Value of a Splugorth minion barge?

[MadisonRose]

How much do you think someone would pay for the corpse of a Splugorth minion, the barge and the eye staff? I can make it up as I go along, but I just realized I have absolutely no idea the value of these things. Thank you!

[Blue_Lion]

value is stated for the staff and most the gear in rifts Atlantis.

[Shark_Force]

the staff has value, as it can be used by others (obviously only by powerful beings though). the barge and the corpse are probably mostly worthless. the barge is part of the slaver, and isn't really of anything particularly uncommon. you might get some value out of it being MDC materials, but that's about it. none of it works unless you know bio-wizardry, and only the splugorth have that knowledge, and, well... if you show up with a splugorth slaver corpse at a splugorth outpost, trying to sell it to them, they're more likely to kill you (or perhaps capture and enslave you, or capture and torture you... there are a lot of bad outcomes, in any event) than to pay you anything for it.

[Nightmartree]

You might be able to use the barge or refit it as some kinda tw devicd (or just gut it and use it to make some kinda floaty weapon platform) and only person i can imagine wanting the slaver is maybe cs or other power for research or a necromancer...actually could a necro animate and use the barge with a minion attached? Since the barge was linked to him as a part of his body basically? Its a bit of a stretch though

[Riftmaker]

I could see some storm spire paying to examine the barge and slavers corps. Problem is if the squids find out about it you'll have a hit team on your ass. I'd do 1d4 million credits plus the value of the items on the things body.

[Nekira Sudacne]

That's a bit lowballing it, the staff is worth a minimum of 10 million all by itself.

[Nightmartree]

That's a bit lowballing it, the staff is worth a minimum of 10 million all by itself.

is that book/market price or what you'd expect to get selling them as spoils of war? I don't remember the staffs being that expensive

[Shorty Lickens]

Assuming the thing doesnt explode on death, I'd say it starts at 50 million.

Good NGR jets are in the tens of millions, and they cant do nearly as much stuff as a slave barge.

[Killer Cyborg]

The demand for Slave Barges is probably about as high as the supply of people who want to be permanently bonded to a slave barge.

[slade the sniper]

A lot of the issues with giving a price for some of these things is that the value varies greatly depending on the buyer. I like having the prices available, but really there are some things that are of incredible value that a lot of people don't want...even if they could afford it.

10 million is a good bet, but a better question is how much does the buyer want it.

-STS

[Nekira Sudacne]

Ah! I found it.

Atlantis page 124/125. The slave barge is worth 50 million, and says the splurgorth never sell it, so that's the price of managing to capture one.

[eliakon]

One other issue with these things...
...is that once the barge is bonded to a user it is not exactly something you can reuse.
Removing the slaver/killing the slaver kills the barge.
Which thus means that it might be of some interest to a necromancer (maybe) or, if you have them in your game a Necro-Tech.
If you want the full 50m you are going to have to sneak in and get your hands on fresh 'unused' ones.
Good luck.

[Riftmaker]

That's a bit lowballing it, the staff is worth a minimum of 10 million all by itself.

I said " plus the value of the items on the things body." I was talkin the barge and the corps of the dead slaver. The low price is because there is a risk of angry squids coming calling if word gets out.

Its like asking after I loot the raider that tried to kill me how much can I sell his corps for?

[Shorty Lickens]

That's a bit lowballing it, the staff is worth a minimum of 10 million all by itself.

I said " plus the value of the items on the things body." I was talkin the barge and the corps of the dead slaver. The low price is because there is a risk of angry squids coming calling if word gets out.

Its like asking after I loot the raider that tried to kill me how much can I sell his corps for?

Depends on who wants it.
A shifter with some nefarious plans might pay decent money for a fresh body.

[Nightmartree]

That's a bit lowballing it, the staff is worth a minimum of 10 million all by itself.

I said " plus the value of the items on the things body." I was talkin the barge and the corps of the dead slaver. The low price is because there is a risk of angry squids coming calling if word gets out.

Its like asking after I loot the raider that tried to kill me how much can I sell his corps for?

Depends on who wants it.
A shifter with some nefarious plans might pay decent money for a fresh body.

Wait you mean my buying alien corpses so i can take a trip to another world and sell them as "oddities" and "alien beings from the beyond" to billionaires, various governments and private organizations is nefarious?...do i have to start meeting my contacts in back alleys now!?

[Riftmaker]

That's a bit lowballing it, the staff is worth a minimum of 10 million all by itself.

I said " plus the value of the items on the things body." I was talkin the barge and the corps of the dead slaver. The low price is because there is a risk of angry squids coming calling if word gets out.

Its like asking after I loot the raider that tried to kill me how much can I sell his corps for?

Depends on who wants it.
A shifter with some nefarious plans might pay decent money for a fresh body.

Wait you mean my buying alien corpses so i can take a trip to another world and sell them as "oddities" and "alien beings from the beyond" to billionaires, various governments and private organizations is nefarious?...do i have to start meeting my contacts in back alleys now!?

I meant some kind of say lizard mage interested in bio-wizardy something the squids would never teach a non-minion.

[Shark_Force]

anyone with the resources to reverse-engineer bio-wizardry has the resources to create their own splugorth minion corpses.

[boring7]

Boppin' on over to WB 2...

Let's start with the value:

Note: The barge and its five eyes die if the Slaver connected to it is slain. The additional observation eyes fly back to Atlantis and the eye-staff must find a new master within 72 hours or it too will die.

Quick check on the staff stats: bonding is easy enough (you just use it) but it's intelligent and evil. The bond is permanent (so you can't bond it to yourself then give it away), other stuff that probably isn't relevant, and a price tag of 10 to 40 million credits.

