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I've been browsing through some of the old discussions on weapons, and I noticed a trend that seems particularly bogglesome to me. I was wondering if anyone could elaborate on it, or even just explain it to me.

The question is: What's with the obsession about the maximum range of weapons?

I mean, sure, if you and your opponents are standing in an open field with no noteworthy terrain or obstacles, I can see how having a long range would be beneficial. Ditto for weapons that fire at an arc or are otherwise guided like missiles, or with sniper rifles and similar weapons. But... most firearms? How often are you getting into firefights with enemies in those circumstances, as opposed to say on a city street, in a building, or while surrounded by trees or other obstacles? I mean, most of the time when I get into combat in a game, it's while using guerrilla and urban fighting tactics where the ranges are measured in handfuls of meters. I can't even think of a time where we got into a battle where a range of half a mile was even remotely feasible, outside of (again) things like sniping and missile attacks.

I think I'm missing something about it, at least given the way people make such a huge deal about a firearm's range. A max range of 2,000 feet doesn't mean much when your line of sight stops at about 20-60 feet like 99% of the time.

What happens 99% of the time is entirely dependent on the campaign, adventure, gaming group, and/or GM.

Overall you're not really wrong; most of the time range doesn't matter all that much because you're not going to be shooting at stuff thousands of feet away.
BUT in Rifts it's not all that unusual to...
-Fire at flying enemies who you have a clear line of sight at
-Fire at enemies that are big enough to see over a tree line or even city skyline
-Fire at enemies on the ground while you're thousands of feet in the air
-Fire at enemies in the air while you're also in the air
-Fire at enemies in deserts or open plains where there's not enough flora or hills to hide them
-Fire from hills down onto an enemies in an open field, road, or other clear area.

Keep in mind that many gamers will go out of their way for a minor +1 bonus on a D20 roll, so preparing for situations that come up even 10-30% of the time is pretty appealing.

For that matter, if you know many gun enthusiasts in real life, they're generally pretty obsessed with minor details for situations that aren't likely to come up.
They're often like, "IF you're in the unlikely position where somebody shoots at you, and IF you're in the unlikely position where you see that attack coming, and IF you're in the even more unlikely position where you have time to draw your weapon and fire before you get killed, THEN having a round already chambered might mean the difference between life and death, SO you're an absolute fool if you carry without a round in the chamber!!!"

The single biggest reasons, at least that I have heard, is realism and the technology involved. When the effective range of modern rifles like the AR-15 and M-4 is 1,800 feet or better than most people expect a speed of light weapon that is unaffected by wind or most other conditions should be substantially higher.

The other, and I discussed this in another thread, is the lack of any true sniper weapons leading to the said skill being largely forgotten by most players I have had. Single shot (needed for aimed bonuses) damage is a big part of this but so is range.

Killer Cyborg wrote:What happens 99% of the time is entirely dependent on the campaign, adventure, gaming group, and/or GM.

Overall you're not really wrong; most of the time range doesn't matter all that much because you're not going to be shooting at stuff thousands of feet away.
BUT in Rifts it's not all that unusual to...
-Fire at flying enemies who you have a clear line of sight at
-Fire at enemies that are big enough to see over a tree line or even city skyline
-Fire at enemies on the ground while you're thousands of feet in the air
-Fire at enemies in the air while you're also in the air
-Fire at enemies in deserts or open plains where there's not enough flora or hills to hide them
-Fire from hills down onto an enemies in an open field, road, or other clear area.

I would just note that most flying power armors are listed as being able to use a handheld weapon so some of thee situations are incredibly common.

Killer Cyborg wrote:Keep in mind that many gamers will go out of their way for a minor +1 bonus on a D20 roll, so preparing for situations that come up even 10-30% of the time is pretty appealing.

For that matter, if you know many gun enthusiasts in real life, they're generally pretty obsessed with minor details for situations that aren't likely to come up.
They're often like, "IF you're in the unlikely position where somebody shoots at you, and IF you're in the unlikely position where you see that attack coming, and IF you're in the even more unlikely position where you have time to draw your weapon and fire before you get killed, THEN having a round already chambered might mean the difference between life and death, SO you're an absolute fool if you carry without a round in the chamber!!!"

I was about ready to say "this isn't just gamers" but then you covered it.

