looked do to focus on small group action.
GAW has modified A-10s and fighters.
CS has fighters and stealth bombers.
Iron heart had a tactical bomber and fighter.
Nurani has an air superiority fighter.

The real issue is that such vehicles tend to be easy to shoot down in rifts. As people can hit them with LRM or SRM from quite a distance. Rifts lacks a distinction between ground to air, ground to ground and air to air missiles so any missile platform is anti air. (A GM could reasonably say that the modifiers in modern weapon Proficiency do not apply to missiles that use a different strike rule.)

Bombs

[Mack]

The real issue is that such vehicles tend to be easy to shoot down in rifts. As people can hit them with LRM or SRM from quite a distance. Rifts lacks a distinction between ground to air, ground to ground and air to air missiles so any missile platform is anti air. (A GM could reasonably say that the modifiers in modern weapon Proficiency do not apply to missiles that use a different strike rule.)

One caveat to that is aircraft are fast moving targets and the missile should receive a penalty to strike. (I don't have my RUE handy, but I recall that becoming a rather significant penalty for a target moving at hundreds of miles per hour.) And in some cases, the aircraft maybe faster than the missile making a very small engagement envelope.

[Blue_Lion]

The real issue is that such vehicles tend to be easy to shoot down in rifts. As people can hit them with LRM or SRM from quite a distance. Rifts lacks a distinction between ground to air, ground to ground and air to air missiles so any missile platform is anti air. (A GM could reasonably say that the modifiers in modern weapon Proficiency do not apply to missiles that use a different strike rule.)

One caveat to that is aircraft are fast moving targets and the missile should receive a penalty to strike. (I don't have my RUE handy, but I recall that becoming a rather significant penalty for a target moving at hundreds of miles per hour.) And in some cases, the aircraft maybe faster than the missile making a very small engagement envelope.

That is debatable as the penalty for striking moving targets is for modern weapon proficients. And as I said a GM can reasonably rule that it does not apply.

Missile strike rules does not address the bonuses and penalties (other than skill to mini missile) and modifiers from weapon proficiency The exact wording is the only one of the three strike rules that does not tell you to add a bonus.

RUE PG.339 Hand to hand-
"Any roll less than a 4 (counting bonuses) the attacker misses. Any roll above a four will hit unless..."
PG. 361-Ranged combat/modern weapon proficiency
"To shoot something the attacker must roll 1D20 and needs a 8 or higher to strike. However the shooter may also have bonuses from skills and penalties from conditions and circumstances."

PG. 364 Ranged combat/missiles combat
"As usual a D20 is rolled to determine weather a missile hits or misses. Any roll above a 4(5-20) hits unless the defender/target can dodge or shoot the missile down before it hits."

So the wording does not specify that the penalty applies(and could possibly read as a unmodified dice roll for missiles) and if it does is a GM call not a standard. The circumstance modifiers are stated as being for shooting but missiles may be ruled as launched not shot. It would be reasonable for a GM to say it does not apply as I said so your caveat was already covered.

[kaid]

I guess one thing I am kinda surprised we have not seen more of in rifts are float/sea plane designs. That kind of thing works pretty well in areas that lack infrastructure for more normal type aircraft.

How often do those get folded into VTOL designs, though? Or even straight-up hover-capable designs?

Normal VTOL type planes would not work well at all with a float/sea plane design. Vtols normally have huge problems with the temperature their thrust comes out at so even though they don't need much runway they do need some kind of fairly solid non meltable surface to land on. Hover vehicles like death heads do not seem to have that issue so those could in theory have some kind of aquatic landing capability if designed for it. There are a couple "sea" jets one from the new navy and one I think from triax that are amphibious designs or triphibious.


In theory also you could design more robust landing gear for STOL type landings on semi improved landing strips. But that still works better with slower moving vehicles than it does with jets. Its all fun and games until you hit a pothole on landing and go arse over teakettle down whats left of your runway.

[kaid]

The real issue is that such vehicles tend to be easy to shoot down in rifts. As people can hit them with LRM or SRM from quite a distance. Rifts lacks a distinction between ground to air, ground to ground and air to air missiles so any missile platform is anti air. (A GM could reasonably say that the modifiers in modern weapon Proficiency do not apply to missiles that use a different strike rule.)

One caveat to that is aircraft are fast moving targets and the missile should receive a penalty to strike. (I don't have my RUE handy, but I recall that becoming a rather significant penalty for a target moving at hundreds of miles per hour.) And in some cases, the aircraft maybe faster than the missile making a very small engagement envelope.

That is debatable as the penalty for striking moving targets is for modern weapon proficients. And as I said a GM can reasonably rule that it does not apply.

Missile strike rules does not address the bonuses and penalties (other than skill to mini missile) and modifiers from weapon proficiency The exact wording is the only one of the three strike rules that does not tell you to add a bonus.

RUE PG.339 Hand to hand-
"Any roll less than a 4 (counting bonuses) the attacker misses. Any roll above a four will hit unless..."
PG. 361-Ranged combat/modern weapon proficiency
"To shoot something the attacker must roll 1D20 and needs a 8 or higher to strike. However the shooter may also have bonuses from skills and penalties from conditions and circumstances."

PG. 364 Ranged combat/missiles combat
"As usual a D20 is rolled to determine weather a missile hits or misses. Any roll above a 4(5-20) hits unless the defender/target can dodge or shoot the missile down before it hits."

So the wording does not specify that the penalty applies(and could possibly read as a unmodified dice roll for missiles) and if it does is a GM call not a standard. The circumstance modifiers are stated as being for shooting but missiles may be ruled as launched not shot. It would be reasonable for a GM to say it does not apply as I said so your caveat was already covered.

Although given the wording for missiles there you then get that most of the longer range ones are smart missiles and have pretty sizable pluses to hit. So I sort of assume that is there to help overcome negatives imposed by circumstances. Given the tracking/homing nature of the longer range missiles I am not sure how speed would effect/degrade that.

Now mini missiles shooting a fast moving target is hard but for the bigger ones that actively track/home in theory they are constantly course correcting so the speed difference should not be an issue.