So without a buyer lined up the staff is worthless. Further down the pirce of a barge is "50 million (?); has never been available." Which is as ambiguous as the rest of Rifts and could be the estimated production price (i.e. 'cost to make it') or the presumed black market value (i.e. whatever the chiselers in the black market would charge, probably at least 3x what it costs to make).

But what of salvage?

Theoretically, a bio-wizard or techno-wizard could modify the barge to accommodate life forms other than the Splugorth Slaver. However, like the Slaver, the pilot would be permanently attached to the symbiotic machine and would require transmutation fluid in the containment unit. Such a modification has never been performed!

So it's possible, but you'd be breaking new ground AND you'd have to have a volunteer (not impossible, since it's basically a really weird 'Borg conversion, and plenty of those exist.

Or you could just enslave the minion. Resurrection is of nebulous rarity (it's officially hard to find, but so are spellcasters. And like spellcasters, there are a bajillion resurrection spells floating around) but if you can rez the minion you can also load him down with enough kill switches and/or mind control that he does what you tell him. In fact even selling it for study would be increased in value if it was fully active because the slaver was alive and plugged in.

Or you could part it out for TW parts which might (DM's discretion) be incorporated into the machine (it is techno-wizardry and bio-wizardry), as well as any other parts your TW or tech can salvage. My rule of thumb would be treat the salvage skill like prowl, and you get d20+(salvage skill/10) % of the base value of 50 million credits. So your salvager, who has a skill of 54% and rolls an 8 can get 6.5 million credits.

Which kind of credits? Not sure on that one...

Edit: As for the Splugorth opinion...hard to say. They have a certain anarcho-capitalist philosophy towards a lot of their stuff. For many it is a case of, "well it wasn't *my* barge, so I don't care. I'll probably make a snide comment about it to the Splugorth who lost it at our next game of Paradox Poker actually." But they also see humans as mud-creatures who shouldn't be allowed to get 'uppity'. They could just as easily decide you need to be captured or die because you are dangerous (fear) or because you are dangerous (exotic and valuable to sell).

But whatever the case, it's doubtful they'd buy a wrecked barge for much (if at all) because they can either make their own or because they only buy from licensed dealers that can give them New or Certified Pre-owned barges.

[Killer Cyborg]

Back in the day, during an Atlantis adventure, we captured a barge.
Decided to shell out the money to buy a high-level techno-wizard slave (whom we then freed), and he modified the barge to bond with the party's Hatchling Dragon (who's player had skipped role-playing for some lame reason).
He could shapechange to look like a Slaver, and we could use the thing to at least attempt undercover ops.

[Nightmartree]

considering someone just brought up the 5 eyes that float around it. would it be too out of left field to consider using some borg/tech conversion and remove the brains of a few people, insert a psychic with mind bond or such into the slaver spot, and force him to link with minds until they are "all one" and control them to be a psychic driven human brain barge?

cause I can totally see someone with tech and a disregard for human life and sanity making this after capturing a slaver barge.

[Shark_Force]

considering someone just brought up the 5 eyes that float around it. would it be too out of left field to consider using some borg/tech conversion and remove the brains of a few people, insert a psychic with mind bond or such into the slaver spot, and force him to link with minds until they are "all one" and control them to be a psychic driven human brain barge?

cause I can totally see someone with tech and a disregard for human life and sanity making this after capturing a slaver barge.

well... if by "someone" you actually mean "the mindwerks company", i could certainly imagine them *trying* to do something like that.

would it work? well, i'd say probably not reliably. i think it would be extremely buggy even when it works at all (which it probably won't more often than not), probably half the time would result in the death of some or all of the... err... victims/donors? well, whatever you call them, i'm thinking it would be super risky for them...

which basically means, no, unless your DM has decided the angel of death has gotten curious along that path long enough to do a whole bunch of experimenting, in which case there are probably one or more partially-working completely insane extremely angry quasi-undead monstrosities floating around somewhere near poland, and the smart decision would be to not go anywhere near them and hope they eventually fully self-destruct in some way or another

(note: typically, PCs don't do the smart thing. if they did, the game would largely consist of sitting around in a shop or something like that for half of the OCCs in the game ).

[Nightmartree]

partially-working completely insane extremely angry quasi-undead monstrosities floating around

now this is what i'm getting at

the rest was all good, but this line here to me sounds like a green light. The goal here was never sane flying psychic brains, the goal was crazed, suffering flying brains who probably have a chip in their brain to apply pain when they attempt to attack the bad guys or to make them do as they're ordered while also allowing them to be put to sleep at the press of a button. get a few of these things have them run on autopilot 90% of the time, just computers doing scans and such, when a situation comes along you wake up the crazy psychics to handle it. You'd probably end up with some totally screaming bonkers, a few who will do whatever is needed just so they can sleep again, others who have become broken and just do as theyre ordered, some rebels ect. ect. basically...they make great random murder mobs AND the potential for tragic heroes/villians for the more functioning ones. and of course multiple personalities cause they are exactly that.

[Eagle]

The most valuable things on the barge are the Talismans that give Armor of Ithan to the warrior women. They're worth 10 million apiece and they're small enough to fit in your pocket. Hitting a slaver barge might be like poachers who take down elephants. You chop off the tusks and then get out of there. Most people who can take down a slaver barge probably strip the thing down and then leave. I'd imagine that there's a waiting list for things like a Staff of Eylor. If you've got the right connections you can probably move that stuff all day.

