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Are there any pictures of Mechanoid spaceships floating about?

Dimensions would help too.

If you have the Rifts Sourcebook 2 Mechanoids, if you look in the section (I believe) is called "Seeds of Decet" they show Wasps exiting and flying around a Mechanoid space ship. As for the size of the ship I would be safe in saying that they're at least the size of Earth, but I have a good feeling that they're bigger.

Spark wrote:If you have the Rifts Sourcebook 2 Mechanoids, if you look in the section (I believe) is called "Seeds of Decet" they show Wasps exiting and flying around a Mechanoid space ship. As for the size of the ship I would be safe in saying that they're at least the size of Earth, but I have a good feeling that they're bigger.

Actually that picture is why I’m asking the question.

If a GM does introduce the Mechanoids into either Robotech or Phaseworld the big Mechaniod space craft would make an appearance.

jedi078 wrote:Are there any pictures of Mechanoid spaceships floating about?

Dimensions would help too.

Try The Collected Mechanoid Invasion Trilogy
p. 1, at the top, first panel
p. 89 cargo freighter (100,000 metric tons. 12 km long, 7 km deep, 5.5 km wide)
p. 90 Hauler Type II (1200 m wingspan, 370 m body width, 450 m body length, 180 m deep), and Hauler Type III (600 meters long, 380 meters tall 418 square meter storage area)
p. 91 Battle Cruiser (19 km long, 4 km tall, 4.5 km wide)
p. 95 all three panels show parts/angles of the mechanoid mothership.
p. 96 diagram of the mothership, w/ floor maps (89,000 km long, 42,000 km at the widest point, maybe 500 km tall)
p. 146 Wasps leaving spaceship
p. 170 a mechanoid ship (or maybe just mechanoid) attacking a starship

If they popped up in the Phase World reality, the big threat wouldn't be their eight planet-sized ships, it'd be their potential for exponential growth. Once the mechanoids conquer a humanoid-dominated system, or just find a system with no inhabitants, the whole thing is treated as one gigantic resource to be utterly consumed for the war effort.

So while they'd be toast if their current strength suddenly popped up in the middle of the Three Galaxies (any one of the major governments there could win a war of attrition against that artificial solar system), there's ways that could make them a vastly more dangerous threat. If they pop up in a distant galaxy where the local humanoid races lack the technology to defeat them, they'll eventually harness the resources of that entire galaxy to expand their numbers and build fleets for the continuing conquest of the universe, which means they'd be nigh on unstoppable by the time they finally reach the Three Galaxies region (only the Intruders from the second Phase World book would stand a chance, and then only if we assume those guys have conquered at least one entire galaxy of their own).

Plus of course it's sort of implied that the technologies which finally defeated the Dominators belonged to ancient Three Galaxies civilizations which have long since ceased to exist.

Oh and on the UWW having ships that are immune to energy weapons, I can't see that being a big deal after the first encounter. This is a galaxy-conquering race of high-tech psychic geniuses we're talking about here. Whipping up a lot of railguns on short notice shouldn't be that hard

Still, there's one edge the Three Galaxies have: phase technology. Last time I checked, the actual living organisms in your typical mechanoid were fairly fragile things (Oracles and Overlords, the biggest Mechanoids statted in Sourcebook 2, only have 300 and 100 Hit Points respectively), which would make phase weapons devastatingly effective until the Mechanoids adapt and go with an across-the-board policy of slapping force fields on everything.

About the energy immunity of some of the ships... Mechanoids are smart and I don't think it would take long for those swarms of wasps to think.. "Hey, lets just ram them for like 1D6x10MD. If we assign three wasps per target it's like getting hammered by boomguns."

It also wouldn't take them long to go, "Hey, you know what's all the rage nowadays? Missiles! Lets start equipping wasps with missiles!"

SkyeFyre wrote:About the energy immunity of some of the ships... Mechanoids are smart and I don't think it would take long for those swarms of wasps to think.. "Hey, lets just ram them for like 1D6x10MD. If we assign three wasps per target it's like getting hammered by boomguns."

It also wouldn't take them long to go, "Hey, you know what's all the rage nowadays? Missiles! Lets start equipping wasps with missiles!"

