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taalismn wrote:

Icefalcon wrote:[ If you think about it, it is probably why Triax did away with them.

"Ever try to move through thick forest with those damn horns constantly hanging up on branches and what not? Sure, you can just power through the underbrush, but occasionally you tag a thick one that snaps your head about before the branch breaks, or you wind up with a big clump of leaves up there, making you look like you got a bad leaf-afro! And the noise!"
---Anonymous Glitterboy Pilot, Hudson Bay Theater of Operations.

Doesn't the stowed Boom Gun stick up way higher than those horns do?

Nightmask wrote:

taalismn wrote:

Icefalcon wrote:[ If you think about it, it is probably why Triax did away with them.

"Ever try to move through thick forest with those damn horns constantly hanging up on branches and what not? Sure, you can just power through the underbrush, but occasionally you tag a thick one that snaps your head about before the branch breaks, or you wind up with a big clump of leaves up there, making you look like you got a bad leaf-afro! And the noise!"
---Anonymous Glitterboy Pilot, Hudson Bay Theater of Operations.

Doesn't the stowed Boom Gun stick up way higher than those horns do?

Well, that too...but why have extra appendages in the way if you don't have to?

Nightmask wrote:

taalismn wrote:

Icefalcon wrote:[ If you think about it, it is probably why Triax did away with them.

"Ever try to move through thick forest with those damn horns constantly hanging up on branches and what not? Sure, you can just power through the underbrush, but occasionally you tag a thick one that snaps your head about before the branch breaks, or you wind up with a big clump of leaves up there, making you look like you got a bad leaf-afro! And the noise!"
---Anonymous Glitterboy Pilot, Hudson Bay Theater of Operations.

Doesn't the stowed Boom Gun stick up way higher than those horns do?

Not to mention the ammo belt snagging on things also.

Icefalcon wrote:[Not to mention the ammo belt snagging on things also.

Because super-ninjas LOVE to grab loose clothing(or the equivalent).

I always figured those cones had something to do with life support for the pilot, since the rest of the G-10 is built around its gun.

I've used a variation during an adventure:

Glitter King

2 feet taller than a.glitter boy

Uses flight thrusters as recoil dampners in place of pylons

Can sustain flight


6d6 x 20 MD main plasma rail gun

3D10 vibro Halberd, powered by nuclear cell

Helment has 4 horns on the crown in pace of only two

900 mdc main body

The King of GB's got me thinking. There are variations of GBs I would like to see: Suits of Legend. One-of-a-kind variations, and rules for creating your own. I figure that any suit that's been handed down over multiple generations will have some tricked-out features and customizations. On the downside, these armors would be a pain/expensive to maintain and repair. Here are some possibilities:

Franken-Boy. These types been repaired and rebuilt so many times, often with nonstandard and alien systems, that it only vaguely resembles the original model. It's ugly, but it gets the job done. Select several features (weapons, sensors, tools, et cetera) from alien or foreign armors. As long as it could plausibly fit on a GB frame, and it could be powered, it's fair game. Possible options:
+Scavenged Ulti-Max or Naruni force field.
+Alternate main gun
+Extra arms (bionic, but built into the armor) that mirror the arm above them, each with a different kind of gun that shoots what you shoot at.
+A Kittani Serpent Power Armor tail! Aside from looking ridiculous, it provides some extra stabilization and a few close-combat maneuvers.
+A second (or third) head from an alien/foreign robot that provides enhanced sensors and possible weapons. May be mounted on one of the GB's horn-like protrusions.
+The GB upper body is grafted onto a very different means of propulsion, such as a robot horse body for a centaur look, a spider skull walker's legs, a Kittani Raptor armor's body, a Kittani serpent tail, etc. Running no longer tires the user, though motion sickness might become an issue.

Wiz Kid. This is a Glitter Boy with all kinds of techno-wizard enhancements.