[Shark_Force]

a lot of the excuses people are coming up against air travel don't really make sense as something that would only impact air travel.

it's easy to shoot them down? well it's easy to shoot a big boss ATV and destroy it too.

mages working for magically inclined nations might be arbitrarily hanging out on ley lines and blowing up every flying vehicle they see for no apparent reason except to make them more eeeeeeeevvvvilll! uh... sure... i guess that's technically possible. i can't for the life of me imagine why they'd actually do that (in fact, the only nation i know of that has ever had a "kill on sight" policy for any flying vehicle is the CS, and that was only for one single flying vehicle which had something like 10 of them in existence). but, supposing for some reason this was true... they could do the same for ground vehicles.

and sure, you can make the argument that line of sight is easier to draw against air vehicles. but you could also make the argument that it is easier to get into melee range with a ground vehicle, and there are a lot of melee threats. plus, those weapons that could be used against flying vehicles... who's gonna use them, exactly? i mean, sure, if you're flying through CS space, they've apparently got the money to burn that they could just lob a few medium missiles your way and not even notice the cost. but for pretty much anyone else, blowing a million credits to bring down an airplane is just not a sound investment unless they have reason to expect the airplane is a threat (or is carrying tons of gold i suppose). i mean, bandits, *if* they even have a medium range missile and the equipment to fire it, probably could make more money by selling the missile than they could make by shooting someone down and selling whatever is left after the aircraft is destroyed. i mean, an intact skycycle might sell for a couple hundred thousand credits, but the twisted wreckage of one probably just sells for maybe a few thousand. who's going to waste an expensive and hard-to-get missile on that? heck, possibly even several missiles would be needed. that just isn't a good investment. you might see a bandit group do that *once* and then realize that they lost money on the deal.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

a lot of the excuses people are coming up against air travel don't really make sense as something that would only impact air travel.

it's easy to shoot them down? well it's easy to shoot a big boss ATV and destroy it too.

mages working for magically inclined nations might be arbitrarily hanging out on ley lines and blowing up every flying vehicle they see for no apparent reason except to make them more eeeeeeeevvvvilll! uh... sure... i guess that's technically possible. i can't for the life of me imagine why they'd actually do that (in fact, the only nation i know of that has ever had a "kill on sight" policy for any flying vehicle is the CS, and that was only for one single flying vehicle which had something like 10 of them in existence). but, supposing for some reason this was true... they could do the same for ground vehicles.

and sure, you can make the argument that line of sight is easier to draw against air vehicles. but you could also make the argument that it is easier to get into melee range with a ground vehicle, and there are a lot of melee threats. plus, those weapons that could be used against flying vehicles... who's gonna use them, exactly? i mean, sure, if you're flying through CS space, they've apparently got the money to burn that they could just lob a few medium missiles your way and not even notice the cost. but for pretty much anyone else, blowing a million credits to bring down an airplane is just not a sound investment unless they have reason to expect the airplane is a threat (or is carrying tons of gold i suppose). i mean, bandits, *if* they even have a medium range missile and the equipment to fire it, probably could make more money by selling the missile than they could make by shooting someone down and selling whatever is left after the aircraft is destroyed. i mean, an intact skycycle might sell for a couple hundred thousand credits, but the twisted wreckage of one probably just sells for maybe a few thousand. who's going to waste an expensive and hard-to-get missile on that? heck, possibly even several missiles would be needed. that just isn't a good investment. you might see a bandit group do that *once* and then realize that they lost money on the deal.

you dont generally need MRMs to shoot down airplanes.

Only a VERY few vehicles in Rifts have a ceiling above ~20,000ft. SRMs do just fine and are pretty cheap.

[Shark_Force]

you dont generally need MRMs to shoot down airplanes.

Only a VERY few vehicles in Rifts have a ceiling above ~20,000ft. SRMs do just fine and are pretty cheap.

you need MRMs if you aren't standing extremely close to the flight path of the vehicle. there isn't a squad of bandits armed with short range missile launchers stationed every couple of miles after all.

but sure, let's go with just short range missiles.

in order to have even a chance at a regular sky king not outrunning your missiles, you need to use at least the armour piercing missiles, which means you'll be needing to spend 8,000 credits for a volley of 2. which can be dodged (at +5, plus more depending on the pilot), by the way. and which only kill around 50% of the time if they hit.

meanwhile, the sky king can reasonably be expected to take evasive action (-1 to hit) and go to full speed (that's an additional -11 to hit the sky king) once the missile is fired. we'll be generous and presume the person firing the missiles is proficient and makes an aimed shot, and give them, oh, only -8 to hit with their attack roll. they need to get at least an 8, which means 3/4 of the time they just straight-up miss. there's 8 grand down the drain with absolutely nothing to show for it most of the time. oh, and the pilot gets probably +8 or so to dodge, and unless you rolled nat 20 that means the pilot has somewhere close to 75% or better to dodge.

but let's be even *more* generous and presume they do in fact hit, and do enough damage. the sky king has now been disabled, but is still moving at nearly 600 miles per hour. it's probably spinning out of control, pieces are flying off in every direction, cargo (if indeed there is any) is probably amongst that debris, and when it crashes, further damage will be done to all components as they have just slammed into the ground at a rather high velocity. your bandits will now need to search a massive area to find all the debris in the hopes that some of it is still valuable in spite of being smashed to pieces (so like i said, you're basically hoping they were hauling a bunch of gold around with them), with no guarantee that they'll find any specific part of the vehicle. the main portion of the vehicle will likely crash somewhere, but will be essentially a pile of scrap metal that is going to need to go through a recycling plant to be of use to anyone, and weighs probably a couple thousand pounds, so they better have some kind of crane to get it onto a vehicle that can transport the danged thing, and they better hope both the crane and the heavy vehicle can even get to the sky king. worse, there's a chance the sky king's ammo all cooked off (or is damaged and dangerous to handle), and the nuclear power plant is probably breached, so have fun with that. once you bring the whole thing to a wrecker, you'll probably be lucky to get 5,000 credits for all that work, because it's just scrap. nothing is likely to be salvageable. and that presumes they're even willing to take it at all; you'd better be able to prove the reactor *isn't* leaking and that there are no missiles still in the vehicle.

so after all that, you've got a 3,000 credit net loss assuming perfectly ideal conditions; you were actually in range to take the shot, you had the right kind of missile and launcher to be able to try to make the shot, you actually landed your shot accurately, your damage was not too much below average, you had the equipment present to attempt to salvage, and the vehicle crashed someplace you could salvage it.

furthermore, you're going to need to come up with your usual expenses to cover the time your bandits were spending searching a couple square miles of trackless wilderness, and any spoils are going to need to be split up between everyone involved.

like i said, this is the sort of mistake a group of bandits will make *once*. you're basically gambling on that specific skycycle being loaded up with high value cargo that isn't completely devalued as a result of being destroyed in a crash (and also that you'll even find it) to make it even worth thinking about trying, and you're not remotely guaranteed to succeed.

you can get slightly better results perhaps if you only pick slower-moving and softer targets, but the general trend will be the same; it isn't easy to hit, firing any missiles at all costs you money, and you probably aren't going to get your money back the great majority of the time even if everything works out relatively well.

now, specifically targeted attacks against known high-value targets? sure, those are plausible. those targets are probably also guarded, so good luck with that, but at least it might be worth enough for someone to make the attempt. otherwise, you're mostly going to find that random groups firing missiles at random flying vehicles is mostly a self-correcting problem, as those random groups run out of resources to do so (unless they're the coalition states, but if you go flying over the coalition states without their permission, you should be expecting to get shot down, it's the only reasonable assumption).