Exactly. If they can build motherships the size of planets, they're probably capable of throwing some sort of kinetic weaponry together.

Rallan wrote:Still, there's one edge the Three Galaxies have: phase technology. Last time I checked, the actual living organisms in your typical mechanoid were fairly fragile things (Oracles and Overlords, the biggest Mechanoids statted in Sourcebook 2, only have 300 and 100 Hit Points respectively), which would make phase weapons devastatingly effective until the Mechanoids adapt and go with an across-the-board policy of slapping force fields on everything.

Good point.

Still, I believe that a number of the mechanoids already have TK Force Field as a psionic power. Once they figured out to use that, things might go smoother for them.

duck-foot wrote:

Spark wrote:If you have the Rifts Sourcebook 2 Mechanoids, if you look in the section (I believe) is called "Seeds of Decet" they show Wasps exiting and flying around a Mechanoid space ship. As for the size of the ship I would be safe in saying that they're at least the size of Earth, but I have a good feeling that they're bigger.

thats huge

That's the point. In the original RPG the Mechanoids were an unstoppable juggernaut who had almost limitless resources. If their explorers found a galaxy with humanoid life in it, they'd turn up and start kicking ass and taking names nonstop until they'd utterly wiped out every humanoid being in the galaxy, along with any non-humanoid races foolish enough to try and stop the Mechanoids. They waged nonstop campaign of intergalactic conquest for thousands of years, and they'd accumulated technological secrets plundered from dozens (if not hundreds or even thousands) of conquered races, as well as what they'd picked up by trading with the non-humanoid species who left them in peace, and they put it all into ensuring that they'd be able to wipe out anything that stood in their way. They had the time, the knowledge, and the resources to do stuff on a truly epic scale.

Which is why in Rifts canon the only civilization known to have stood against them and survived was the Kittani, who only managed because their entire race was fleeing their home galaxy, and they were picked up and taken to safety in other dimensions by the Splugorth. And it's why the only reason there's still humanoid life in their home dimension (not that we meet any of these survivors since they're only mentioned in the backstory of the Mechanoids sourcebook) is because the Mechanoid civilization imploded in a civil war between the "pure" and "abberant" mechanoid factions.

The war between the two branches of the Mechinoids is what I call a good thing! I hope they keep it up for a long time.

The afforementioned artifical solar system was the mechanoids flagship. Not their main fleet if you read the original trilogy they had millions of their continent sized mother ships. No one and nothing in the palladium cannon could even hope to stop a full scale invasion by the mechanoids.
The zentraedi grand armada enmass could do probably do some seriouse damage but even it would be little more than a speed bump.

Then you use hit & run tactics against the mechanoids until you can get most of your people out of the system. Then you disappear. Of course if you can cause your star to go nova as you leave. Maybe that will slow them down. Heck if you are advanced enough maybe you could generate some Gamma Ray Burst pointed at the Mechanoids might really hurt them enough to drive them from the galaxy.

Drive the mechanoids from the galaxy?! They have a hatred for humanoids breed into them they're not going to give up so easily. Hell think how crazy they got to remove the mutant mechanoids from their ranks, they did a near suicide attack on their own.

Worst case, the mechanoids are beaten back. They need only send a small group out, like a brain, runners, brutes, ect. and start a factory on some backwater planet and presto they have a new army a few years later.

I think the only way to stop the mechanoids is to keep a constant assault on them. Keep them from building robots, repairing their cyborg bodies, and building robots. Do that and you can wear them down to nothing. Then sweep the dust into a sun or a black-hole and return to life as it was.

I think that your are right about keeping the mechanoids busy on all fronts to be able to rebuild. Of course I think that might take every single intelligent races of all alignments to beat them. Depends on those races laying aside their hatred for each other.

Aramanthus wrote:I think that your are right about keeping the mechanoids busy on all fronts to be able to rebuild. Of course I think that might take every single intelligent races of all alignments to beat them. Depends on those races laying aside their hatred for each other.

Hey don't underestimate the power of fighting the greater evil. People will band together to fight something like the Mechanoids. In fact that and maybe Atlantis attacking NA are two of the only non-supernatural threats that could see all the major kingdoms of Rifts Earth North America join together. If you have something bearing down on you that wants only to kill or enslave you, it don't matter if you human, Simvan or any other D-Bee, you're fighting the same fight.