The barge itself is probably harder. To the right buyer it could be worth a lot, but you gotta find those. Some tore up, broke ass barge that's been blown halfway to hell in a firefight and looks like it belongs in a junkyard probably won't get you that much. Somebody might be wiling to pay so they can salvage the materials, or study the design, but the thing would be worth a hell of a lot more if it's actually working. If you could get one of those, 50 million credits is certainly reasonable. Again, you just have to find the right buyer. High level mages with weird interests would be my target. The City of Brass would be a good place to start.

[Nightmartree]

Am i just cheap or does it seem like you could hire a plucky group of mercenaries to kill these alien slavers and bring you their gear for 10 million or so? And most of that 10 million is cause theyre bringing the gear back to you and not just looting rights?

[Eagle]

Am i just cheap or does it seem like you could hire a plucky group of mercenaries to kill these alien slavers and bring you their gear for 10 million or so? And most of that 10 million is cause theyre bringing the gear back to you and not just looting rights?

Well a single Armor Talisman is worth 10 million, so I figure you'd have to pay more than that for them to bring it back to you. Depends on how easy the merchandise is to move, really.

The sad part is, I'm sure Kevin Siembieda put the price on those Talismans as high as he did because he didn't want his players buying them. But what he ended up doing is making Splugorth barges really juicy targets once you get to a certain power level. I'd imagine there's a fairly high mortality rate for those things. There should be a horde of greedy bastards ambushing these slaver parties for all their super-valuable gear.

[eliakon]

Am i just cheap or does it seem like you could hire a plucky group of mercenaries to kill these alien slavers and bring you their gear for 10 million or so? And most of that 10 million is cause theyre bringing the gear back to you and not just looting rights?

Well a single Armor Talisman is worth 10 million, so I figure you'd have to pay more than that for them to bring it back to you. Depends on how easy the merchandise is to move, really.

The sad part is, I'm sure Kevin Siembieda put the price on those Talismans as high as he did because he didn't want his players buying them. But what he ended up doing is making Splugorth barges really juicy targets once you get to a certain power level. I'd imagine there's a fairly high mortality rate for those things. There should be a horde of greedy bastards ambushing these slaver parties for all their super-valuable gear.

One of the solutions I used in my games was to simply "lock" the gear
That lovely Temporal magic spell and boom, now it only works for the person it is issued to.

Makes sense, and the splugorth can 'reset it'

That and the fact that people that make a habit of robbing the splugorth should, realistically, get Splugorth Security coming after them, personally.

YMMV but I always laughed at players that said that "Well, I am going to go use the CS/Splugorth/Gargoyles/Whoever as my personal loot piñata"
Then made sure they had spare characters rolled up.

[Shark_Force]

it doesn't even really take a certain power level, just enough money to invest in arming a town's militia with low-end gear. the difficulty in dealing with the splugorth slavers isn't being powerful enough, it's being able to deal with 4-6 of your people getting netted per action. just bring along 40-50 militiamen armed with shotguns firing plasma cartridges, wearing some low-end MDC armour (i believe someone has found options for as little as a few thousand credits). while firing en masse, they'll take down the minions pretty quickly, and can probably last long enough to deal with the problem.

especially if you can supply a few of the minor/major psychics with TW knives that instantly destroy magic nets... the slaver barge is *great* at capturing people, but not very good at dealing damage quickly.

[Axelmania]

We should explore that possession of a barge might have a NEGATIVE value because of the risk holding one poses of reprisal.

It might be worth it to.pay someone to take it off your hands..

[Nightmartree]

Am i just cheap or does it seem like you could hire a plucky group of mercenaries to kill these alien slavers and bring you their gear for 10 million or so? And most of that 10 million is cause theyre bringing the gear back to you and not just looting rights?

Well a single Armor Talisman is worth 10 million, so I figure you'd have to pay more than that for them to bring it back to you. Depends on how easy the merchandise is to move, really.

The sad part is, I'm sure Kevin Siembieda put the price on those Talismans as high as he did because he didn't want his players buying them. But what he ended up doing is making Splugorth barges really juicy targets once you get to a certain power level. I'd imagine there's a fairly high mortality rate for those things. There should be a horde of greedy bastards ambushing these slaver parties for all their super-valuable gear.

but see that ten million is an atlantis price not "I want you to go shoot up aliens and bring me all the stuff" price, does any PC or random merc in America have access to the price lists of atlantean gear? and your probably right, someone who knows what they're doing could almost certainly get far more credits for the barge, staff and amulets...assuming that they are connected to a being big enough to take the heat who knows or assigns a worth similar to the books, and even then I wouldn't pay more than 1/5th the price for the amulets and between that and a tenth for the barge depending on condition. After all that's some pretty hot merchandise in the biggest market on the planet (and so connected to a lot of the other places off planet) and if you sell it to people who don't know what all this is, how to use it, and ect. they have to account for "research costs" and skimping to pad their own wallets (or their kingdoms small budget).

Its still decent money assuming you can take them down without too much cost, but I don't see you getting that much for these items just because the people who could pay you that much, don't need to or know that they're putting a giant alien intelligence sized bullseye on their head if they aren't careful.

also I figure that if they find that a large number of minions going to one area have begun to die then you'll probably be facing a search and destroy or search and capture squad depending on the spluguroths mood, or maybe if its a low value area a few spies will investigate and then report back, leading to a good chance that the PC's will still get marked for capture or destruction, just now with the guarantee that they know what they need to put you down.