[glitterboy2098]

this is why i sought out socio-economic reasons why airpower would be less common. lack of proper airfields, and the difficulties of going out into the wilderness suffice to keep flying from being an easy or cost effective option for most people, and would guide its development more towards servicing the major communities. since the non-military groups generally won't be able to carry the massive loads of people or cargo that military transports like the DHT can, using airpower to move people and cargo also ends up servicing niche markets primarily. when you are limited to only a few dozen people or a couple tons of cargo as your average, only stuff that is very valuable for its size, or absolutely has to get somewhere fast tends to be hauled.

with most player groups/adventurers not going anywhere that aviation can easily service.. or using gear that exceeds the cargo limits of the commonly available planes, there would be little reason for player groups/adventurers to make regular of use of it.

[Freemage]

a lot of the excuses people are coming up against air travel don't really make sense as something that would only impact air travel.

it's easy to shoot them down? well it's easy to shoot a big boss ATV and destroy it too.

mages working for magically inclined nations might be arbitrarily hanging out on ley lines and blowing up every flying vehicle they see for no apparent reason except to make them more eeeeeeeevvvvilll! uh... sure... i guess that's technically possible. i can't for the life of me imagine why they'd actually do that (in fact, the only nation i know of that has ever had a "kill on sight" policy for any flying vehicle is the CS, and that was only for one single flying vehicle which had something like 10 of them in existence). but, supposing for some reason this was true... they could do the same for ground vehicles.

and sure, you can make the argument that line of sight is easier to draw against air vehicles. but you could also make the argument that it is easier to get into melee range with a ground vehicle, and there are a lot of melee threats. plus, those weapons that could be used against flying vehicles... who's gonna use them, exactly? i mean, sure, if you're flying through CS space, they've apparently got the money to burn that they could just lob a few medium missiles your way and not even notice the cost. but for pretty much anyone else, blowing a million credits to bring down an airplane is just not a sound investment unless they have reason to expect the airplane is a threat (or is carrying tons of gold i suppose). i mean, bandits, *if* they even have a medium range missile and the equipment to fire it, probably could make more money by selling the missile than they could make by shooting someone down and selling whatever is left after the aircraft is destroyed. i mean, an intact skycycle might sell for a couple hundred thousand credits, but the twisted wreckage of one probably just sells for maybe a few thousand. who's going to waste an expensive and hard-to-get missile on that? heck, possibly even several missiles would be needed. that just isn't a good investment. you might see a bandit group do that *once* and then realize that they lost money on the deal.

You missed the fact that the above argument is a composite.

1: Only certain states have the infrastructure and construction capacity needed to make modern or future-tech aircraft on a mass basis. Isolated city-states aren't going to make an investment that doesn't pay off well. In North America, this really just means the CS, FreeQ, and maybe Ishpimeg.

2: These powers, in turn, have a fairly openly hostile relationship with several of their magically active neighbors. Because of this, airplanes in the sky are likely going to be assumed to be hostile, and can be sighted from a large distance off. Furthermore, Ley Lines are handy means of communication.

3: So, air power is primarily an advantage within your own borders; it drops off dramatically once you try to use it to project power, because it's relatively simple for the FoM, for instance, to have a policy of having lone individuals near likely flight paths, and to have the means to communicate along the Ley Line to someone at one end who is going to deal with the intrusion. The more times you cross an LL in flight, the greater the chance that one of them will be monitored, and your expensive air fleet gets sabotaged by a flight of demons.

On the flipside, the air power of the FoM and other independents is of such a nature that it, too, is hard to use to project power beyond a certain range. Magic becomes more difficult to sustain for long periods of time away from the Ley Lines, and having your air force suddenly pop back to their own reality just as they reach their target would be a waste of everyone's resources.

Note that "limited value" doesn't mean "worthless". The CS can make an effort to navigate through much of the country with limited LL crossings, though this makes for a far more circuitous route. This limits their response time, and also is not risk free, but it does mean that if they're willing to really commit to a course of action, they can do so.

If I were in the CS high command, I'd probably be looking at Lone Star and the Pecos "Empire" for air power use. Fewer Ley Lines, less unified opposition, and a terrain that at least gives them many of the same advantages as their targets in terms of long-range scouting. All combined, it's a theater in which air-power would, in fact, give the solid tactical advantage the pro- side here is talking about.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

you dont generally need MRMs to shoot down airplanes.

Only a VERY few vehicles in Rifts have a ceiling above ~20,000ft. SRMs do just fine and are pretty cheap.

you need MRMs if you aren't standing extremely close to the flight path of the vehicle. there isn't a squad of bandits armed with short range missile launchers stationed every couple of miles after all.

but sure, let's go with just short range missiles.

in order to have even a chance at a regular sky king not outrunning your missiles, you need to use at least the armour piercing missiles, which means you'll be needing to spend 8,000 credits for a volley of 2. which can be dodged (at +5, plus more depending on the pilot), by the way. and which only kill around 50% of the time if they hit.

So we're going to spend the entire argument making stupid decisions that favor your view of things and dont make sense. Gotcha. Gee, i wonder if your assessment will come out in your favor when you rig it up that way?

meanwhile, the sky king can reasonably be expected to take evasive action (-1 to hit) and go to full speed (that's an additional -11 to hit the sky king) once the missile is fired.

Sure, which wont affect the strike roll i already made one iota. Do you even understand how the rules work? The strike roll is made the moment i fire. If he accelerates afterwards.. .good for him. I dont go back and retroactively apply penalties.

we'll be generous and presume the person firing the missiles is proficient and makes an aimed shot,

Which you cant do. You DO know how the rules work, right?

and give them, oh, only -8 to hit with their attack roll. they need to get at least an 8,

Actually, missiles hit on a 5 or better. The rules. You should read them.

which means 3/4 of the time they just straight-up miss. there's 8 grand down the drain with absolutely nothing to show for it most of the time. oh, and the pilot gets probably +8 or so to dodge, and unless you rolled nat 20 that means the pilot has somewhere close to 75% or better to dodge.

