drazool wrote:Eagle wrote:Most people aren't supposed to have MD weapons or armor, and somehow they're managing to live long enough to reproduce. I figure most villages are in relatively safe locations (safe-ish), and people probably breed like rabbits to maintain their population. Your average girl in town is probably popping out kids when she's 15 or 16. Having a dozen children would be normal, because there's a pretty high mortality rate.
I've heard stories about when my grandpa was young, he grew up a sharecropper in a house with a dirt floor (it was the 1920s). He had a bunch of brothers and sisters who never even got named because they died when they were a couple of weeks old. In Rifts they'd have more advanced medical care, but you're also more likely to get killed by a monster, so it makes sense to maintain the high birth rate. I think you'd have a lot of "Joe went to town and never came back". But most of the time when you see a mega damage monster, you run and hide. The things may be horrifically dangerous, but they fail perception checks too.
Well, this, but there's also the fact that if you have a town of 100 people, and they can field, say, 50 people with some kind of megadamage weapon, that's a lot of damage. Assuming 2d6 MD weapons, and a 75% hit rate, they should be dealing something like 250 megadamage per attack, as a group. While you could massage these numbers up and down, you're not likely to encounter too many critters that would be able to stand up to that kind of attack.
I think hundreds of years later, natural selection would determine that a) all of the humans that survive to adulthood are at least able to shoot a gun, and b) most critters would know to avoid groups of humans. Individuals or very small groups would be vulnerable, but groups larger would be a different story.
Add to this the fact that even some individual or small group travelers are terrifying creatures in their own right, and I think the outlook is pretty good for people who are near civilization.
Add to this the availability of hover vehicles, and the relative prevalence of hover-cycles, even small groups of fast moving individuals would be able to get from town to town relatively easily.
Most towns would have cleared the forest for 1000 - 2000 feet from their walls/gatehouses/guard towers, whatever, and maybe farther, depending on what weapons they have available, and would be able to shoot out that far. Nightvision and thermal vision modes are relatively common. I think your average towns person is relatively safe.
Further, while the books don't say so, I would expect that cellular technology is widespread. A single cell tower is relatively easy to set up, covers a radius of about 7 miles, and can be linked to other towers via microwave links. There's basically no chance that some organization wouldn't try to scavenge that tech, and set up a network.
In my rifts world, any town of 100 people or so has cell service, internet, and a basic, functioning militia. Any town of 1000-2000 people have a small group of dedicated security, at least a couple of power armors, as well as a militia. Larger towns might have other security features as well, such as walls, automated defenses, and mutual defense agreements with communities nearby.
Finally, I think few communities outside of the coalition would be willing to totally forsake magic. A single magic user, with the right selection of spells, would be able to vastly bolster the defensive capabilities of any community of which they were a part.
I would envision the world as being basically a desert of savagery, with towns and villages being little oases of safety and civilization.
That's just my interpretation, of course.