And remember the Civil War Union general who, leading his men from the front, called "Come on, men, they couldn't hit an elephant from this ra-", and was immediately killed by Confederate fire.

taalismn wrote:And remember the Civil War Union general who, leading his men from the front, called "Come on, men, they couldn't hit an elephant from this ra-", and was immediately killed by Confederate fire.

Yeah, that's a classic quote!

Max range is included on the stats so you do not have cases of players shooting at a flying target 2 miles away with a laser pistol. Or the reverse where a Gm says a target 500 feet away is out of range of a railgun.

While many fights in woods might happen at less than 50m there are times when how far you can shoot matters.
So as there are times it maters it is included. It is better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

The flying combat examples or ambushes are fairly common in our campaign. If you have ever been hit by a big missile volley having a long range weapon so you can get maybe two shots at it instead of one is huge. Have a Cyber Knight in our game who never uses ranged weapons although he uses power armor. He flew up to attack a CS Jet fighter and learned the power of a missile volley which I refer to as The Robotech Lesson. Engagement ranges are now a subject of much planning by our group.

Crimson Dynamo wrote:I think I'm missing something about it, at least given the way people make such a huge deal about a firearm's range. A max range of 2,000 feet doesn't mean much when your line of sight stops at about 20-60 feet like 99% of the time.

While that range might be "like 99% of the time" for you, for others it may be something different in their experience. Regular Infantry-centric combat encounters will playout a lot differently than Regular Mecha-centric combat encounters in terms of range and could have an influence in how those players think about range in a vise-versa situation.

KC has a good list of situations where 20-60ft just is not going to cut it, and I'm sure that is not even a complete list since I can add:
-factoring in movement speeds (infantry not much of an issue, but fast movers that use MPH/KPH instead of the SPD attribute tend to be able to cover your range distance in the blink of an eye when they are already in motion)
-even combatants at different sizes than man-size (example 2x 30ft tall Robots duking it out in the street likely are not going to get that close except for HTH)
-if you want to maximize your effectiveness in combat it also helps if you can shoot at your enemy when they cannot shoot at you. Or put another way the range of the weapons involved can be a factor in setting an encounter. For example, if you know a group of bandits only uses laser pistols, and you have laser rifles, why wouldn't you try to factor that range advantage in when planning an ambush?
-counter attacking a missile attack has benefits in terms of range (as Mip7029 said, though given the range of most guns and missile speeds 1 attack is being generous already IMHO)
-mechanically there is no penalty for shooting at targets w/n the listed range of the weapon in terms of baseline, though there are situational modifiers like movement, cover, and range can determine penalties to Dodge of course, but it is no harder mechanically to shoot at someone 60ft or 100ft or 1000ft or 2000ft using (for example) a C-10 provided you have line of sight. Now in reality it should be harder, but in terms of game mechanics in RAW it isn't.

Okay, thanks. So it is basically a weird obsession for niche combat situations where different weapons would be used/preferred anyway. A sane person doesn't go taking on mega-mechs or snipe at flying targets with a sidearm.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something important regarding regular, everyday sidearms and whatnot. It was just odd to me how people on this forum were essentially freaking out about how important a sidearm's range was when comparing firearms. "Like, ermahgerd, that pistol only has a range of 600 ft., it's totally useless even though its damage, payload, and availability are all ridiculously better! This other drekky pistol I prefer has a range of 2,000 ft. and will win every battle ever ermahgerd ermahgerd ERMAHGERD!!11one" Those were the kind of comments I was referring to. And yes, there's a smidge of sarcastic hyperbole there in case you missed it, but it's not a tremendous amount of hyperbole either.

Crimson Dynamo wrote:Okay, thanks. So it is basically a weird obsession for niche combat situations where different weapons would be used/preferred anyway. A sane person doesn't go taking on mega-mechs or snipe at flying targets with a sidearm.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something important regarding regular, everyday sidearms and whatnot. It was just odd to me how people on this forum were essentially freaking out about how important a sidearm's range was when comparing firearms. "Like, ermahgerd, that pistol only has a range of 600 ft., it's totally useless even though its damage, payload, and availability are all ridiculously better! This other drekky pistol I prefer has a range of 2,000 ft. and will win every battle ever ermahgerd ermahgerd ERMAHGERD!!11one" Those were the kind of comments I was referring to. And yes, there's a smidge of sarcastic hyperbole there in case you missed it.

