Forums of the Megaverse®

I believe in RUE the Operator OCC has some guidelines for this.

Likewise, the skill Vehicle Armorer is in RUE and should provide some good information and guidelines.

Thraxe wrote:My group is having a hard time with our Rifts weapons engineer. We are still on rifts earth and he has been adding weapons to our power armor, and he has been upgrading the weapons we already have. It is kind of making the game unbalanced. Are there any rules on what you can and can not do with a weapon or any rules on upgradeing a weapon from what it says in the core book. The weapon came out of and if this is something asked before I am sorry for reasking it.

And I'm sorry for having to edit your post so much before it made any grammatical sense to me.

Rifts Australia has a few guidelines for modifying SDC handguns and rifles that can easily be used on modern energy-type guns. As for big, mounted weapons, I wouldn't let him go past the following, which are the same as the "weapon boost tinkering powers" of the Psi-Tech:

* increase speed, fuel efficiency, and MDC by 10%
* increase computer speed/performance by 15%
* increase the range of mounted weapon systems by 10%

I'll help ya out buddy. Here are some rules I had develop a long time ago.

Energy Weapons
This covers laser weapons, ion weapons, particle beam projectors, etc. This does NOT cover plasma weapons, projectile weapons, or exotic beam weapons such as Tri-Beam weaponry.
Improved focusing crystals These can upgrade the damage by one dice type, but cost 15% of the weapon. This involves replacing the standard manufactured crystals with carefully designed focusing lenses adapted for that particalur weapons frequency and wattage. This can only be done once. In the case of cannons or other heavy energy weapons that have a x5 or x10 multiplier, the improved focusing crystals only add a +5 or +10 to the damage, respectively.
The base skill for this is Weapons Engineer, however Electrical Engineer can be used at -20%.
Purchase Cost: 20% of weapons initial cost
Engineer Cost: 10% of weapons initial cost
Time: 20 hours to create the crystals/focusing arrays, 20 minutes to install.
For example: A pistol that does 2d4 has improved focusing crystals added, it now does 2d6 damage. A laser cannon aboard a Shrike II combat jet does 3d4x5 damage, with the crystals it does 3d4x5+5 damage.

Improved Energy Output
By bypassing safeties and manufacturer limits, the weapon is able to put out more energy than normal. However, this rapidly degrades the hardware, and any time a 1 is rolled, the weapon breaks down and will require replacement parts (10% of the weapon's cost) and repair (1d4+1 hours). Once this is done, it adds another die to the damage.
Skill needed is Weapons Engineer at -10% or electronics engineer at -20%
Purchase Cost: 25% of weapon's base
Engineer Cost: 5% of weapon's base.
Time: 2 hours to locate and override specific hardware and firmware regulators.

Bust Mode
This allows the weapon to fire bursts. Recently (102PA) this has been the hottest weapon modification available. However, weapon not designed to use this suffer from heat expansion normally not seen, so the damage is lower for weapons modified for this post-manufacture than those designed to be burst fire weapons.
Benefit: The weaponis improved as follows:
2d6 to 5d4
3d6 to 5d6
5d6 to 3d4x10
(As you can see, there is diminishing returns on this)
Manufacture Cost: 50% of base weapon
Engineer Cost: 25% of base weapon
Time: This requires massive work, usually 2 weeks of design, 5 hours of refitting.

Extended Range
By increasing the wavelength/frequency to a tighter one, the weapon's range is increased.
Benifit: Range is increased to 150%
Manufacture Cost: 20% of base weapon
Engineer Cost: 5% of base weapon
Time: This one requires multiple shots at a target to measure frequency and wavelength scatter at various distances. The time to modify is 5 days of testing, 2 hours of work.

Full Auto
Some people insist on full auto, despite the fact that it really lowers the amount of damage done. Full auto either fires steady bursts, or just one long beam.
Benefit: The weapon does one die lower times seven, but uses up THREE of the character's attacks and drains the e-clip.
Example: A laser rifle that does 5d6 normally will do 5d4x7.
Base Cost: 10% of the weapon's base cost
Engineer Cost: 0%
Time: 20 minutes to bypass the safety interlocks.




If you need more than energy weapons, just let me know.

Easiest way to run it is if the Engineer wannabe wants to boost a weapon's damage, clip, or range...he can modify one up by 25% without too-much work (one set of rolls and a couple of minutes to a couple of hours of his character's game time). Alternatively, he can modify two to +10% under the same conditions.

If he wants to do more...start adding penalties - and hefty ones at that.

Incidentally, swapping-out a lasing system for a small particle accellerator (etc) should be a simple mod...presuming he has the Particle Cannon innards laying around.

As for the adding of a recovered Boom Gun to a rebuilt tank chassis...
Put the gun into a turret, and every time you fire, there would be a chance that the gun would rip free of it's mountings, tear the turret off, etc.

Also the Old Rifts® Mercenaries book had a list of things you can do and improve(Like armor). Mounting new systems the only limit is the gear you allow them to get,money to mount it, and size(logic no long-missile launcher or a 8 foot robot). I have had many people sink allot of money into a car/equipment and watch their million or so credits go up in smoke.

The only weapon upgrade with out replace I know of is Missiles can be upgrade by a specialist(+50%). And that is a ability of the OCC.
Thing it is Merc(old) and/or Rifts® World Book 11: Coalition War Campaign™