[Shark_Force]

oh, i definitely wouldn't recommend turning "splugorth hunting" into a profession. i think you could probably get away with it once pretty easy (one lost barge could be danged near anything, and the megaverse is pretty bug... they'll probably send a few search parties out to see what they can see after a while (i don't think the barges even have radio equipment, so potentially up to a couple days... maybe 3d10-2 hours) but won't pursue unless there's a fairly easy trail (if you want to spice it up, give it a small chance that the group got unlucky and today they get to be made into examples to warn everyone else not to screw with the splugorth, so the trackers are *really* trying hard), but if they start consistently losing barges in one area, or even just see a major increase in the number of barges lost across many areas, expect them to put some serious effort in to most lost barges, and the splugorth are crazy scary in ways that the CS aren't... truthfully, it isn't *that* hard to find a place beyond the effective reach of the CS. oh, they *could* put troops pretty near anywhere on the planet within 24 hours, but they also pretty much never do, and they lack the resources (as in, they don't have them in place) to track someone down on the other side of the planet to know where to send troops to, let alone into other dimensions. but the splugorth... man, they've got pretty much every magic trick on the book at their disposal, and probably a bunch of tricks that aren't in the book.

i mean, hunting the CS for gear? that's dangerous, but you could probably pull it off as a small group if you're careful and have lots of resources, as long as you don't do something stupid like set up your base and only hit patrols within 50 miles of that base (in which case you may as well just leave a map behind with an X on it to show them where to launch the long range missiles).

but hunting the splugorth repeatedly, now that's just crazy...

[Blue_Lion]

oh, i definitely wouldn't recommend turning "splugorth hunting" into a profession. i think you could probably get away with it once pretty easy (one lost barge could be danged near anything, and the megaverse is pretty bug... they'll probably send a few search parties out to see what they can see after a while (i don't think the barges even have radio equipment, so potentially up to a couple days... maybe 3d10-2 hours) but won't pursue unless there's a fairly easy trail (if you want to spice it up, give it a small chance that the group got unlucky and today they get to be made into examples to warn everyone else not to screw with the splugorth, so the trackers are *really* trying hard), but if they start consistently losing barges in one area, or even just see a major increase in the number of barges lost across many areas, expect them to put some serious effort in to most lost barges, and the splugorth are crazy scary in ways that the CS aren't... truthfully, it isn't *that* hard to find a place beyond the effective reach of the CS. oh, they *could* put troops pretty near anywhere on the planet within 24 hours, but they also pretty much never do, and they lack the resources (as in, they don't have them in place) to track someone down on the other side of the planet to know where to send troops to, let alone into other dimensions. but the splugorth... man, they've got pretty much every magic trick on the book at their disposal, and probably a bunch of tricks that aren't in the book.

i mean, hunting the CS for gear? that's dangerous, but you could probably pull it off as a small group if you're careful and have lots of resources, as long as you don't do something stupid like set up your base and only hit patrols within 50 miles of that base (in which case you may as well just leave a map behind with an X on it to show them where to launch the long range missiles).

but hunting the splugorth repeatedly, now that's just crazy...

It does not take resources for small scale hunting. The main thing is keep mobile, what takes resources is large scale hunting. You need resources to hide your tracks and gather resources.
CS loosing a patrol here or there, they would kind of expect that after all rifts can be dangerous.(just remember to jam their radios) But when an area is loosing higher than normal small patrols then they would get involved.

Same is true of the splugorth, loosing a barge here and there they would not notice it happens. But an area starts loosing to many barges then they send something to investigate.

[Eagle]

Am i just cheap or does it seem like you could hire a plucky group of mercenaries to kill these alien slavers and bring you their gear for 10 million or so? And most of that 10 million is cause theyre bringing the gear back to you and not just looting rights?

Well a single Armor Talisman is worth 10 million, so I figure you'd have to pay more than that for them to bring it back to you. Depends on how easy the merchandise is to move, really.

The sad part is, I'm sure Kevin Siembieda put the price on those Talismans as high as he did because he didn't want his players buying them. But what he ended up doing is making Splugorth barges really juicy targets once you get to a certain power level. I'd imagine there's a fairly high mortality rate for those things. There should be a horde of greedy bastards ambushing these slaver parties for all their super-valuable gear.

One of the solutions I used in my games was to simply "lock" the gear
That lovely Temporal magic spell and boom, now it only works for the person it is issued to.

Makes sense, and the splugorth can 'reset it'

That and the fact that people that make a habit of robbing the splugorth should, realistically, get Splugorth Security coming after them, personally.

YMMV but I always laughed at players that said that "Well, I am going to go use the CS/Splugorth/Gargoyles/Whoever as my personal loot piñata"
Then made sure they had spare characters rolled up.

I think the best way to limit this kind of thing is just to enforce some limits on acting with out of character knowledge. When you're looking at the capabilities of groups of PCs, there's not always going to be overlap between "knows Splugorth barges have valuable crap" and "can actually take down a Splugorth barge".

Rifts PCs don't get to thumb through the sourcebooks. Your 3rd level Line Walker probably doesn't know what stats the Splugorth raiding parties have. If you want to limit PCs when they try to wargame a scenario (and you don't always need to -- it can be a lot of fun to let guys go rampaging through the game), just ask one simple question. "Why is your character doing that?" Then make them answer with knowledge they have in-character. If they can't give you a decent answer, then either 1) their character doesn't do it, or 2) feel free to change the game stats (this allows the players to retain full agency over their characters) and you just assume that the stats in the book are in-universe rumors.

Too many GMs try to prevent the PCs from "winning" or getting too far ahead. I don't mind when players are successful, I just don't want the game to lose any suspense or adventure and let the players just declare all the amazing things they do, no roleplaying required. Making a bundle after taking down some slavers is great -- but it's not a point-and-click video game. Why is Johnny the Juicer so intent on wandering out into the wilderness and fighting slavers? How does he even know how to find them? Can he tell the difference between a Splugorth minion (which everybody thinks are the actual Splugorth, remember) and a Horune pirate? A lot of times we gloss over this kind of thing, but I've found that *not* glossing over it and making the characters play it out ends up angering players a lot less than putting artificial limitations on the magic items they found and the money they get.

