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I was thinking since in the Three Galaxies Glitterboy or Chromium armor is produced is it possible that say a tank, a fighter, or even a starship could have their hull made from that material. With the technology, in the three galaxies, I know it's possible but would it be feasible and cost-effective, or is there just not enough of an upside to warrant the extra cost?

Cheers

Why bother when lasers aren't really that big of a threat in Phase World, especially with the inclusion of things like Phase Fields and Phase Beams running around? Especially considering how dirt cheap they are; 25,000 credits to lower your incoming damage by 90%, and 50,000 credits for a gun that bypasses armor (Glitter Boy or otherwise) completely.

That said, it depends entirely on how Glitter Boys are treated outside of Rifts Earth. If you stick to the books and they're just an import from Rifts Earth, then it's probably going to be a hard sell to rationalize. If it's just one of dozens of brands and tons of manufacturers exist that produce similar types of power armor, acquiring it will be more feasible. So the answer is: "It depends on the GM."

But again, it's nothing special in Phase World, so whatever the investment, it'd be a waste unless you specifically decide to hang around cultures that only use laser weapons.

Crimson Dynamo wrote:Why bother when lasers aren't really that big of a threat in Phase World, especially with the inclusion of things like Phase Fields and Phase Beams running around? Especially considering how dirt cheap they are; 25,000 credits to lower your incoming damage by 90%, and 50,000 credits for a gun that bypasses armor (Glitter Boy or otherwise) completely.

That said, it depends entirely on how Glitter Boys are treated outside of Rifts Earth. If you stick to the books and they're just an import from Rifts Earth, then it's probably going to be a hard sell to rationalize. If it's just one of dozens of brands and tons of manufacturers exist that produce similar types of power armor, acquiring it will be more feasible. So the answer is: "It depends on the GM."

But again, it's nothing special in Phase World, so whatever the investment, it'd be a waste unless you specifically decide to hang around cultures that only use laser weapons.

True but laser resistance aside I was thinking that on a per weight basis the Glitterboy type armor offers very dense protection. Now that multiplied over a hull the size of a space fighter would be a lot of protection for a vehicle that size, though it would probably be very expensive.

To answer your question, yes it is reasonable to do so. Would anyone do it? Maybe, maybe not, but we know as per Chaos Earth they can and do put it on things other than a Glitterboy, like the Silver Eagle SAMAS.

Using the SAMAS as the example, making it with Chromium armour increased a generic USA SAMAS at a Main Body of 250mdc up to a Main Body of 450mdc, an increase of 80%.

So in theory, a Fighter with 500mdc would increase to 900mdc if done with Chromium armour.

Conversely, that means a "Glitterboy" could be made without it but would drop the Main Body of 770mdc to about 425mdc using regular armour... which is on par with units of similar size in Rifts.

jtjr26 wrote:I was thinking since in the Three Galaxies Glitterboy or Chromium armor is produced is it possible that say a tank, a fighter, or even a starship could have their hull made from that material. With the technology, in the three galaxies, I know it's possible but would it be feasible and cost-effective, or is there just not enough of an upside to warrant the extra cost?

Cheers

The short answer to this is yes. The best example of this is in WB 5 you have the Triax Dragonwing. This is large robot vehicle that also operates as an aircraft with stealth technology. There is also a note at the end that says there are a small number Glitter Wings which make use of the GB chrome armor, but this also tells the problem because the GW does not have the stealth features.

This means you could certainly have aerospace vehicles with this armor.

jtjr26 wrote:True but laser resistance aside I was thinking that on a per weight basis the Glitterboy type armor offers very dense protection. Now that multiplied over a hull the size of a space fighter would be a lot of protection for a vehicle that size, though it would probably be very expensive.

jaymz wrote:To answer your question, yes it is reasonable to do so. Would anyone do it? Maybe, maybe not, but we know as per Chaos Earth they can and do put it on things other than a Glitterboy, like the Silver Eagle SAMAS.

Using the SAMAS as the example, making it with Chromium armour increased a generic USA SAMAS at a Main Body of 250mdc up to a Main Body of 450mdc, an increase of 80%.

So in theory, a Fighter with 500mdc would increase to 900mdc if done with Chromium armour.

Conversely, that means a "Glitterboy" could be made without it but would drop the Main Body of 770mdc to about 425mdc using regular armour... which is on par with units of similar size in Rifts.

I agree with this and I think the math is sound. What I found interesting was the Glitterwing that I mentioned earlier gave no numbers for improved MDC but given the MDC value of a GB relative to it's weight you would almost definitely see a higher MDC.