Optics Boy. Some operator with too much money and time on his hands had some fun with this one. This armor is designed to exploit the reflective qualities of MDC Chromium in strange ways. Options include:
+Indented cubic reflector-pattern texture on the armor surfaces that will (most of the time) reflect much of a laser shot back at the shooter (shooter or gun takes half damage, since the suit does, too).
+The front of the armor is covered with parabolic indentations. On activation, small antennas protrude from the middle of each parabolic indentation. At the end of each, a powerful light burns. The armor becomes, in effect, an array of spotlights. This feature can even be weaponized. The suit will assume a pre-set position (no dodge, minimal movement allowed), and the whole suit focuses the resulting light beams at a single point. The damage is fairly small, but it looks cool!
+The surfaces of the GB are all flattened into sharply-defined polygons (like the real-life stealth fighter, but shiny!), allowing the surface to be polished to a far higher quality than the standard suit. Reduce MDC by 10% (The polygon structure isn't as resilient), but the armor now takes only 10% damage from lasers. Even variable frequency lasers do half damage. The polishing must be touched up periodically.

Symbiote Boy. Something-or someone-else inhabits the GB, providing it with some interesting features. Possibilities:
+A Machine Person from Phase World. Something happened to her, and she is in a constant state of morph, unable to detach from the suit or directly the GB's movement. She can, however, keep it repaired, communicate with the user, and manage the robot's systems. Her blob-like form resides in and around the moving parts under the armor.
+Haunted. Some kind of spirit or entity resides in the armor. The haunting entity has its own agenda, which could be good or bad for the user.
+A community of tiny sentient debees reside in the armor! They're explorers from another dimension with some helpful knowledge/powers.
+Some splugorth bio-wizardry has gone wrong! This armor had three bio-wizard features installed by a rogue Highlord, but the biological entities weren't properly lobotomized contained. They seized control of the suit and escaped. The unfortunate sentient components are terrible pilots, and are happy to work with any user who will fight the Splugorth.

This is what I would do.

Get Shadow Boy give him an extremely large tower shield also made of chromium, and attach it to his left arm. Then have it so it has the same drills in the bottom for even more recoil suppression. The GB would still be able to see fine through the camera on the cannon. Also have a GG's Doubble Up rifle under the arm conector on the shield. There could also be a claw on the bottom of the right arm for melee defence, and could also get a naruni camo-field.

3 things make the G-10 better. Naruni Force Field (defense vs missile volleys, everything else the armor can take), Vibro-blade mounted on one arm, WI-GL20 mounted on the other. Integrate a high powered p[ulse laser onto the boom gun.

If you want to get grazy, replace the grenade launcher with a system like the GG in FQ for mini missiles. Though I think it's a waste when you can get more milage out of the WIGL and the boom gun is your long range weapon anyway.


As for Glitter Bot...chromium coating on a Devastator 2. They dual wield Boom Guns.

Cousins & relations;

I hope this isn't too late in the mentioning, but there was at least one 'alternate Rifts' Glitter Boy, designed for zero-gravity/vacuum operation, in Mutants In Orbit, which was coupled mainly to 'After the Bomb' but providing optional rules and settings for orbital and lunar colonies (the latter of which had a more advanced A.R.C.H.I.E. running things on the Moon) in Rifts. I have no idea how it fits into 'modern' Rifts (it was published by Palladium in 1992 or 1993, I believe); it was mainly intended as a setting expansion for After The Bomb (with Rifts as an option) and I don't know whether or not its contents are canon (if not simply outdated).

Just thought I'd pop this in, having bought Mutants In Orbit when it came out, and not having seen it mentioned earlier in the thread.

-Boe.

Boethermsbrukan wrote:Cousins & relations;

I hope this isn't too late in the mentioning, but there was at least one 'alternate Rifts' Glitter Boy, designed for zero-gravity/vacuum operation, in Mutants In Orbit, which was coupled mainly to 'After the Bomb' but providing optional rules and settings for orbital and lunar colonies (the latter of which had a more advanced A.R.C.H.I.E. running things on the Moon) in Rifts. I have no idea how it fits into 'modern' Rifts (it was published by Palladium in 1992 or 1993, I believe); it was mainly intended as a setting expansion for After The Bomb (with Rifts as an option) and I don't know whether or not its contents are canon (if not simply outdated).