[eliakon]

Am i just cheap or does it seem like you could hire a plucky group of mercenaries to kill these alien slavers and bring you their gear for 10 million or so? And most of that 10 million is cause theyre bringing the gear back to you and not just looting rights?

Well a single Armor Talisman is worth 10 million, so I figure you'd have to pay more than that for them to bring it back to you. Depends on how easy the merchandise is to move, really.

The sad part is, I'm sure Kevin Siembieda put the price on those Talismans as high as he did because he didn't want his players buying them. But what he ended up doing is making Splugorth barges really juicy targets once you get to a certain power level. I'd imagine there's a fairly high mortality rate for those things. There should be a horde of greedy bastards ambushing these slaver parties for all their super-valuable gear.

One of the solutions I used in my games was to simply "lock" the gear
That lovely Temporal magic spell and boom, now it only works for the person it is issued to.

Makes sense, and the splugorth can 'reset it'

That and the fact that people that make a habit of robbing the splugorth should, realistically, get Splugorth Security coming after them, personally.

YMMV but I always laughed at players that said that "Well, I am going to go use the CS/Splugorth/Gargoyles/Whoever as my personal loot piñata"
Then made sure they had spare characters rolled up.

I think the best way to limit this kind of thing is just to enforce some limits on acting with out of character knowledge. When you're looking at the capabilities of groups of PCs, there's not always going to be overlap between "knows Splugorth barges have valuable crap" and "can actually take down a Splugorth barge".

Rifts PCs don't get to thumb through the sourcebooks. Your 3rd level Line Walker probably doesn't know what stats the Splugorth raiding parties have. If you want to limit PCs when they try to wargame a scenario (and you don't always need to -- it can be a lot of fun to let guys go rampaging through the game), just ask one simple question. "Why is your character doing that?" Then make them answer with knowledge they have in-character. If they can't give you a decent answer, then either 1) their character doesn't do it, or 2) feel free to change the game stats (this allows the players to retain full agency over their characters) and you just assume that the stats in the book are in-universe rumors.

Too many GMs try to prevent the PCs from "winning" or getting too far ahead. I don't mind when players are successful, I just don't want the game to lose any suspense or adventure and let the players just declare all the amazing things they do, no roleplaying required. Making a bundle after taking down some slavers is great -- but it's not a point-and-click video game. Why is Johnny the Juicer so intent on wandering out into the wilderness and fighting slavers? How does he even know how to find them? Can he tell the difference between a Splugorth minion (which everybody thinks are the actual Splugorth, remember) and a Horune pirate? A lot of times we gloss over this kind of thing, but I've found that *not* glossing over it and making the characters play it out ends up angering players a lot less than putting artificial limitations on the magic items they found and the money they get.

I guess I wasn't quite as clear as I should have been.
I have a serious issue with metagamers.
I loathe the breed with a deep and abiding passion.
To me they are the worst sort of blight on the gaming community.
As such I take pains to make spray for them regularly and keep my games metagamer free.
Part of that is that I make it exquisitely clear that I do not allow for, as you put it, rule book thumbing to build up the ultimate loot piñata system.
I also do not allow people to 'just know' all the little details that allow for 99.9999% of these schemes to work.
If I ask a PC "why are you doing that and how do you know to do it?" if they can't answer with in game knowledge then that's fine...
...they will lose all their XP for the session though, and get a strike.
Three strikes and your out go find another table to play at.

[taalismn]

Monetary value maybe....everything has a price, but finding a buyer willing to take what would essentially be a target for the Splugorth.....lotsa luck finding anybody willing to pay full stated value.

[boring7]

Honestly, not sure a hijacker *would* be a target for the Splugorth. A good model for the Splugorth slaver barge would be poachers in Africa (or arms dealers); a relatively high-risk venture which sometimes results in you losing the capital you put into it but usually produces a high profit margin. If you lose one of your Tusk-hunters or a plane-load of guns you eat the loss and move on because making a war out of it just isn't profitable. Think of it this way, you're a Splugorth who just lost a Slave Barge:

-If you hire mercs and start hunting, everybody knows you lost a barge and laughs at you/thinks about capitalizing on your apparent weakness.
-If you find it, you'll probably still lose it (it's heavily damaged, and trying to re-capture it means more damage, plus the nicest bits are easy to separate from it and scatter to the winds), so all you're *really* chasing is revenge.
-That revenge will be expensive, since the target is tough enough to break a Barge and any potential buyers are rich/powerful enough to do so. Not to mention you don't know where to look.
-If you *do* get revenge and make everyone fear your name again, that's good.
-If you cover it up, you don't spend all that cash and don't have to deal with your competition seeing you as a target.
-If you try and fail to cover it up, you may look even weaker.

So it could certainly happen, but there are some good reasons for it to not happen.

[Shark_Force]

Honestly, not sure a hijacker *would* be a target for the Splugorth. A good model for the Splugorth slaver barge would be poachers in Africa (or arms dealers); a relatively high-risk venture which sometimes results in you losing the capital you put into it but usually produces a high profit margin. If you lose one of your Tusk-hunters or a plane-load of guns you eat the loss and move on because making a war out of it just isn't profitable. Think of it this way, you're a Splugorth who just lost a Slave Barge:

-If you hire mercs and start hunting, everybody knows you lost a barge and laughs at you/thinks about capitalizing on your apparent weakness.
-If you find it, you'll probably still lose it (it's heavily damaged, and trying to re-capture it means more damage, plus the nicest bits are easy to separate from it and scatter to the winds), so all you're *really* chasing is revenge.
-That revenge will be expensive, since the target is tough enough to break a Barge and any potential buyers are rich/powerful enough to do so. Not to mention you don't know where to look.
-If you *do* get revenge and make everyone fear your name again, that's good.
-If you cover it up, you don't spend all that cash and don't have to deal with your competition seeing you as a target.
-If you try and fail to cover it up, you may look even weaker.