Well, this is the first time in the conversation you've mentioned the word "sidearms."
In your initial post, you said "most firearms."

But even with sidearms, range can be important. Sure, I wouldn't want to start a gunfight with a flying mech when all I had was a sidearm, but if the mech started a fight with me I'd want as good a chance as I could of inflicting damage before I died.
PA/robot repairs aren't cheap!


And if all you have is a sidearm, and you're going up against somebody with a rifle, range can be a real factor.
I remember playing paintball as a teenagers, with my Splatmaster Rapide pistol vs guys with more money who brought paintball "rifles."
One incident in particular, I remember my shots hitting the ground at the guy's feet because he was just outside my range, while his shots were flying way past my head!!
It's not a good feeling.

If you're going to have a pistol, all else being equal why NOT go for one with range?
I tend to prioritize firepower myself most of the time, because like you say--pistol combat isn't usually long range stuff.
But I've also made snipers/sharpshooters who carry a Wilk's 320 because of the range and strike bonuses. Granted, that was back before a lot of this power creep came in, so 1d6 MD was a bit more formidable.

Killer Cyborg wrote:And if all you have is a sidearm, and you're going up against somebody with a rifle, range can be a real factor.

Which is why you either lead them into a situation that evens the playing field rather than trying to engage them out in the middle of a desert with no terrain or obstacles to hide behind, switch to a smarter weapon or means of attack, retreat, or surrender.

"Nah, I think I'll just keep shooting at him ineffectually until I'm dead" isn't exactly a compelling argument. Even a character with an I.Q. of 7 isn't going to think that.

If you're going to have a pistol, all else being equal why NOT go for one with range?

That's the rub though. In most of the threads I read, they weren't equal. People were obsessing (I'm not using this word lightly) over weapon ranges above and beyond all other factors. In fact, it's the number one argument people make about how the Naruni plasma cartridge weapons aren't worth the investment, as just one noteworthy example. Better and more coherent arguments against them are the availability of ammunition and payloads, but that only seems to be a side note in those conversations.

I just found it really, really odd. Particularly in the way of the sidearms/daily carries.

I tend to prioritize firepower myself most of the time, because like you say--pistol combat isn't usually long range stuff.

Well, it extends to more than just pistols/sidearms, too. But yeah, that's the main culprit.

But I've also made snipers/sharpshooters who carry a Wilk's 320 because of the range and strike bonuses. Granted, that was back before a lot of this power creep came in, so 1d6 MD was a bit more formidable.

Of course, if expecting certain types of combat or when specializing in something like sniping, you'd prioritize other stats. But, again, my question was about the absolute obsession over weapon ranges. It was very confusing to me, especially since it only seems to come up in Palladium games; I don't recall ever seeing the same obsession in other roleplaying games, even those that make heavy use of firearms.

Crimson Dynamo wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:And if all you have is a sidearm, and you're going up against somebody with a rifle, range can be a real factor.

Which is why you either lead them into a situation that evens the playing field rather than trying to engage them out in the middle of a desert with no terrain or obstacles to hide behind, switch to a smarter weapon or means of attack, retreat, or surrender.

"Nah, I think I'll just keep shooting at him ineffectually until I'm dead" isn't exactly a compelling argument. Even a character with an I.Q. of 7 isn't going to think that.

If you're going to have a pistol, all else being equal why NOT go for one with range?

That's the rub though. In most of the threads I read, they weren't equal. People were obsessing (I'm not using this word lightly) over weapon ranges above and beyond all other factors. In fact, it's the number one argument people make about how the Naruni plasma cartridge weapons aren't worth the investment, as just one noteworthy example. Better and more coherent arguments against them are the availability of ammunition and payloads, but that only seems to be a side note in those conversations.

I just found it really, really odd. Particularly in the way of the sidearms/daily carries.

I tend to prioritize firepower myself most of the time, because like you say--pistol combat isn't usually long range stuff.

Well, it extends to more than just pistols/sidearms, too. But yeah, that's the main culprit.

But I've also made snipers/sharpshooters who carry a Wilk's 320 because of the range and strike bonuses. Granted, that was back before a lot of this power creep came in, so 1d6 MD was a bit more formidable.