Well, since im firing these missiles, we're using 4. So he can't dodge. (But he's in a Sky King, so he's got mini missiles to counterfire with. Why are we picking on a Sky King again?)

random wandering text snipped

Im not sure why we're picking on lone Sky Kings that aren't likely to have much worth stealing, but hey. Your stacked argument requires it, i guess. Though i would point out that he's just as likely to have a couple hundred thousand credits on a card in his pocket. That isn't going to be destroyed by a crash. And body armor that can be salvaged. And weapons. (In the modern day, assault rifles and pistols survive falls from 30,000+ feet intact and in firing condition, and those are modern SDC arms made of SDC material, not MDC weapons made of MDC material). If you're going to be shooting down things for loot, cargo planes are probably a better bet.

Which would be why Cargo planes aren't used in Rifts Earth very much, probably. Seems likely to me, at least. Thats probably why NG makes an entire line of ground-based shipping vehicles (Semis, Hover Trains, etc). Weird.

I'm also not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand, really.

[eliakon]

meanwhile, the sky king can reasonably be expected to take evasive action (-1 to hit) and go to full speed (that's an additional -11 to hit the sky king) once the missile is fired.

Sure, which wont affect the strike roll i already made one iota. Do you even understand how the rules work? The strike roll is made the moment i fire. If he accelerates afterwards.. .good for him. I dont go back and retroactively apply penalties.

You don't
But since evasive action IS a penalty then there are two ways that it works.
Either the penalty in the book doesn't really exist
Or the penalty does exist and applies. I would assume that this either would represent having 'locked on to" the wrong spot, or having responded to a lock up warning.
I would also wonder why they were not flying at full speed anyway

we'll be generous and presume the person firing the missiles is proficient and makes an aimed shot,

Which you cant do. You DO know how the rules work, right?

You can't make a CALLED shot with Missiles.
I would be fascinated to know where the rule is that says you can't make an aimed shot.

and give them, oh, only -8 to hit with their attack roll. they need to get at least an 8,

Actually, missiles hit on a 5 or better. The rules. You should read them.

Yes you should.
If there are bonuses to strike that affect missiles, and there are they are just not common, then obviously when there are penalties they to affect them.
Its pretty simple.
The 4+ is not a "natural 5 nothing ever applies you can never get a penalty and can only get bonuses because your cool like that"
5+ is pretty obviously like every other roll in the game "Before modifiers"
You roll your d20 You add all your plusses then you subtract all your minuses. if your result is a 5 or higher you hit.

So yes, if you have -4 to your strike roll you need to roll an 9 to hit, because 9-4 is the 5+
If you have a -8 you need to roll a 13 since 13-8=5
If you have a -16 or more you need to roll a n20 (assuming that your GM lets you make the roll. Not all GMs allow people to make the attempt if the modifiers result in even a natural 20 still generating a miss result and 20-16=4 which is still a miss)


And as for the question of why this wasn't a cargo plane and was only a sky-king?
Because a cargo plane is even harder to take down and needs an even larger volley of missiles.
The larger the air target the more likely it is to have defenses that can shoot down incoming missiles and the higher its MDC will be (meaning that it will need more and more missiles to be shot down)
Thus while a sky-king could be shot down by a couple bandits in a truck a cargo plane might need an Iron-Bolt. And that Iron Bolt, since it is MUCH slower will have to know exactly where the plane is planning to fly so that it can be in position ahead of time.
Which requires the airplane to fly a predictable route... which is pretty stupid. Airplanes in airspace that is potentially hostile DON'T fly predictable routes for that EXACT reason.
A cargo plane is going to vary its route and altitude so that an attacker is going to need to have multiple SAM batteries along the projected route to intercept it.
This moves the threats it faces from "bandits" to "organized military forces"

[Axelmania]

Missiles can't do aimed or called shots because WP are required to make those now as of Ultimate Edition. You need a human or robot with WP Heavy to do those with mini missiles.

Whether the called shot can be done against anything besides main bodies isnt something to get back into here.

This and the 5+ v 8+ to hit issue is something else that could derail the the at if we get into arguing about it... If someone wants to they should probably do so in a separate thread. Some may think 5 always trumps 8, some may think 8 always trumps 5, some may think it is 5 for self-guided missiles and 8 for unguided missiles.

[Blue_Lion]

a lot of the excuses people are coming up against air travel don't really make sense as something that would only impact air travel.

it's easy to shoot them down? well it's easy to shoot a big boss ATV and destroy it too.

mages working for magically inclined nations might be arbitrarily hanging out on ley lines and blowing up every flying vehicle they see for no apparent reason except to make them more eeeeeeeevvvvilll! uh... sure... i guess that's technically possible. i can't for the life of me imagine why they'd actually do that (in fact, the only nation i know of that has ever had a "kill on sight" policy for any flying vehicle is the CS, and that was only for one single flying vehicle which had something like 10 of them in existence). but, supposing for some reason this was true... they could do the same for ground vehicles.

and sure, you can make the argument that line of sight is easier to draw against air vehicles. but you could also make the argument that it is easier to get into melee range with a ground vehicle, and there are a lot of melee threats. plus, those weapons that could be used against flying vehicles... who's gonna use them, exactly? i mean, sure, if you're flying through CS space, they've apparently got the money to burn that they could just lob a few medium missiles your way and not even notice the cost. but for pretty much anyone else, blowing a million credits to bring down an airplane is just not a sound investment unless they have reason to expect the airplane is a threat (or is carrying tons of gold i suppose). i mean, bandits, *if* they even have a medium range missile and the equipment to fire it, probably could make more money by selling the missile than they could make by shooting someone down and selling whatever is left after the aircraft is destroyed. i mean, an intact skycycle might sell for a couple hundred thousand credits, but the twisted wreckage of one probably just sells for maybe a few thousand. who's going to waste an expensive and hard-to-get missile on that? heck, possibly even several missiles would be needed. that just isn't a good investment. you might see a bandit group do that *once* and then realize that they lost money on the deal.

Sure an atv is easy to destroy no one claimed it was not. But as Rifts GMG describes radar as anti air, it can be allot harder to find the ATV. It hides in the ground clutter. Most vehicles in rifts are easy to destroy. The issue with air is unless you are flying high risk below radar at lower speeds you can be detected quite a distance away. Every PA can detect air craft, as can ground based radar and other air craft. The problem with them in rifts is that you do not need special anti air weapons to fight them like you do in real life.