So it could certainly happen, but there are some good reasons for it to not happen.

as i said, i expect they'd send out someone to find out if tracking you down is going to be easy (did you leave an obvious trail where a 20 foot tall robot smashed through the trees? expect company), but most of the time they aren't going to go nuts over one barge (though i do still think they'd do it on occasion... i mean, if there was a 10% or even 5% chance they decide to go after you to make an example, they most likely can track you down, and that will lead to most anyone doing it as a career meeting a bad end eventually).

[Nightmartree]

Honestly, not sure a hijacker *would* be a target for the Splugorth. A good model for the Splugorth slaver barge would be poachers in Africa (or arms dealers); a relatively high-risk venture which sometimes results in you losing the capital you put into it but usually produces a high profit margin. If you lose one of your Tusk-hunters or a plane-load of guns you eat the loss and move on because making a war out of it just isn't profitable. Think of it this way, you're a Splugorth who just lost a Slave Barge:

-If you hire mercs and start hunting, everybody knows you lost a barge and laughs at you/thinks about capitalizing on your apparent weakness.
-If you find it, you'll probably still lose it (it's heavily damaged, and trying to re-capture it means more damage, plus the nicest bits are easy to separate from it and scatter to the winds), so all you're *really* chasing is revenge.
-That revenge will be expensive, since the target is tough enough to break a Barge and any potential buyers are rich/powerful enough to do so. Not to mention you don't know where to look.
-If you *do* get revenge and make everyone fear your name again, that's good.
-If you cover it up, you don't spend all that cash and don't have to deal with your competition seeing you as a target.
-If you try and fail to cover it up, you may look even weaker.

So it could certainly happen, but there are some good reasons for it to not happen.

as i said, i expect they'd send out someone to find out if tracking you down is going to be easy (did you leave an obvious trail where a 20 foot tall robot smashed through the trees? expect company), but most of the time they aren't going to go nuts over one barge (though i do still think they'd do it on occasion... i mean, if there was a 10% or even 5% chance they decide to go after you to make an example, they most likely can track you down, and that will lead to most anyone doing it as a career meeting a bad end eventually).

"Jhonny please tell me you disabled the multidimensional magical tracker that's installed in all splurgoth slaver barges to keep track of their property" "the what?"- Almost last words of Barge Theft R Us

also isn't a conservator they're "nature borg scout"? I'm pretty sure they had ways to find you and hunt you that most things didn't and its a lot different to be being hunted by a magical bioborg, than attacking a large floating vehicle. For starters, you have to sleep sometime.

[Blue_Lion]

Am i just cheap or does it seem like you could hire a plucky group of mercenaries to kill these alien slavers and bring you their gear for 10 million or so? And most of that 10 million is cause theyre bringing the gear back to you and not just looting rights?

Well a single Armor Talisman is worth 10 million, so I figure you'd have to pay more than that for them to bring it back to you. Depends on how easy the merchandise is to move, really.

The sad part is, I'm sure Kevin Siembieda put the price on those Talismans as high as he did because he didn't want his players buying them. But what he ended up doing is making Splugorth barges really juicy targets once you get to a certain power level. I'd imagine there's a fairly high mortality rate for those things. There should be a horde of greedy bastards ambushing these slaver parties for all their super-valuable gear.

One of the solutions I used in my games was to simply "lock" the gear
That lovely Temporal magic spell and boom, now it only works for the person it is issued to.

Makes sense, and the splugorth can 'reset it'

That and the fact that people that make a habit of robbing the splugorth should, realistically, get Splugorth Security coming after them, personally.

YMMV but I always laughed at players that said that "Well, I am going to go use the CS/Splugorth/Gargoyles/Whoever as my personal loot piñata"
Then made sure they had spare characters rolled up.

I think the best way to limit this kind of thing is just to enforce some limits on acting with out of character knowledge. When you're looking at the capabilities of groups of PCs, there's not always going to be overlap between "knows Splugorth barges have valuable crap" and "can actually take down a Splugorth barge".

Rifts PCs don't get to thumb through the sourcebooks. Your 3rd level Line Walker probably doesn't know what stats the Splugorth raiding parties have. If you want to limit PCs when they try to wargame a scenario (and you don't always need to -- it can be a lot of fun to let guys go rampaging through the game), just ask one simple question. "Why is your character doing that?" Then make them answer with knowledge they have in-character. If they can't give you a decent answer, then either 1) their character doesn't do it, or 2) feel free to change the game stats (this allows the players to retain full agency over their characters) and you just assume that the stats in the book are in-universe rumors.

Too many GMs try to prevent the PCs from "winning" or getting too far ahead. I don't mind when players are successful, I just don't want the game to lose any suspense or adventure and let the players just declare all the amazing things they do, no roleplaying required. Making a bundle after taking down some slavers is great -- but it's not a point-and-click video game. Why is Johnny the Juicer so intent on wandering out into the wilderness and fighting slavers? How does he even know how to find them? Can he tell the difference between a Splugorth minion (which everybody thinks are the actual Splugorth, remember) and a Horune pirate? A lot of times we gloss over this kind of thing, but I've found that *not* glossing over it and making the characters play it out ends up angering players a lot less than putting artificial limitations on the magic items they found and the money they get.