Of course, if expecting certain types of combat or when specializing in something like sniping, you'd prioritize other stats. But, again, my question was about the absolute obsession over weapon ranges. It was very confusing to me, especially since it only seems to come up in Palladium games; I don't recall ever seeing the same obsession in other roleplaying games, even those that make heavy use of firearms.

I like range but a lot of times damage is more critical.
to use an example, I have a character I p[layd for years, who's main weapons of choice were:
old style shemarrian railgun, Neuroni plasma cartridge pistol, the MP-23A caseless SMG, various melee weapons

Crimson Dynamo wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:And if all you have is a sidearm, and you're going up against somebody with a rifle, range can be a real factor.

Which is why you either lead them into a situation that evens the playing field rather than trying to engage them out in the middle of a desert with no terrain or obstacles to hide behind, switch to a smarter weapon or means of attack, retreat, or surrender.

"Nah, I think I'll just keep shooting at him ineffectually until I'm dead" isn't exactly a compelling argument. Even a character with an I.Q. of 7 isn't going to think that.

I mean, I try to shoot people effectually, but you do you I guess.


Anyway, yeah, life and combat is pretty nice when we have all the options we'd like.
But lots of people try to prepare for worst-case scenarios, instead of best-case scenarios.

If you're going to have a pistol, all else being equal why NOT go for one with range?

That's the rub though. In most of the threads I read, they weren't equal. People were obsessing (I'm not using this word lightly) over weapon ranges above and beyond all other factors. In fact, it's the number one argument people make about how the Naruni plasma cartridge weapons aren't worth the investment, as just one noteworthy example. Better and more coherent arguments against them are the availability of ammunition and payloads, but that only seems to be a side note in those conversations.

I just found it really, really odd. Particularly in the way of the sidearms/daily carries.

In that context, I can't really argue with you.
Naruni makes up in firepower what it lacks in range; most pistol combat isn't carried out at football-field lengths, and IIRC even the Naruni pistols are somewhere on that level.
Hell, I've armed characters with a Wilk's Laser Torch as their "pistol," and that thin only has like a 10' range!
But it does 4d6 MD, which is pretty respectable.

I tend to prioritize firepower myself most of the time, because like you say--pistol combat isn't usually long range stuff.

Well, it extends to more than just pistols/sidearms, too. But yeah, that's the main culprit.

Clarification appreciated!

But I've also made snipers/sharpshooters who carry a Wilk's 320 because of the range and strike bonuses. Granted, that was back before a lot of this power creep came in, so 1d6 MD was a bit more formidable.

Of course, if expecting certain types of combat or when specializing in something like sniping, you'd prioritize other stats. But, again, my question was about the absolute obsession over weapon ranges. It was very confusing to me, especially since it only seems to come up in Palladium games; I don't recall ever seeing the same obsession in other roleplaying games, even those that make heavy use of firearms.[/quote]

I haven't noticed the same thing you have, but yeah, from your description it does sound odd.

Personally, it boils down to a few specific things.

First, the realism. I know, I know, it's fiction, but it is still irksome to see a sci-fi setting that is worse than reality. In many cases, it implies completely different laws of physics - not the ones covering the new advanced stuff, but the mundane stuff we're all used to. A railgun firing a solid projectile can destroy a tank in one shot through sheer kinetic energy, but lacks the energy to go more than a couple thousand feet? A laser that can vaporize a person becomes useless in even less distance? What does these mean for things like kinetic energy and friction and electromagnetic and... these things ripple when you're not expecting it. It produces inconsistencies.

Second, it completely influences tactics. If you're only in urban settings, sure, who cares. Very little of my game time has been spent places where range didn't matter. With the ranges indicated, sniping becomes useless (as already noted) but so does every other tactic other than "rush into close range and then look for cover" and historically that is a very limited slice of modern combat. Heck, most combat vehicles are fast enough that the difference between "barely in range of target" and "crashing into it" is well less than a round.

Third, it impacts the storytelling, mostly because of the tactics. Out of sight is out of mind, except for missiles. Artillery might as well not exist. The Coalition is a mile away? They might as well be on the moon. One side has missiles and the other side doesn't? Well, the second side just lost - they might as well surrender before they're taken out by the only weapon with significant range. Or they need to get underground. Even an urban setting doesn't help you when RPA can hover 3000 feet in the air and be untouchable by an army outfitted with railguns and lasers.