[Shark_Force]

You missed the fact that the above argument is a composite.

1: Only certain states have the infrastructure and construction capacity needed to make modern or future-tech aircraft on a mass basis. Isolated city-states aren't going to make an investment that doesn't pay off well. In North America, this really just means the CS, FreeQ, and maybe Ishpimeg.

2: These powers, in turn, have a fairly openly hostile relationship with several of their magically active neighbors. Because of this, airplanes in the sky are likely going to be assumed to be hostile, and can be sighted from a large distance off. Furthermore, Ley Lines are handy means of communication.

3: So, air power is primarily an advantage within your own borders; it drops off dramatically once you try to use it to project power, because it's relatively simple for the FoM, for instance, to have a policy of having lone individuals near likely flight paths, and to have the means to communicate along the Ley Line to someone at one end who is going to deal with the intrusion. The more times you cross an LL in flight, the greater the chance that one of them will be monitored, and your expensive air fleet gets sabotaged by a flight of demons.

On the flipside, the air power of the FoM and other independents is of such a nature that it, too, is hard to use to project power beyond a certain range. Magic becomes more difficult to sustain for long periods of time away from the Ley Lines, and having your air force suddenly pop back to their own reality just as they reach their target would be a waste of everyone's resources.

Note that "limited value" doesn't mean "worthless". The CS can make an effort to navigate through much of the country with limited LL crossings, though this makes for a far more circuitous route. This limits their response time, and also is not risk free, but it does mean that if they're willing to really commit to a course of action, they can do so.

If I were in the CS high command, I'd probably be looking at Lone Star and the Pecos "Empire" for air power use. Fewer Ley Lines, less unified opposition, and a terrain that at least gives them many of the same advantages as their targets in terms of long-range scouting. All combined, it's a theater in which air-power would, in fact, give the solid tactical advantage the pro- side here is talking about.

1) there aren't exactly a lot of places mass-producing *anything* in north america. but that's irrelevant, since the places that aren't mass-producing can buy them. further beside the point is that a WW II era spitfire doesn't require much in the way of supertech at all, can land on reasonably level grass fields, and could be made with cheap MDC materials like those found in the plastic man armour, to probably give it around 100 MDC, maybe more... we're not exactly looking at something that nobody could produce.

2) really? group A is hostile towards group B, and therefore just assumes that everything they see is automatically an enemy and start firing? that's your assumption? but hey, i'll humour you. we'll even assume that these magical nations are extra-stupid enough to put a highly trained mage on guard duty in the middle of nowhere, with a bunch of demons that are almost guaranteed to get bored and angry about their job even faster than the mage who is going to get bored and angry fast already, so i sure hope there isn't anything valuable nearby because that mage you left in the wilderness to watch the sky for random people to arbitrarily attack is going to need a miracle to keep those demons under control. but hey, i'm feeling generous today, we'll presume that a mere 5 minutes after they arrived to their stations, the first vehicle shows up. demons have a flying speed of what, like, 60 mph? they also frequently have no ranged attacks, and despise technology, so... good luck doing anything about whatever aircraft that may be.

3) yeah, people who shoot anyone and everyone first and ask questions later don't tend to have particularly long lifespans, and the same is true of nations. that's a good way to get yourself into a constant state of warfare, and then get slaughtered as all of your enemies tear you apart. maybe if you're lucky, they get busy fighting over the scraps of your former nation for long enough that you can escape alive. the CS can get away with those kinds of shenanigans apparently (even their most hated enemies are apparently unwilling to stab them in the back while they're distracted. so it stands to reason they can do pretty much whatever they like and apparently nobody will do anything about it), but the rest of north america don't have the luxury of an army several times the size of everyone else on the continent's armies combined, and as such can't afford to be idiots about this. except even the CS isn't crazy enough to just literally shoot everything on sight; they have a kill on sight issued for precisely one model of aircraft that we know of. that doesn't mean they're going to let just any old airplane fly straight to chi-town, but it does mean you're not going to be flying along and suddenly the CS fires a volley of 10 missiles your way without warning (unless your airplane is advertising how much you love d-bees or something, but that doesn't mean much for those of us who aren't morons).

[Axelmania]

If you mean the FoM, Dunscon wants to hurt the CS more than Tolkeen but he is incredibly intelligent and wants to consolidate power. Damaging the CS where it wouldn't be attributed to him isn't ideal.

[Freemage]

Mass production is necessary for the large-scale tactical advantage to work, though. You need to be able to field sorties of aircraft, over a large territory, in order to be able to project consistent air power over foreign soil. I've already acknowledged that:

1: Within CS airspace, they CAN project plenty of airpower support on-demand.

2: Outside of CS airspace, they occasionally do so, as well, but it requires a great deal more effort in order to bypass the Ley Lines that get pretty thick as soon as you get east of Chicago.

I'm only discussing the use of air power as a means of reliably projecting force outside the current borders of the CS, or in some regions that are only nominally claimed, in the fashion that modern nations are able to do.

On point 2: Not a swarm of highly trained mages randomly in the wilderness. A trainee LLW (possibly not even 'first level', unless you insist that abilities like Ley Line Transmission only come to you in a single discrete package along with all the skills, other magical abilities, and spell lore--and even then, first level is sufficient to the task) is all that's needed. And he doesn't need the demons on standby. That's the whole point. You have ONE highly trained mage covering a major Nexus. You've got his trainees (the guys who have mastered the art of sending messages via Ley Lines) at various points along the connecting Lines. Watching for potential interlopers is one of their jobs; they also would be responsible for observing the Ley Line itself, especially any Nexus they were positioned near, and so on. They report in that there's a significant force (they aren't caring about lone planes unless open hostilities have developed) flying in from some angle. Boss-Mage casts some sort of screening/concealment magic, then uses Ley Line gate to get there. Summon demons while invisible, right in the flight path. Jets start falling, boss mage gets the hell out of there.

And it's vital to remember that modern day communications systems do NOT exist in Rifts. You don't have a Hollywood NORAD situation where you're tracking all of your jets' positions as they go across the continent. You lack a centralized communication network, even, to tell them where to go on the fly. Instead, orders have to be relayed, and positions relayed back, a process that becomes much more difficult once you're out in the field (one of the reasons Tolkeen was such a cluster#@#% was because the generals got their starting orders, but couldn't really 'check in' with High Command on a regular basis, so when the plan suffered the fate of all first contact with the enemy, they got completely hosed).