I guess I wasn't quite as clear as I should have been.
I have a serious issue with metagamers.
I loathe the breed with a deep and abiding passion.
To me they are the worst sort of blight on the gaming community.
As such I take pains to make spray for them regularly and keep my games metagamer free.
Part of that is that I make it exquisitely clear that I do not allow for, as you put it, rule book thumbing to build up the ultimate loot piñata system.
I also do not allow people to 'just know' all the little details that allow for 99.9999% of these schemes to work.
If I ask a PC "why are you doing that and how do you know to do it?" if they can't answer with in game knowledge then that's fine...
...they will lose all their XP for the session though, and get a strike.
Three strikes and your out go find another table to play at.

I have never been in a group that actively hunted barges but when we brought one down one time my TW drug it back to a town for parts. Rebuilt it into a TW hover vehicle. (His MO was to salvage military vehicles and bots, rebuild them and sale them off to merc companies.)

[Mack]

Don't underestimate how much of a pain it could be to move a barge across rough terrain. Just getting it back to the nearest town could be a significant undertaking for a small party. I don't have the weight/dimensions handy, but you can't just heft it onto a shoulder and walk back.

[Nightmartree]

Don't underestimate how much of a pain it could be to move a barge across rough terrain. Just getting it back to the nearest town could be a significant undertaking for a small party. I don't have the weight/dimensions handy, but you can't just heft it onto a shoulder and walk back.

Depends on the PC, ive seen a few were i just wanna shake my head and walk away cause a few tons of alien barge is a tinker toy

But i could be underestimating its weight (and i tend to disregard dimensions to a large degree with supernatural ps, mostly because most things youd wanna lift with it will break under their own weight if you try)

[Blue_Lion]

Don't underestimate how much of a pain it could be to move a barge across rough terrain. Just getting it back to the nearest town could be a significant undertaking for a small party. I don't have the weight/dimensions handy, but you can't just heft it onto a shoulder and walk back.

OH it is a major pain moving large gear even with proper recovery gear. It gets easier of you design a quick attach TW floater system from SoT to make it float off the ground so you can toe it like a balloon. The charter I had at the time was a TW survivor from Tolkeen army ordnance/maintenance corps geared towards military salvage. His job in the war was to recover military vehicles and bots to be rebuilt and used to fight the CS. During the start of the final siege he was away recovering vehicles in a remote position and got cut off during the final siege.

[Shark_Force]

Don't underestimate how much of a pain it could be to move a barge across rough terrain. Just getting it back to the nearest town could be a significant undertaking for a small party. I don't have the weight/dimensions handy, but you can't just heft it onto a shoulder and walk back.

Depends on the PC, ive seen a few were i just wanna shake my head and walk away cause a few tons of alien barge is a tinker toy

But i could be underestimating its weight (and i tend to disregard dimensions to a large degree with supernatural ps, mostly because most things youd wanna lift with it will break under their own weight if you try)

i'd guess the barge (plus slaver) are gonna be at least 8,000 lbs. probably a bunch more... i tend to assume MDC material will have a higher density than non-MDC material. but i don't have the stats on a slaver barge handy, so i don't really even know the proper size. but, to be transporting 4-6 warrior women, plus fit the slaver in somewhere, it's gotta be pretty large... so maybe a *lot* more.

some groups may have a person who can haul that much around casually, but i doubt it's anything like typical.

[boring7]

Don't underestimate how much of a pain it could be to move a barge across rough terrain. Just getting it back to the nearest town could be a significant undertaking for a small party. I don't have the weight/dimensions handy, but you can't just heft it onto a shoulder and walk back.

Depends on the PC, ive seen a few were i just wanna shake my head and walk away cause a few tons of alien barge is a tinker toy

But i could be underestimating its weight (and i tend to disregard dimensions to a large degree with supernatural ps, mostly because most things youd wanna lift with it will break under their own weight if you try)

i'd guess the barge (plus slaver) are gonna be at least 8,000 lbs. probably a bunch more... i tend to assume MDC material will have a higher density than non-MDC material. but i don't have the stats on a slaver barge handy, so i don't really even know the proper size. but, to be transporting 4-6 warrior women, plus fit the slaver in somewhere, it's gotta be pretty large... so maybe a *lot* more.

some groups may have a person who can haul that much around casually, but i doubt it's anything like typical.

Is it supposed to carry slaves? It's called the "infamous slaver barge" but is also listed as "used primarily for defense."

[Nightmartree]

Don't underestimate how much of a pain it could be to move a barge across rough terrain. Just getting it back to the nearest town could be a significant undertaking for a small party. I don't have the weight/dimensions handy, but you can't just heft it onto a shoulder and walk back.

Depends on the PC, ive seen a few were i just wanna shake my head and walk away cause a few tons of alien barge is a tinker toy

But i could be underestimating its weight (and i tend to disregard dimensions to a large degree with supernatural ps, mostly because most things youd wanna lift with it will break under their own weight if you try)

i'd guess the barge (plus slaver) are gonna be at least 8,000 lbs. probably a bunch more... i tend to assume MDC material will have a higher density than non-MDC material. but i don't have the stats on a slaver barge handy, so i don't really even know the proper size. but, to be transporting 4-6 warrior women, plus fit the slaver in somewhere, it's gotta be pretty large... so maybe a *lot* more.

some groups may have a person who can haul that much around casually, but i doubt it's anything like typical.

Is it supposed to carry slaves? It's called the "infamous slaver barge" but is also listed as "used primarily for defense."