That is true! But I don't see them in a full strength attack on the NA. I see them checking out the overall power structure of NA> And if they do carry out a full scale invasion, then I see the continent banding together to throw the Splogies out. So I do agree with you on that one!

Aramanthus wrote:I think that your are right about keeping the mechanoids busy on all fronts to be able to rebuild. Of course I think that might take every single intelligent races of all alignments to beat them. Depends on those races laying aside their hatred for each other.

It wouldn't be enough. You'd need the combined resources of an entire galaxy just to take a bit of the pace off their galaxy-wide blitzkrieg. You'd need the combined resources of multiple galaxies to be able to actually hold them at bay for a while.

That is more than likely very true. Getting a dimension to work together might be a bit difficult. Unless you could find a way of communicating accross the galactic gulfs instanteously if would be difficult to coordinate any sort of organized resistance.

Then I suppose if the Mechanoids ever truly got the ability to travel dimensionally that would be doom of the multiverse they happened to be located in.

or just a very good time had by all the non humanoids out there

That maybe so Lucas. But as a humanoid I'm hoping that those species can pull together and kick their collective butts.

Aramanthus wrote:That is more than likely very true. Getting a dimension to work together might be a bit difficult. Unless you could find a way of communicating accross the galactic gulfs instanteously if would be difficult to coordinate any sort of organized resistance.

Then I suppose if the Mechanoids ever truly got the ability to travel dimensionally that would be doom of the multiverse they happened to be located in.

I dunno, dimensional travel is probably the rest of the megaverse's best defence against the Mechanoids. Sure, if they were to find out how to open gateways to other universes it'd unleash a wave of destruction bigger than anything that's been seen in zillions of years, but it's not all bad.

For starters, there's an infinite amount of places to run. The mechanoids can't follow everyone everywhere. It's just too damn risky, because every time they chase after a bunch of refugees they run the risk of popping up in a dimension full of critters that need entire battlefleets to subdue. If the Mechanoids give chase they might end up in a world full of easily subdued primitives, or they could just as easily find themselves in the middle of an intergalactic empire or a hellish dimension of demon conquerors. Every time they go somewhere without the strength to conquer it in force, they risk letting word of their presence spread further and further across the megaverse.

And secondly, the megaverse is bigger than the Mechanoids. When word finally does get out that there's an unstoppable army of genocidal cyborgs trying to slaughter every humanoid in existence, there's gonna be some pretty staunch resistance. And not just from "nice" guys like the human nations of Rifts Earth, or the Consortium of Civilized Worlds. Demons, the Splugorth, vampires, Gods, pretty much everyone that's vaguely humanoid and/or relies on humanoids for their power, is gonna be up in arms.

Your points are noted and I also accept them too. I'm familiar with the multiversal theory.....at least last year called the M-theory. And According to some of the theorist there could be and infinite number of multiverses. And I do agree that the if various people accross the multi universes could ban together at all levels that might be enough to stop them. And yes I do agree that dimensional travel is one of the great defenses the rest of the multiverse hasd against them.

The big thing that is keeping the mechanoids limited to one universe is one lack of knowledge, most of the mechanoids don't know there are other univierses. Second is that the mechanoids would prefer a technological method to travel, and that that just isn't possible yet (from books I've read any way), and the only other way is to ally with an inhuman creature that can D-travel.

These are all things that are going to limit the Mechanoids. However if they get someone to reopen the gateway to their home universe, if the Mechanoids happen upon the "Great Machine" pocket dimension, or are able to use the dimensional device that is in the basement at Lone Star they could move over the mega-verse.

And even if the Mechanoids were to do this, best thing for them to do is stay in one universe until it is completely taken over. Once that is done they'd begin a military build-up in preparation for the next wave of conquest. They maybe hotheaded towards humanoids, they may even do silly things sometimes, but they do know that in order to remove them all it will take time. After all how long do you think it takes them to clear out a whole galaxy?

Last bit, on the note about an ally. It's very unlikely they'll find one. Most creatures that have these abilities and might even converse with the Mechanoids, would likely want to keep humanoids around as play things, or food. So to destroy them all wouldn't be appealing to them.

All I can say is thank goodness they are stuck there!