If the CS cannot get communications to troops in Minnesota during the siege, there's no way they have reliable communications and tracking data anyplace inside the Magic Zone. So planes fly into the zone, and if they don't come out again, all you really know is that there was a line they were supposed to be following, and someplace along that route, they got hosed.

(And that assumes they didn't happen to fly close enough to Dweamor to get completely lost before they got macked, but then, the CS barely even knows about Dweamor's "misdirection" defenses.)

Axel: If the CS is damaged within the Magic Zone, Dunscon would likely take credit even if he's not the one responsible in a given instance. And whoever did do it probably would be happy to let him, since that keeps them off the CS' awareness.

[eliakon]

On point 2: Not a swarm of highly trained mages randomly in the wilderness. A trainee LLW (possibly not even 'first level', unless you insist that abilities like Ley Line Transmission only come to you in a single discrete package along with all the skills, other magical abilities, and spell lore--and even then, first level is sufficient to the task) is all that's needed. And he doesn't need the demons on standby. That's the whole point. You have ONE highly trained mage covering a major Nexus. You've got his trainees (the guys who have mastered the art of sending messages via Ley Lines) at various points along the connecting Lines. Watching for potential interlopers is one of their jobs; they also would be responsible for observing the Ley Line itself, especially any Nexus they were positioned near, and so on. They report in that there's a significant force (they aren't caring about lone planes unless open hostilities have developed) flying in from some angle. Boss-Mage casts some sort of screening/concealment magic, then uses Ley Line gate to get there. Summon demons while invisible, right in the flight path. Jets start falling, boss mage gets the hell out of there.

The problem with this is multifold
1) The premise that air traffic will be unimpeded unless it is 'significant' (which gets silly right there, what is 'significant'?)
2) the premise that you will have a convenient Ley Line that you can get to that is in the flight path
3) the premise that this convenient ley line happens to be so far ahead of the planes that you will have time to summon your demons
4) that any demons you can summon will be able to actually do anything at all.

These are all pretty HUGE assumptions.
1) ignoring non-significant air traffic gets you right back to the "air power is everywhere" problem. And of course you also run into issues of needing to have a trained corps of LLW that are skilled in identification of aircraft so that they can pick out the 'significant' ones. (I guess a spotter corps like Brittan used in WW2? That's going to need a LOT of people... and if it is only on Ley Lines that leaves a LOT of area uncovered
2) There are not just ley lines everywhere, and in those places where there ARE lots of ley lines they are not all interconnected. Plus of course there is the problem that you need to 'transfer' so each time you 'change lines' that uses up one of your phases. And you get a max of FOUR per hour, with a hard cap of uses per day as well.
4)There are only a few spells that can summon a Demon (Canon spells in the Rifts line there are only a handful) and of those handful most of them wont summon anything that is going to be of much use against an airplane let ALONE a "significant force' of them.
Especially considering that airplanes are going to be flying at altitude and speed meaning that most demons are going to be just sitting there twiddling there thumbs. The VAST majority of demons (Or summons of any sort) will only be able to do anything if they are able to get up in the flight path, AND are invisible (visually and to sensors) so that they can get in a surprise attack. They will then get ONE attack in as the planes wiz by at 100+ MPH. Unless you have a metric crapton of summons that is not going to do much.

And it's vital to remember that modern day communications systems do NOT exist in Rifts.

Ummm. You mean other than the radios? The one with 500 mile range that is standard on every vehicle and power armor?
And the command vehicles with multi-channel radios and command and control functions?

You don't have a Hollywood NORAD situation where you're tracking all of your jets' positions as they go across the continent. You lack a centralized communication network, even, to tell them where to go on the fly. Instead, orders have to be relayed, and positions relayed back, a process that becomes much more difficult once you're out in the field (one of the reasons Tolkeen was such a cluster#@#% was because the generals got their starting orders, but couldn't really 'check in' with High Command on a regular basis, so when the plan suffered the fate of all first contact with the enemy, they got completely hosed).

Well I guess....
I mean other than the massive radars that can track multiple targets...
...and the communications systems...
...and the command and control systems...
Other than THAT you have no one tracking anyone.
Now sure you can rule for your own personal game that you are changing things up to make radar and radios unreliable. You can houserule away command and control and leadership. That's up to you. But that is not official, and its not how the actual canon is set up.

If the CS cannot get communications to troops in Minnesota during the siege,

Except that they could.

there's no way they have reliable communications and tracking data anyplace inside the Magic Zone.

This of course is not following since the initial premise is false.

[quote="Freemage"]So planes fly into the zone, and if they don't come out again, all you really know is that there was a line they were supposed to be following, and someplace along that route, they got hosed.[quote]
I guess if you want to want to do that in YOUR game sure...
...that's not how it works officially but sure you can do that.
But that doesn't mean that the rest of us need to take your personal house rules as a justification for things. Because when discussing how the actual game is set up one generally discusses the actual published material and not how you would do it in your homebrew.

[Shark_Force]

a trainee ley-line walker still has years of training. for a job that is typically performed by someone who only needs a few weeks to learn how to use a radio... a ley line walker, even a "level zero" ley line walker, is highly trained compared to what you want to be using as a sentry.

but in any event, if we do have these wackos hanging out in the middle of nowhere waiting for people to murder for no good reason... why are they only interested in murdering airplanes?

because my original point was that these theoretical (often absurd) threats people keep insisting are present for aircraft are probably equally present for any ground vehicle as well.

if there are monsters that attack aircraft, well, there are monsters that attack groundcraft. if there are bandits attacking flying vehicles, there are also bandits that will attack ground vehicles. i mean, at extreme altitudes we've got the orbital community making sure nobody gets too close, but there's loads of room in between ground level and the debris field.

so if you're going to try to explain why there's no flying travel... i'm going to need to hear something that only applies to flying vehicles.

oh, and also it has to be something that could remotely plausibly exist. so, for example, no airports doesn't really work as an explanation, because you don't need a modern airport. it's certainly helpful, and perhaps necessary for *some* aircraft, but there are plenty of aircraft that don't need any such thing. unless your argument is that there are no open fields (and no ability to create them), plus no rivers, no lakes, no roads (or ability to create them - and i don't mean like a modern highway, for many planes a decently wide gravel road would be enough), and so on in the entire setting, there are going to be places people can land in many areas.

