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Why does the handheld Rifle that the Silverhawk PA carries have the power of two ships weapons with a Grenade launcher added? It has the equivalent of a Ships light laser and a Ships light particle beam cannon along with the mag fed grenade launcher.

Because it does...
and the CAF, when it decides to board an enemy ship, doesn't want to spend an hour on killing each individual Kreeghor or Star-hiver when it finally CAN board. That's why it has a hand held star-fighter cannon w/ grenades.

There's no kill like OVERTkill.

SpiritInterface wrote:Why does the handheld Rifle that the Silverhawk PA carries have the power of two ships weapons with a Grenade launcher added? It has the equivalent of a Ships light laser and a Ships light particle beam cannon along with the mag fed grenade launcher.

Because while Carella was a truly outstanding setting writer (honestly I think Phase World may be my favorite part of Rifts) his technical writing was horrible. If you want a real laugh look at the weapons ranges and speed for starships.

The Silverhawk is just the massive power creep that was in all of Carella's books, look at South America 2. The main saving grace with the rifle is that the p-beam has one fifth the range of the laser so for a lot of attacks it is just not practical and if you get close enough to use it, and slow enough to fire it more then once, the enemy usually gets multiple shots at it.

This being said, every time I let a player use the SIlverhawk in one of my games they just love it. It really is a crowd pleaser.

DhAkael wrote:Because it does...
and the CAF, when it decides to board an enemy ship, doesn't want to spend an hour on killing each individual Kreeghor or Star-hiver when it finally CAN board. That's why it has a hand held star-fighter cannon w/ grenades.

There's no kill like OVERTkill.

True and true. I always felt that the CAF had a doctrine of few better vehicles while the TGE went for numbers.

DhAkael wrote:Because it does...
and the CAF, when it decides to board an enemy ship, doesn't want to spend an hour on killing each individual Kreeghor or Star-hiver when it finally CAN board. That's why it has a hand held star-fighter cannon w/ grenades.

There's no kill like OVERTkill.

That doesn't explain how they crammed three tons worth of Ships weapons into a rifle. According to DB6 Three Galaxy's both weapons weigh over 1.5 tons each.

SpiritInterface wrote:

DhAkael wrote:Because it does...
and the CAF, when it decides to board an enemy ship, doesn't want to spend an hour on killing each individual Kreeghor or Star-hiver when it finally CAN board. That's why it has a hand held star-fighter cannon w/ grenades.

There's no kill like OVERTkill.

That doesn't explain how they crammed three tons worth of Ships weapons into a rifle. According to DB6 Three Galaxy's both weapons weigh over 1.5 tons each.

This is not unique to the Silverhawk or Phase World. I mean the Wilks 457 pulse rifle does the same damage as the main rail gun of UAR Enforcer or a single burst from a Howitzer Mobile Gun.

Damage in Rifts doesn't really scale by size or weight. It would be nice if it did but the Silverhawk is just an extreme example of what we see throughout Rifts and most of the MDC games.

Warshield73 wrote:

SpiritInterface wrote:

DhAkael wrote:Because it does...
and the CAF, when it decides to board an enemy ship, doesn't want to spend an hour on killing each individual Kreeghor or Star-hiver when it finally CAN board. That's why it has a hand held star-fighter cannon w/ grenades.

There's no kill like OVERTkill.

That doesn't explain how they crammed three tons worth of Ships weapons into a rifle. According to DB6 Three Galaxy's both weapons weigh over 1.5 tons each.

This is not unique to the Silverhawk or Phase World. I mean the Wilks 457 pulse rifle does the same damage as the main rail gun of UAR Enforcer or a single burst from a Howitzer Mobile Gun.

Damage in Rifts doesn't really scale by size or weight. It would be nice if it did but the Silverhawk is just an extreme example of what we see throughout Rifts and most of the MDC games.

+1, though in the SH PB rifle hits as hard as the ship scale weapon, it doesn't have the range, and the HI-Laser hits like the HI-80 rifle (burst mode) but with the range of the cap. ship weapon. So it isn't really limited to just the Silverhawk's gunpod.

All damage/armor values are completely arbitrary. It skewers to man-size favor-ability over larger platforms. There is a WB5 Robot that is IIRC 100ft tall, but it's BFG is rather anemic.

There's a reason I am slowly going through trying to fix it and make things more consistent and you've all demonstrated why lol

Keep the grenade launcher, though; its versatility is not to be underestimated, depending on what you load it with.

Oh I'm not generally changing weapons per say but just damages and ranges

jaymz wrote:Oh I'm not generally changing weapons per say but just damages and ranges

I actually did this for awhile too but in the end it just became to confusing for my players. I already had a lot of modifications to add in things like electronic warfare and new weapons like disruptors.

I did make a lot of changes to weapons ranges increasing space ranges significantly since the ranges in the books are way too low.

My players generally had no issues

At this point the Rifts power creep has caught up to most of the stuff in PW, at least for my games. I still don't love the unevenness between equipment in what should be the same tech level, but it is rarely a big deal.

In my opinion, the Silverhawk scales well with other fighters, rather than most PA, the part I'm honestly convinced of is that the decimal point is misplaced in the pricing. Move it over one and the pricing lines up much better with the ship component prices noted in the same book.

Isn't that gun connected by a tube to the armor's nuclear battery? I can't remember if there was MDC and strike penalty assigned to cutting the tube. There should be, that would seem like an obvious tactic, to disrupt its ammo.

It would also create problems for anyone who simply tries to take the Silverhawk's weapon and use it themselves...

That said, as long as you kept it attached to the armor....

*picturing a strong humanoid tying a silverhawk PA (with pilot still inside) to his back and wielding the rifle as the Silverhawk desperate applies pathetic low-MD kicks to the back of the shooter.

Axelmania wrote:That said, as long as you kept it attached to the armor....
*picturing a strong humanoid tying a silverhawk PA (with pilot still inside) to his back and wielding the rifle as the Silverhawk desperate applies pathetic low-MD kicks to the back of the shooter.

Now I'm picturing a Royal Kreeghor doing this. "Lord Kelanus, your ammunition is crying again." "Punch it a few times, that usually shuts it up."

I guess you could destroy the helmet and threaten to kill them if they don't cooperate.