I think in Phase World the big thing would be the variety of weapon types in use and force fields. Also we have no idea how HI-Lasers act on GB armor. Do they do full damage or is there damage reduced like normal lasers. Even if it is reduced if the CS, Wilks and Triax can all figure out variable frequency lasers then I have to imagine that even the minor powers in the 3G could do the same.

Add all of this up and add in GB armor is the opposite of stealth and I just don't think you would see it on very many spacecraft. Now tanks and other ground vehicles I could see that so maybe the secret 3G manufacturer that is producing all of these GBs (mention under the golden horde in DB3) could start producing variant GBs and even some ground vehicles that make use of the armor and maybe even the boom gun.

Warshield73 wrote:I think in Phase World the big thing would be the variety of weapon types in use and force fields. Also we have no idea how HI-Lasers act on GB armor. Do they do full damage or is there damage reduced like normal lasers. Even if it is reduced if the CS, Wilks and Triax can all figure out variable frequency lasers then I have to imagine that even the minor powers in the 3G could do the same.

Variable Frequency Lasers are a thing in the 3G setting (found in DB6 with 4x examples and DB8 with 1x example), though they seem to be pretty rare.

Re: Laser Subtypes (HI, X-Ray, VF, etc) vs Laser Resistant Materials are supposed to interact with each other. There is actually an ACTIVE Laser Resistant system (DB6) that actually improves over time (take 1/2 damage which drops to 1/10th), so what happens when that goes up against Variable Freq. Lasers? Or Variable Lasers optimized for anti-GB work (which in cannon are all vulnerable to IIRC 1of12 frequencies that it will cycle through) are used for non-GB-LR materials.

My personal OPIONION on this is that LR materials are designed for lasers operating in specific range of frequencies, lasers operating outside of those frequencies do full damage.

jtjr26 wrote:True but laser resistance aside I was thinking that on a per weight basis the Glitterboy type armor offers very dense protection. Now that multiplied over a hull the size of a space fighter would be a lot of protection for a vehicle that size, though it would probably be very expensive.

ACTUALLY, if we are talking TOTAL MDC protection (not counting non-mass locations like force fields) of a unit vs its mass (weight) and put all mass in the same units (kg and not tons for shorthand), the GB armor is not as dense as you'd think. In point of fact Palladium also fudges numbers to favor certain types of units over others that result in a contradictory expectation from how things work in the real world.

The NG-JK1B Juicer Killer PA has a ratio of 14.82MDC/kg (1A is 10.91MDC/kg). Free Quebec's Silver Wolf Glitterboy has a ratio of 3.98MDC/kg, FQ's Glittergirls come in at 2.69MDC/kg, and the USA-G10 (WB22) at 2.52MDC/kg. For the record this is out of 139 megaversal Power Armor units (RT, M2 included with Rifts), the JK1B is #1 and the USA-G10 is #73 and 15 of these don't even reach 1.0MDC/kg. Body Armor (EBA included) I looked at 93 examples (not counting the old style 1 location rules of which the 118 yield up similar results), 74 of them have a better score than the JK1B and even the worst here scored better than the worst PA. Giant's hardware, vehicles of various types, and Robot vehicles scored less than 1.0MDC/kg (I will add there where exceptions, but the general result is they score less than 1.0). And in point of fact Archie-3's housing and not his exo-body (ie facility or the adventure decoy) has ~211MDC/kg, and a Nymp creature (CB1r) has ~1,058MDC/kg (the best ratio I could find).

Note on the above numbers the results are pretty old (want to say something like 10+ years old) and do not include every Palladium RPG book, even at the time, only the ones I own/could-borrow, and are certainly missing newer titles as I did not keep the database up to date after the project concluded. Though I would still expect to see similar results even with missing titles given the trend these showed.

jtjr26 wrote:I was thinking since in the Three Galaxies Glitterboy or Chromium armor is produced is it possible that say a tank, a fighter, or even a starship could have their hull made from that material. With the technology, in the three galaxies, I know it's possible but would it be feasible and cost-effective, or is there just not enough of an upside to warrant the extra cost?

Yes, it is feasible. IIRC Technically the GB's boomgun is built of the same materials and we have examples of non-USA-G10 derived units being manufactured with and without the material.

Now is it cost-effective? That is a bit harder to gauge. If it was cost-effective you'd think those that could produce it on Rifts Earth (Archie-3, FQ, Triax, RoJ, Silver Republics, maybe even the New Navy) would also be using it on larger catalog of platforms. They aren't though. Now it could be those on Rifts Earth don't have the resources to support such a widespread adoption (a planet in the 3G might be differentw).