[Axelmania]

Eliakon about the one attack, it should be feasible, however hard, to grab on to a passing plane and then while keeping home with one claw, use the other to bash away at the plane.

The problem being that Palladium doesn't exactly have grappling rule complexity for these situations...

If you can interpose yourself in front of a plane where it is effectively melee attacking you with a block/ram/tackle, could you roll Entangle to grab a wing, for example?

The kind of cinematic stuff I would love to see gargoyles doing to a SAMAS even if it took a dozen tries. Fast craft should be able to charge demons with confidence, but not impunity. They should be pressured to adopt tactics that let them maintain distance from potential grapples even if we lack the rules for dealing with such grapples.

[Shark_Force]

Eliakon about the one attack, it should be feasible, however hard, to grab on to a passing plane and then while keeping home with one claw, use the other to bash away at the plane.

The problem being that Palladium doesn't exactly have grappling rule complexity for these situations...

If you can interpose yourself in front of a plane where it is effectively melee attacking you with a block/ram/tackle, could you roll Entangle to grab a wing, for example?

The kind of cinematic stuff I would love to see gargoyles doing to a SAMAS even if it took a dozen tries. Fast craft should be able to charge demons with confidence, but not impunity. They should be pressured to adopt tactics that let them maintain distance from potential grapples even if we lack the rules for dealing with such grapples.

the thing is, the aircraft has pretty much all the control. it is probably moving at least twice as fast, possibly even ten times as fast, as those gargoyles, and the slightest change in it's direction is going to make it awfully hard for those gargoyles to adjust their position because it's going to happen so quickly. and that's if the aircraft doesn't make a more major shift in direct that makes it simply impossible for those gargoyles to intercept. getting any attacks off at all is *super* lucky. it would require that you have precise knowledge of the aircraft's flight path within a couple hundred feet (including accounting for elevation) at least several minutes in advance, followed by perfect timing on the attempt. a plane shouldn't fly into a gargoyle, but it can pretty much just laugh at any attempts that gargoyle makes to get anywhere near them.

[eliakon]

Eliakon about the one attack, it should be feasible, however hard, to grab on to a passing plane and then while keeping home with one claw, use the other to bash away at the plane.

The problem being that Palladium doesn't exactly have grappling rule complexity for these situations...

If you can interpose yourself in front of a plane where it is effectively melee attacking you with a block/ram/tackle, could you roll Entangle to grab a wing, for example?

The kind of cinematic stuff I would love to see gargoyles doing to a SAMAS even if it took a dozen tries. Fast craft should be able to charge demons with confidence, but not impunity. They should be pressured to adopt tactics that let them maintain distance from potential grapples even if we lack the rules for dealing with such grapples.

Ummmm no.
That is basically absurd.
just...no.
Assuming that the plane in question is stupid enough to actually ram you (Which I can't for the life of me imagine why they would ever do that) being hit by something moving 100, 200, maybe even 500 MPH is not something you are going to "just grab onto"

No airplane is going to "Charge" this demon and ram it. That is absurd. No one 'rams' with airplanes.
An aircraft is going to fly on past the demon, while the demon might get to swoop in and try to get in one lucky attack in passing while the aircraft shoots it a few times.

Its a nice imaginary scenario again where one creates a perfectly contrived situation and you STILL end up with "well if everything was exactly 100% perfect, and if the airplane crew was absolute suicidal idiots who are helping us kill them then we might, possibly, have a chance to rarely make this work, but probably not."
That isn't, in any world, 'plausible. That is more of "Trying to pretend that this is something that is a thing"

[Eagle]

The easiest solution to the question of airpower is to just have a handful of smaller reasons to make it not quite as effective as airpower today.

--The biggest problem with large scale air travel is that you're flying over uncontrolled, hostile territory. No, most of the time you aren't getting shot down by some jerk with a missile launcher. Nor are there dragons who just hang out in the sky waiting to destroy any airplane they see (I had a GM once who said that). But... that doesn't mean that somebody won't occasionally take a pot-shot at you. It's like an airliner that flies over a country at war today. Every once in a while, some buttwipe will decide to shoot, just because. And big airliners are expensive enough that this a single lost plane is very expensive.

--Secure landing facilities are a problem. Forget about a guy with a medium range missile out in the middle of the wilderness. Think about a half-dozen bandits with pulse-capable laser rifles who are hanging out a quarter mile from the runway. They've got some camo concealing them from the air, and they're just waiting to empty their e-clips into whatever plane that comes in low and slow for a landing. Sure, civilized areas can take precautions against things like that, but smaller cities and towns can't guarantee a safe landing. Even if they only attack 1 out of every 100 landings, or 1 out of every 1000, that's enough to make many trips economically impractical.

--Ley lines can be screwy with navigation tech. Trips can take longer and you don't always get where you're supposed to be going. Again, even 1 time out of 100 where you think you're going to Texas and you wind up in Wyoming (or just flying in circles for hours), that's enough to make a lot of people not trust it.

--"There's.... something on the wing..." Occasionally, yeah, monsters will attack something up there. Just for being up there. This is Rifts, after all.

Air power doesn't have to be completely impossible for people to not use it. Make it a little less safe, a little less reliable, a lot more expensive, and you'll see much less of it. I do like the idea of 100 MDC Cessnas being manufactured is towns and cities around North America, and most of the time they're small enough that nobody messes with them. Having a grizzled old drunk who agrees to fly you from here to the next town in his rickety death-trap looking plane is good stuff for an RPG. Like that dude from Mad Max. A major nation like the Coalition can afford the massive spending required to establish government-directed travel, and if they lose a plane then they lose a plane and they just accept the cost. But most nations don't have those kinds of resources.

[eliakon]

The easiest solution to the question of airpower is to just have a handful of smaller reasons to make it not quite as effective as airpower today.

--The biggest problem with large scale air travel is that you're flying over uncontrolled, hostile territory. No, most of the time you aren't getting shot down by some jerk with a missile launcher. Nor are there dragons who just hang out in the sky waiting to destroy any airplane they see (I had a GM once who said that). But... that doesn't mean that somebody won't occasionally take a pot-shot at you. It's like an airliner that flies over a country at war today. Every once in a while, some buttwipe will decide to shoot, just because. And big airliners are expensive enough that this a single lost plane is very expensive.

And even today those 'pot shots' are so rare as to be basically urban legends.
Other than military forces shooting down civilian airliners with military hardware no one has 'taken shots' at an airplane. Even ones flying over war zones.
Not to mention that it takes a LOT of firepower to bring down an aircraft not just 'some pot shot'
And of course the fact that this argument would be even stronger for ground travel...