I don't think it does...its more like a platform the slavers use to travel. Not to haul "cargo".

and 8,000 pounds... a ps of 25 supernatural could carry it and I've seen more than just a few characters with that ps show up...that said I have some people I play with who break probability (they don't cheat, but anyone looking at the "odds" is never gonna believe it) so I may be used to a higher stat level than most people

[boring7]

Spoiler:

Don't underestimate how much of a pain it could be to move a barge across rough terrain. Just getting it back to the nearest town could be a significant undertaking for a small party. I don't have the weight/dimensions handy, but you can't just heft it onto a shoulder and walk back.

Depends on the PC, ive seen a few were i just wanna shake my head and walk away cause a few tons of alien barge is a tinker toy

But i could be underestimating its weight (and i tend to disregard dimensions to a large degree with supernatural ps, mostly because most things youd wanna lift with it will break under their own weight if you try)

i'd guess the barge (plus slaver) are gonna be at least 8,000 lbs. probably a bunch more... i tend to assume MDC material will have a higher density than non-MDC material. but i don't have the stats on a slaver barge handy, so i don't really even know the proper size. but, to be transporting 4-6 warrior women, plus fit the slaver in somewhere, it's gotta be pretty large... so maybe a *lot* more.

some groups may have a person who can haul that much around casually, but i doubt it's anything like typical.

Is it supposed to carry slaves? It's called the "infamous slaver barge" but is also listed as "used primarily for defense."

I don't think it does...its more like a platform the slavers use to travel. Not to haul "cargo".

and 8,000 pounds... a ps of 25 supernatural could carry it and I've seen more than just a few characters with that ps show up...that said I have some people I play with who break probability (they don't cheat, but anyone looking at the "odds" is never gonna believe it) so I may be used to a higher stat level than most people

The Mystic Kuznya hits that without even trying that hard. On the flip side I recall looking for the carrying capacity and finding wildly different numbers. For example:

3. Supernatural P.S.: When creating the character, roll for the P.S. attribute as usual but then add 1D6+12 to the number rolled, and make it supernatural P.S. This means punches and kicks inflict M.D. and the smith can carry 100x his P.S. in pounds

.

[ShadowLogan]

Don't underestimate how much of a pain it could be to move a barge across rough terrain. Just getting it back to the nearest town could be a significant undertaking for a small party. I don't have the weight/dimensions handy, but you can't just heft it onto a shoulder and walk back.

Dimensions and weight/mass for the barge don't exist, at least not in SB1o or WB2 (pre-RUE version, not sure about the shadow update version). Partial dimensions for the Slaver exist, but nothing about his/her/its weight/mass.

Which can make working out how to move it a bit tricky. The dimensions at least could be inferred from art (if one treats it as "canon") and known dimensions for the BWW or Slaver. Weight/Mass would be another matter.

[Blue_Lion]

Don't underestimate how much of a pain it could be to move a barge across rough terrain. Just getting it back to the nearest town could be a significant undertaking for a small party. I don't have the weight/dimensions handy, but you can't just heft it onto a shoulder and walk back.

Depends on the PC, ive seen a few were i just wanna shake my head and walk away cause a few tons of alien barge is a tinker toy

But i could be underestimating its weight (and i tend to disregard dimensions to a large degree with supernatural ps, mostly because most things youd wanna lift with it will break under their own weight if you try)

i'd guess the barge (plus slaver) are gonna be at least 8,000 lbs. probably a bunch more... i tend to assume MDC material will have a higher density than non-MDC material. but i don't have the stats on a slaver barge handy, so i don't really even know the proper size. but, to be transporting 4-6 warrior women, plus fit the slaver in somewhere, it's gotta be pretty large... so maybe a *lot* more.

some groups may have a person who can haul that much around casually, but i doubt it's anything like typical.

In general MDC seams lighter than currant stuff.

[Nightmartree]

In general MDC seams lighter than currant stuff.

I think that's because most MDC is a result of molecular structure or energy. With a few of them being some form of reaction to X material or energy and very few being the result of density actually achieving MDC levels. That said I think kisentite from aliens unlimited is a MDC material due to density and its supposed to be super heavy. Like a suit of plate mail weighing as much as the person inside it kind of heavy, Not sure how that counts compared to what it should have in defense but its far far heavier than comparable MDC materials.

[Blue_Lion]

In general MDC seams lighter than currant stuff.

I think that's because most MDC is a result of molecular structure or energy. With a few of them being some form of reaction to X material or energy and very few being the result of density actually achieving MDC levels. That said I think kisentite from aliens unlimited is a MDC material due to density and its supposed to be super heavy. Like a suit of plate mail weighing as much as the person inside it kind of heavy, Not sure how that counts compared to what it should have in defense but its far far heavier than comparable MDC materials.

As printed in AU yes, as printed in Rifts(CS navy) Kisentite is TW.
(In general means it is not and absolute statement but recognizing a trend.)

[Nightmartree]

In general MDC seams lighter than currant stuff.

I think that's because most MDC is a result of molecular structure or energy. With a few of them being some form of reaction to X material or energy and very few being the result of density actually achieving MDC levels. That said I think kisentite from aliens unlimited is a MDC material due to density and its supposed to be super heavy. Like a suit of plate mail weighing as much as the person inside it kind of heavy, Not sure how that counts compared to what it should have in defense but its far far heavier than comparable MDC materials.

As printed in AU yes, as printed in Rifts(CS navy) Kisentite is TW.
(In general means it is not and absolute statement but recognizing a trend.)

TW?

and ya I know what in general means I was expanding on the reasons why because I have issues with keeping my mouth shut. *sigh* my fault