If none of this impacts you, that's fine. That doesn't mean it doesn't impact anyone else.

cosmicfish wrote:Personally, it boils down to a few specific things.

First, the realism. I know, I know, it's fiction, but it is still irksome to see a sci-fi setting that is worse than reality. In many cases, it implies completely different laws of physics - not the ones covering the new advanced stuff, but the mundane stuff we're all used to. A railgun firing a solid projectile can destroy a tank in one shot through sheer kinetic energy, but lacks the energy to go more than a couple thousand feet? A laser that can vaporize a person becomes useless in even less distance? What does these mean for things like kinetic energy and friction and electromagnetic and... these things ripple when you're not expecting it. It produces inconsistencies.

Second, it completely influences tactics. If you're only in urban settings, sure, who cares. Very little of my game time has been spent places where range didn't matter. With the ranges indicated, sniping becomes useless (as already noted) but so does every other tactic other than "rush into close range and then look for cover" and historically that is a very limited slice of modern combat. Heck, most combat vehicles are fast enough that the difference between "barely in range of target" and "crashing into it" is well less than a round.

Third, it impacts the storytelling, mostly because of the tactics. Out of sight is out of mind, except for missiles. Artillery might as well not exist. The Coalition is a mile away? They might as well be on the moon. One side has missiles and the other side doesn't? Well, the second side just lost - they might as well surrender before they're taken out by the only weapon with significant range. Or they need to get underground. Even an urban setting doesn't help you when RPA can hover 3000 feet in the air and be untouchable by an army outfitted with railguns and lasers.

If none of this impacts you, that's fine. That doesn't mean it doesn't impact anyone else.

Odds are most times in the wild you can't drive ground vehicles at max speed.

Urban weapon range matters allot given that you can be blasting into buildings and killing residents. Visibility in woods might make it hard to see some one more than few hundred feet.

Blue_Lion wrote:

cosmicfish wrote:Personally, it boils down to a few specific things.

First, the realism. I know, I know, it's fiction, but it is still irksome to see a sci-fi setting that is worse than reality. In many cases, it implies completely different laws of physics - not the ones covering the new advanced stuff, but the mundane stuff we're all used to. A railgun firing a solid projectile can destroy a tank in one shot through sheer kinetic energy, but lacks the energy to go more than a couple thousand feet? A laser that can vaporize a person becomes useless in even less distance? What does these mean for things like kinetic energy and friction and electromagnetic and... these things ripple when you're not expecting it. It produces inconsistencies.

Second, it completely influences tactics. If you're only in urban settings, sure, who cares. Very little of my game time has been spent places where range didn't matter. With the ranges indicated, sniping becomes useless (as already noted) but so does every other tactic other than "rush into close range and then look for cover" and historically that is a very limited slice of modern combat. Heck, most combat vehicles are fast enough that the difference between "barely in range of target" and "crashing into it" is well less than a round.

Third, it impacts the storytelling, mostly because of the tactics. Out of sight is out of mind, except for missiles. Artillery might as well not exist. The Coalition is a mile away? They might as well be on the moon. One side has missiles and the other side doesn't? Well, the second side just lost - they might as well surrender before they're taken out by the only weapon with significant range. Or they need to get underground. Even an urban setting doesn't help you when RPA can hover 3000 feet in the air and be untouchable by an army outfitted with railguns and lasers.

If none of this impacts you, that's fine. That doesn't mean it doesn't impact anyone else.

Odds are most times in the wild you can't drive ground vehicles at max speed.

Urban weapon range matters allot given that you can be blasting into buildings and killing residents. Visibility in woods might make it hard to see some one more than few hundred feet.

The vehicles to worry about don't have wheels and can manage at least a healthy fraction of their top speed pretty much anywhere outside a town or city. Anything that can fly or hover doesn't care about any terrain that isn't a direct obstacle. Overpenetration is absolutely a valid concern but it's not a good justification for arbitrarily changing physics and is still a problem for ANY MDC weapon. And "woods" describes only a fraction of non-urban environments - plains, water, swamp, space, flying, ANYWHERE you can see sky, these are all environments where the ridiculously attenuated ranges become hugely important.