Just thought I'd pop this in, having bought Mutants In Orbit when it came out, and not having seen it mentioned earlier in the thread.

-Boe.

Sadly, the Rifts Orbitals are largely ignored in most of the books, the one exception being that ARCHIE-3 now has access to a couple of CAN Republic coimmunications satellites. The MiO Glitter Boy was a nice concept, and actually made a lot of sense for the Orbitals to posess. Instead of a Boom Gun, it mounted a powerful particle beam (4d6x10 MD, range of 4 miles in space), and in space lasers would be an almost essential weapon, as they are recoilless. This increases the advantage of the Chromium Armor from the condition of 'something nifty' to 'Oh Holy Crap, all of our weapons do less damage'.

I always hoped that someone would rewrite MiO as a proper sourcebook for Rifts, but I guess I live to dream that hope in vain.

wyrmraker wrote:Sadly, the Rifts Orbitals are largely ignored in most of the books, the one exception being that ARCHIE-3 now has access to a couple of CAN Republic coimmunications satellites. The MiO Glitter Boy was a nice concept, and actually made a lot of sense for the Orbitals to posess. Instead of a Boom Gun, it mounted a powerful particle beam (4d6x10 MD, range of 4 miles in space), and in space lasers would be an almost essential weapon, as they are recoilless. This increases the advantage of the Chromium Armor from the condition of 'something nifty' to 'Oh Holy Crap, all of our weapons do less damage'.

Wyrmraker, good after'!

I don't recall the last time there was any official reference to MiO; I know it _was_ a handful of times but this was probably going back the better part of twenty years now. Was kind of neat to be able to treat it like an alternate setting, seeing as Randy McCall and Mr. Siembieda stuck with their guns about 'no orbital transfers' from Rifts Earth. There were a couple of main theories on solid ground: 1) Rifts Earth was caught in its own miniature pocket dimension because of the intense ley line eruptions that started off the Dark Ages, which would presume that anybody trying to shot put out of Earth's gravity field would be Rifted upon 'contact' instead of resulting in a successful orbit, or 2) (and I know this was found in early Rifts books on the topic of orbital failing) that shortly before or during the intercontinental nuclear exchange that set off the Earth's ley line network, hundreds of orbiting satellites spewed out a cloud of particulate (assuming ceramic or MDC materials available at the time) that resulted in any orbital craft being shredded passing through it at the speeds which would be needed to attempt to go into orbit of the Earth.

wyrmraker wrote:I always hoped that someone would rewrite MiO as a proper sourcebook for Rifts, but I guess I live to dream that hope in vain.

Agreed. The details were rich enough for a sourcebook of its size (if not its obscurity at this point), and if one assumes the Rifts angle of no outbound craft being able to reach orbit (because of autoRifting or the particulate cloud) it's pretty much its own setting, even if there's a physical nearness to the Earth. The biggest advantage the orbital colonies (certainly Luna) have is twofold but related: they have at least some telemetry from almost _everywhere_ on the surface of Rifts Earth, and because no-one can get into orbit as of yet, there's no way (that doesn't already exist) for that telemetry to be blocked if it can get through the particle field surrounding the Earth.

So they can see what most of the planet's doing on a large scale, but more than likely have no way to physically get back down, if we follow that thought process. Let's say that actual radio communications can penetrate from 'real orbit' down to Earth...what would happen if they reached someone, and that someone could be convinced that there were survivors in orbital colonies nobody else knew about? What about A.R.C.H.I.E.? Would 'He' have made or succeeded in making contact with his 'sibling' on the Moon if his records were detailed enough?

Definitely good source material, even if it's a little scarce and (the latter) hypothetical. ^_^

-Boe.