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Aegis wrote:Will he run out of resources?

This is Rifts man, there are no resources. Everything just happens like magic, food just appears on tables, factories just spring up and produce with materials that just appear when needed.

One thing in Archie's favor is patience, he can wait hundreds of years whilst gathering data and planting informants on his enemies and strike just at the moment of weakness. The other thing in his favor is the fact that no one knows about him or his potential. If the CS got involved in another civil war or were pushed too thin by another enemy then it wouldn't be too difficult for Archie with his robot legions and superior technology to both save humanity and usurp power in one fell swoop.
He would really have to wait until the CS is much less politically stable, but that should be only a couple of generations, which isn't much to our favorite meglomaniac toaster.

Athos wrote:

Aegis wrote:Will he run out of resources?

This is Rifts man, there are no resources. Everything just happens like magic, food just appears on tables, factories just spring up and produce with materials that just appear when needed.

It's a sticky issue resources, all these kingdoms and the especially the CS must have access to mines, lots of mines; uranium mines, iron ore, coal, oil, as well as the minerals and ore to make MDC materials and high tech circuit boards etc. I try to put them in my games, often as a hotly fought over commodity.

I think though that a lot of resources must come from recycling the ruins of pre-Rifts cities. Presumably recycling technology was quite advanced before the coming of the rifts, and I would also presume that after the cataclysm many cities were reduced to slag. Maybe these layers of slag could be broken down and recylced, and there must be huge amounts of steel in the ruins of sky scrapers.

An easy way around resources for someone like Archie is to assume he has a first class nano recycling centre. All you need to do is throw any matter in it and nano machines break it down to it's basic elements, which are then taken away to be rebuilt into modern materials. Perhaps Free Quebecs automated Glitter Boy factories do the same thing.

Just some random thoughts.

I would think his resources would be fairly large. He buys ore and other raw materials with the income from Titan Robotics. If I was Archie, I would have robot run mining operations throughout the eastern seaboard suppling anything he didn't get from trade.

If you add the Rifter article(I know, not offical) with the satt. uplink Archie has a huge advantage in coordinating his moves, and intelligence operations.

If the human powers of North America ever got in serious trouble, Archie would come to the rescue as their savior.

That Rifter article in number 4 about Archie is possibly the only official rifter material. Well technically it's "optional" but "authorised". So it's almost canon.

I agree with zob lol since he beat me to what I was about to post about rifter 4 being the only other thing that has mentioned Archie

Your welcome, this is one of those things that I think has been left out of Rifts. All societies revolve around economics and most wars are fought over land and resources. Whilst KS understands societies well enough to create an interestiing facist state like the CS, he skims over the big issue of where do they get all their resources to build it's huge army with all it's robots and power armor. I think it's because it's hard to marry the idea of a sparsely populated wasteland post-holocaust future with an empire and economy big enough to produce super high tech arms in large numbers. At least the CS is an empire, where do small kingdoms like Northern Gun get all their resources?
That's why I go with the idea that whilst there are lots of mines (possibly large amounts of ore and and minerals have re-appeared from underground rifts and have been pushed up from the tectonic stress of the cataclsym) much of it has been salvaged and/or recycled.

You mean you guys never had mines and the like in your games? (Does everything have to be written in the books? I just assumed they were there).

It even states in Aftermath how Archie has a raw recourse refinement center in Pennsylvania. I believe its for iron.

In the adventure senario in the back of Rifts Mercenaries, it mentions mines made up of metal from cities that has basically melted into the ground from the Great Apocolypes...

The first part of my new campaign will centre around an oil refinery in the sticks - I always assumed these resource centres existed - It's introduced as early as WB1 with the Tampico fort.

common sense I thought..

Another thing to think about is all the technology Archie likely has in the form of captured and destroyed Mechanoids.
If anybody can replicate their technology, it's Archie, and they had some powerful gear!

In Rifter 4 it says he has made some sort of contact with the moon colony ARCHIE but he just seems to be using the Satellite. ARCHIE 7 is aware of signals being bounced off the satellite back to earth but is programmed not to respond to Earth and is not self aware like Archie so cannot make a choice to do otherwise.
Also KC, Archie is using Mechaniod tech, but so far is only duplicating the particle beams and to a lesser degree power system. He has reverse engineered the anti-grav system but at the moment only uses it in his secret sub to transport Titan robots, if he ever puts it into a flying robot like a wasp, he would have a very powerful army indeed.

z0b wrote:so far is only duplicating the particle beams and to a lesser degree power system. He has reverse engineered the anti-grav system but at the moment only uses it in his secret sub to transport Titan robots, if he ever puts it into a flying robot like a wasp, he would have a very powerful army indeed.

If I remember right, the mechanoids were forcing him to refit his factories to produce them... at least to produce Thinmen and Runts...
I'll have to chech up on that.

He can't go too far.
He has no legs.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

z0b wrote:so far is only duplicating the particle beams and to a lesser degree power system. He has reverse engineered the anti-grav system but at the moment only uses it in his secret sub to transport Titan robots, if he ever puts it into a flying robot like a wasp, he would have a very powerful army indeed.

If I remember right, the mechanoids were forcing him to refit his factories to produce them... at least to produce Thinmen and Runts...
I'll have to chech up on that.

According to Rifter 4 (which I have in front of me) yes the mechanoids only got as far as producing Thinmen and Runts, but they did share some of their secrets of advanced tech such knowledge of psionic powers and interfaces, cybernetics and bionics, weapon systems, and anti-gravity propulsion.
He really should be a force to be reconed with, hopefully one day he will come out of the shadows.

EDIT: cut and paste issues