Modern firearms can routinely exceed railgun ranges despite having a tiny fraction of their kinetic energy. Modern lasers are unintentionally dangerous for miles in free space despite being unable to generate a fraction of the power of Rifts energy weapons (and with even a modest aperture, increasing their power to Rifts levels would give them obscene range). It just doesn't make sense, and it strips the game of the most role-playable parts of ranged combat.

at the end of the day it really comes down to people who are writing (or editing) things they don't have an actual understanding about.

to use a basic example in places in rifts, new west, lone star etc. and Kevin talks about towns being days and weeks apart that are only 50-100 miles apart in distance when you have vehicles like power armor that can run 60-100 MPH I don't care how broken up the terrain is unless you have to literally wind around to the point that you have to cross 1000 miles to go 50 miles it is NOT going to take that long.

if you look at the wagon trains and explorers traveling into the old west they had speeds of 1-5mph (or less) no good maps, and a lot of other complications where they would be slowed to a crawl, like "they have to cross a river" so the wagon train pulls up on the side of the river scouts a few miles up and down stream to find the best fording site then if possible setup a guide rope (if the river is too deep t just roll across, and they tear up the banks on each side making it harder to get into and out of the river etc.

but then you have hover or flying vehicles that can travel at hundreds or thousands of MPH and completely ignore any terrain issues.

As a player and a GM of Rifts for many years, I can confidently say that more than 75% of our combats happen when out and about, outside of civilization. Meaning when travelling from point a to point b. Very infrequently will combat happen in the middle of city streets with a few exceptions simply because of the setting and climate of the urban area. For instance, combat is much more likely to happen in the burbs or ciudad juarez than other more civilized areas.

Another thing to note for our groups is that often times hover crafts are the popular group transports so youre going to have some encounters when the group is zooming along and power armor or something could launch missile or railgun fire (3000')

Crimson Dynamo wrote:I've been browsing through some of the old discussions on weapons, and I noticed a trend that seems particularly bogglesome to me. I was wondering if anyone could elaborate on it, or even just explain it to me.

The question is: What's with the obsession about the maximum range of weapons?

I mean, sure, if you and your opponents are standing in an open field with no noteworthy terrain or obstacles, I can see how having a long range would be beneficial. Ditto for weapons that fire at an arc or are otherwise guided like missiles, or with sniper rifles and similar weapons. But... most firearms? How often are you getting into firefights with enemies in those circumstances, as opposed to say on a city street, in a building, or while surrounded by trees or other obstacles? I mean, most of the time when I get into combat in a game, it's while using guerrilla and urban fighting tactics where the ranges are measured in handfuls of meters. I can't even think of a time where we got into a battle where a range of half a mile was even remotely feasible, outside of (again) things like sniping and missile attacks.

I think I'm missing something about it, at least given the way people make such a huge deal about a firearm's range. A max range of 2,000 feet doesn't mean much when your line of sight stops at about 20-60 feet like 99% of the time.

My only complaint with the game system and the sci-fi setting is that battles can easily get out of hand fast especially if you know better but are not paying attention. Because of the wide variety and speeds of super powered humans, vehicles, magic, and monsters, its almost too easy to have a battle spread out over many miles. You can have borgs and juicers sprinting all over a huge field, fast and slow power armor, fast and slow hover vehicles, jets, fast and slow flying monsters, mutants and mages with various flying abilities and possibly instant teleportation and of course the all important jet-pack.
A foot slogger without a fast multi-terrain vehicle is at a serious disadvantage during Rifts Earth combat encounter. Even worse is if his weapons do not have a range in the thousands of feet and are super accurate. And its damn annoying when the enemy is not fighting to the death but rather trying to accomplish a specific task and then retreat. Of course, the PC's also have this advantage with dealing with powerful adversaries. You don't often have to kill them, just stop their plans, or steal something valuable and then flee like a mouse. A mouse with wings or jet engines. Also the ability to move quickly after the main phase of a combat encounter (before enemies can regroup and redeploy) is crucial, particularly rescue teams.

So yeah, the ability of many protagonists and antagonists to move very fast combined with things like gigantic enemies, rifts, ley lines, and now much faster & stronger natives to Earth means long range weapons are needed and appreciated, and the person who can make more shots on his enemy, or shoot earlier, generally has a serious advantage, even if he himself is not particularly mobile. Keep in mind that weapons with extreme ranges aren't as useful as being able to spot and aim at enemies far away, especially if you are not in regular viewing distance of each other. So shooting is nice but spotting is better. And if you have RADAR with guided missiles you are definitely in better shape than other combatants, at least while you are still loaded.