--Secure landing facilities are a problem. Forget about a guy with a medium range missile out in the middle of the wilderness. Think about a half-dozen bandits with pulse-capable laser rifles who are hanging out a quarter mile from the runway. They've got some camo concealing them from the air, and they're just waiting to empty their e-clips into whatever plane that comes in low and slow for a landing. Sure, civilized areas can take precautions against things like that, but smaller cities and towns can't guarantee a safe landing. Even if they only attack 1 out of every 100 landings, or 1 out of every 1000, that's enough to make many trips economically impractical.

This is pretty ludicrous as a reason.
No, really.
Its like saying that because there might be bandits that there should be no travel at all.
It is, after all easier to ambush travelers on a road than lurk near an airfield (especially considering how close you have to get to the airfield!)

--Ley lines can be screwy with navigation tech. Trips can take longer and you don't always get where you're supposed to be going. Again, even 1 time out of 100 where you think you're going to Texas and you wind up in Wyoming (or just flying in circles for hours), that's enough to make a lot of people not trust it.

Again this pretty much requires that you are pulling stuff out of thin air.
1) canon doesn't make ley lines screw up navigation tech
2) why would you fly on a ley line?
3) dimensional anomalies are pretty rare. it is CERTAINLY not going to be 1% of all trips. Otherwise there would, again, be no travel of any sort.
Making up stuff that says "well I am going to just claim that flying is dangerous because I want flying to be dangerous" doesn't demonstrate anything other than a GM who doesn't want flying.

--"There's.... something on the wing..." Occasionally, yeah, monsters will attack something up there. Just for being up there. This is Rifts, after all.

And yet again a threat that is far, far FAR more likely to threaten ground travel than air travel

Air power doesn't have to be completely impossible for people to not use it. Make it a little less safe, a little less reliable, a lot more expensive, and you'll see much less of it. I do like the idea of 100 MDC Cessnas being manufactured is towns and cities around North America, and most of the time they're small enough that nobody messes with them. Having a grizzled old drunk who agrees to fly you from here to the next town in his rickety death-trap looking plane is good stuff for an RPG. Like that dude from Mad Max. A major nation like the Coalition can afford the massive spending required to establish government-directed travel, and if they lose a plane then they lose a plane and they just accept the cost. But most nations don't have those kinds of resources.

All your 'arguments' have done is make the case for air travel STRONGER.
By pointing out that it is safer to fly than to drive
Seriously. Every one of your 'dangers' is far, far, far more likely to threaten someone on the ground, and be worse on the ground. Meaning that yes...
Its safer, cheaper, more reliable... to fly. But for some reason we see less of it
The only reason is because of plot.
No one has the slightest problem with the massive ground transportation infrastructure. Trade caravans running all over North America moving food, weapons, e-clips, medicines, industrial products, magic and everything else. Nope, that's just fine. But the idea that someone might fly an airplane? Nope, that's just ludicrous.

[Axelmania]

Eliakon my point is that if a gargoyle is close enough to throw a punch/claw/bite they are also close enough to try a grab. Speed penalties IMO should apply as they do with ranged combat meaning only natural 20s.would succeed.

[eliakon]

Eliakon my point is that if a gargoyle is close enough to throw a punch/claw/bite they are also close enough to try a grab. Speed penalties IMO should apply as they do with ranged combat meaning only natural 20s.would succeed.

My point is that
1) for most of the time they wont ever even get close enough
2) I am not sold on the idea that one can just "grab onto" something swooping by at 100+ MPH
3) I am not sold on the idea that even a n20 will allow a roll to succeed when the target number is impossible. If you need to roll a 50 or more on a d20 I am not sold on the idea that you should even get to roll. That is not a "five percent of all attempts succeed" situation. That is, frankly trying to metagame the system to allow someone to try and do something that is impossible by claiming "Well Its not really impossible, it just is a 5% chance"

[Mack]

One thing overlooked in the missiles vs aircraft discussion is that the CS does have a "Stealth VTOL Jet Fighter" (CWC p176) that can "slip through enemy radar even at medium to high altitudes."

It's an outlier compared to other Rifts aircraft, but it does provide the CS a distinct advantage.

[Blue_Lion]

The real issue is that such vehicles tend to be easy to shoot down in rifts. As people can hit them with LRM or SRM from quite a distance. Rifts lacks a distinction between ground to air, ground to ground and air to air missiles so any missile platform is anti air. (A GM could reasonably say that the modifiers in modern weapon Proficiency do not apply to missiles that use a different strike rule.)

One caveat to that is aircraft are fast moving targets and the missile should receive a penalty to strike. (I don't have my RUE handy, but I recall that becoming a rather significant penalty for a target moving at hundreds of miles per hour.) And in some cases, the aircraft maybe faster than the missile making a very small engagement envelope.

That is debatable as the penalty for striking moving targets is for modern weapon proficients. And as I said a GM can reasonably rule that it does not apply.

Missile strike rules does not address the bonuses and penalties (other than skill to mini missile) and modifiers from weapon proficiency The exact wording is the only one of the three strike rules that does not tell you to add a bonus.

RUE PG.339 Hand to hand-
"Any roll less than a 4 (counting bonuses) the attacker misses. Any roll above a four will hit unless..."
PG. 361-Ranged combat/modern weapon proficiency
"To shoot something the attacker must roll 1D20 and needs a 8 or higher to strike. However the shooter may also have bonuses from skills and penalties from conditions and circumstances."

PG. 364 Ranged combat/missiles combat
"As usual a D20 is rolled to determine weather a missile hits or misses. Any roll above a 4(5-20) hits unless the defender/target can dodge or shoot the missile down before it hits."

So the wording does not specify that the penalty applies(and could possibly read as a unmodified dice roll for missiles) and if it does is a GM call not a standard. The circumstance modifiers are stated as being for shooting but missiles may be ruled as launched not shot. It would be reasonable for a GM to say it does not apply as I said so your caveat was already covered.

Although given the wording for missiles there you then get that most of the longer range ones are smart missiles and have pretty sizable pluses to hit. So I sort of assume that is there to help overcome negatives imposed by circumstances. Given the tracking/homing nature of the longer range missiles I am not sure how speed would effect/degrade that.

Now mini missiles shooting a fast moving target is hard but for the bigger ones that actively track/home in theory they are constantly course correcting so the speed difference should not be an issue.

It could also be the bonus is for times that people need to over come the missile strike roll.