The only downside to all this is the GM trying to keep track of many different fighters on a large map with PC's and NPC's using a variety of transports. Juicers with rocket packs are especially annoying to keep in play.

Shorty Lickens wrote:My only complaint with the game system and the sci-fi setting is that battles can easily get out of hand fast especially if you know better but are not paying attention. Because of the wide variety and speeds of super powered humans, vehicles, magic, and monsters, its almost too easy to have a battle spread out over many miles. You can have borgs and juicers sprinting all over a huge field, fast and slow power armor, fast and slow hover vehicles, jets, fast and slow flying monsters, mutants and mages with various flying abilities and possibly instant teleportation and of course the all important jet-pack. "Snip"

What you are describing can certainly be challenging but this is unavoidable in any game with advanced technology. I played an old west themed game once and a guy with a Henry Rifle killed almost half the opposing force before the rest of us got into position with our revolvers. You can also think of what happens in a fantasy when you have longbowmen.

In Rifts any vehicle with medium or god help you long range missiles really changes the geometry of a battle map, no matter how fast the vehicles move.

All of this being said about Rifts it is far more difficult to manage a battle in a space setting like Phase World, especially if you have full sized warships.

I have never managed an air or a space battle in any game system. One of these days my adventuring crew will return to one of the 4 or 5 Phase World campaigns I wrote up. I suppose someday I'll have to manage an epic battle. Not looking forward to it.

Shorty Lickens wrote:I have never managed an air or a space battle in any game system. One of these days my adventuring crew will return to one of the 4 or 5 Phase World campaigns I wrote up. I suppose someday I'll have to manage an epic battle. Not looking forward to it.

No matter what system you are running space battles are a pain. Even in Westend Star Wars or TSR Star Frontiers which used hex maps it was still hard. Truthfully it was even harder than PW because in PW you could just keep track of distance to planets and space stations on paper. When you use a hex map you have to move things a lot. to keep distances correct.

Yeah I played the old Battletech board game and it was fun for a short while but it takes a long time to set things up and make your moves and everything. I can totally understand why they made a bunch of video games. Spend more time in action and less time figuring out numbers.

cosmicfish wrote:

Blue_Lion wrote:

cosmicfish wrote:Personally, it boils down to a few specific things.

First, the realism. I know, I know, it's fiction, but it is still irksome to see a sci-fi setting that is worse than reality. In many cases, it implies completely different laws of physics - not the ones covering the new advanced stuff, but the mundane stuff we're all used to. A railgun firing a solid projectile can destroy a tank in one shot through sheer kinetic energy, but lacks the energy to go more than a couple thousand feet? A laser that can vaporize a person becomes useless in even less distance? What does these mean for things like kinetic energy and friction and electromagnetic and... these things ripple when you're not expecting it. It produces inconsistencies.

Second, it completely influences tactics. If you're only in urban settings, sure, who cares. Very little of my game time has been spent places where range didn't matter. With the ranges indicated, sniping becomes useless (as already noted) but so does every other tactic other than "rush into close range and then look for cover" and historically that is a very limited slice of modern combat. Heck, most combat vehicles are fast enough that the difference between "barely in range of target" and "crashing into it" is well less than a round.

Third, it impacts the storytelling, mostly because of the tactics. Out of sight is out of mind, except for missiles. Artillery might as well not exist. The Coalition is a mile away? They might as well be on the moon. One side has missiles and the other side doesn't? Well, the second side just lost - they might as well surrender before they're taken out by the only weapon with significant range. Or they need to get underground. Even an urban setting doesn't help you when RPA can hover 3000 feet in the air and be untouchable by an army outfitted with railguns and lasers.

If none of this impacts you, that's fine. That doesn't mean it doesn't impact anyone else.

Odds are most times in the wild you can't drive ground vehicles at max speed.

Urban weapon range matters allot given that you can be blasting into buildings and killing residents. Visibility in woods might make it hard to see some one more than few hundred feet.

The vehicles to worry about don't have wheels and can manage at least a healthy fraction of their top speed pretty much anywhere outside a town or city. Anything that can fly or hover doesn't care about any terrain that isn't a direct obstacle. Overpenetration is absolutely a valid concern but it's not a good justification for arbitrarily changing physics and is still a problem for ANY MDC weapon. And "woods" describes only a fraction of non-urban environments - plains, water, swamp, space, flying, ANYWHERE you can see sky, these are all environments where the ridiculously attenuated ranges become hugely important.

Modern firearms can routinely exceed railgun ranges despite having a tiny fraction of their kinetic energy. Modern lasers are unintentionally dangerous for miles in free space despite being unable to generate a fraction of the power of Rifts energy weapons (and with even a modest aperture, increasing their power to Rifts levels would give them obscene range). It just doesn't make sense, and it strips the game of the most role-playable parts of ranged combat.

Actually ground hover vehicles can not go any where near their top in allot of situations. Such as woods, to many trees.
Really sub sonic rail guns have more kinetic energy than rounds traveling at faster than the speed of sound? The main gun of an abrams MBT round is larger than a boom gun and almost as fast.
Rifts physics in general do not fallow normal physics do not over think it.

Blue_Lion wrote:

cosmicfish wrote:
The vehicles to worry about don't have wheels and can manage at least a healthy fraction of their top speed pretty much anywhere outside a town or city. Anything that can fly or hover doesn't care about any terrain that isn't a direct obstacle. Overpenetration is absolutely a valid concern but it's not a good justification for arbitrarily changing physics and is still a problem for ANY MDC weapon. And "woods" describes only a fraction of non-urban environments - plains, water, swamp, space, flying, ANYWHERE you can see sky, these are all environments where the ridiculously attenuated ranges become hugely important.

Modern firearms can routinely exceed railgun ranges despite having a tiny fraction of their kinetic energy. Modern lasers are unintentionally dangerous for miles in free space despite being unable to generate a fraction of the power of Rifts energy weapons (and with even a modest aperture, increasing their power to Rifts levels would give them obscene range). It just doesn't make sense, and it strips the game of the most role-playable parts of ranged combat.

Actually ground hover vehicles can not go any where near their top in allot of situations. Such as woods, to many trees.
Really sub sonic rail guns have more kinetic energy than rounds traveling at faster than the speed of sound? The main gun of an abrams MBT round is larger than a boom gun and almost as fast.
Rifts physics in general do not fallow normal physics do not over think it.

as far as the boomguns round I always took the "mach 5" speed as cited by someone who has no flipping clue how firearms, and F-MV[sup]2[/sup]actually works. If you rewrite it as mach 10, 15, or 20 instead of mach 5 it actually works better

At the risk of duplicating myself from another thread: "[Insert desired term here]" is probably more of a layman's term than a technical one. In much the same way a lightsaber in Star Wars is occasionally called a "laser sword" even though it's anything but. Or how we use "clips" when the technical term for them is "magazines."

It's the only real way to make most of PB's rules make sense. Assuming you don't then try to figure out what the technical term should be for it given how their rules work.

a lot of the time it's "i wanna snipe these guys" in my experience. i allow the range changes they want, they turn everything into a long-range ambush, I start subjecting them to long-range ambushes, they wail about the setting, and then they always choose to go back to before when i point out that it's simply both sides using the same tactics.

people seem a lot faster to complain about realisim when it helps them. i've yet to see anyone agree with me when i suggest power armor should still have SDC damage to the pilot from serious impacts.

Orin J. wrote:a lot of the time it's "i wanna snipe these guys" in my experience. i allow the range changes they want, they turn everything into a long-range ambush, I start subjecting them to long-range ambushes, they wail about the setting, and then they always choose to go back to before when i point out that it's simply both sides using the same tactics.

people seem a lot faster to complain about realisim when it helps them. i've yet to see anyone agree with me when i suggest power armor should still have SDC damage to the pilot from serious impacts.

I seam to recall that there is blead through on high MD attacks in armor and PA is armor.

For Rifts it is a mix of range, damage, type of damage, ammo capacity and ease of restocking, and special features(grenade launcher, laser sight, whatever). An Ion or P-Beam weapon has advantages in some circumstances over say a laser. Even a Blue-Green laser has some built in advantages. A pump round gun is great if you are going against magic types with impervious to energy, but is hard to restock, and loses in range and punch to most comparable

energy rifles, plus it is much harder to find ammo on the march.


Basically, I have never seen range as the thing people really push back and fourth on.

And don't let any one plant a Geom-a-Tree in the game to complicate things with even more realism!