I statted these babies a while ago, just wanted to see what you think.



GB-100 Glitter Boy Advanced Power Armor (Tank Replacement)


The armor plating of the GB-100 is constructed at the molecular level, allowing for unparralled strength and extremely low weight. Not only is the armor extraordinarily strong, it is extremely reflective, rendering laser weaponry useless against its hide, and giving it its nick-name.

Not content to merely possess an incredibly potent defense, the developers of the GB-100 saw fit to arm it with the potent PRA-RG-15 "Boomgun" 60mm railgun. Firing a variety of munitions at speeds in excess of Mach 10, the boomgun annihilates even the most heavily armored targets with ease. Sadly, even with jet-assisted recoil adjustment (JARA), the gun kicks like a herd of rhinox on steroids. Due to this fact, the armor is equipped with foot-mounted pylons which sink into the ground milliseconds before firing. Combined with the JARA system, the Boomgun may safely be fired, even at semi-automatic speeds. The Boomgun is named thus due to the unfortunate side-effect of creating a sonic boom whenever it is fired, shattering nearby windows and deafening unprotected personnel. Ammunition loads for the Boomgun vary, including 200-flechette rounds (the most popular and widely used), solid slug sniper shells, and armor-piercing extreme-range ramjet rounds. The Boomgun is slung over the right shoulder (or left in left-handed models), folding forward into firing position.

Other weapon systems are also included, including mini-missile tubes on the shoulder opposite the Boomgun, arm-mounted power blade, and arm-mounted plasma ejector/laser. The GB-100 can also carry standard infantry weapons.

DATA SHEET
Class: Laser Resistant Infantry Personnel Assault Unit
Speed: 100kmph running, 50kmph swimming (max depth 4 km)
Height: 3.1 Meters
Width: 1.3 Meters
Length: 1.2 Meters
Weight: 1.2 Tons, fully loaded.
Cargo: A 1'x1'x3' storage compartment in each leg, plus an optional custom utility belt
Armament: PRA-RG-15 60mm Railgun (right shoulder, 200 rounds), 4 100mm mini-missile tubes (left shoulder), right forearm mounted power-sword, left forearm mounted laser/plasma ejector multiweapon
Sensors: Radar capable of tracking 72 targets at a 10 mile range, IR, UV, Ultrasonic, PSY
Other: 10 gallon refridgerated drinking water storage tank, 4 week supply of high-protein mulit-vitamin nutrient paste, combat computer, targeting computer, laser targeting system, ansible comms, 150 decibel variable loud-speaker, environmentally sealed, temperature control, computer controlled life support, artificial air circulation system (includes humidifier and gas filtration), independant oxygen supply and purge system capable of 8 hours in an oxygen free enviroment, radiation shielding, PSY shielding, insulated to 450 degrees centigrade or absolute zero, polarized and light sensitive/adjusting tinted visor, sonic dampening
Power System: High Powered Fusion, providing a life-span of 100 years.

Cost: 20,000,000 USD



GB-110 Assault Glitter Boy Advanced Power Armor (Rapid Insertion)



The GB-110 is virtually identical to the original GB-100, though the Boomgun has been replaced with a high powered particle beam cannon. Though the range on this weapon is limited, its yield is approximately 33% higher than the Boomgun. Also, an additional head-mounted laser has been added, along with a plethora of microjets across the body. These allow the Assault GB to maneuver in a zero-g environ, and affords it limited (400 kph for 10 minutes) flight capabilities in atmosphere.

DATA SHEET
Class: Flight Capable Laser Resistant Infantry Personnel Assault Unit
Speed: 100kmph running, 50kmph swimming (max depth 4 km), 400kph flight
Height: 3.1 Meters
Width: 1.3 Meters
Length: 1.2 Meters
Weight: 1.2 Tons, fully loaded.
Cargo: A 1'x1'x3' storage compartment in each leg, plus an optional custom utility belt
Armament: PRA-PB-12 (right shoulder), 4 100mm mini-missile tubes (left shoulder), right forearm mounted power-sword, left forearm mounted laser/plasma ejector multiweapon, head-mounted dual laser weapon
Sensors: Radar capable of tracking 72 targets at a 20 mile range, IR, UV, Ultrasonic, PSY
Other: 10 gallon refridgerated drinking water storage tank, 4 week supply of high-protein mulit-vitamin nutrient paste, combat computer, targeting computer, laser targeting system, ansible comms, 150 decibel variable loud-speaker, environmentally sealed, temperature control, computer controlled life support, artificial air circulation system (includes humidifier and gas filtration), independant oxygen supply and purge system capable of 8 hours in an oxygen free enviroment, radiation shielding, PSY shielding, insulated to 450 degrees centigrade or absolute zero, polarized and light sensitive/adjusting tinted visor, sonic dampening
Power System: High Powered Fusion, providing a life-span of 100 years.

Cost: 25,000,000 USD



GB-120 Saturate Glitter Boy Advanced Power Armor (Anti-Infantry)



Varying greatly from the original glitter boy, the GB-120 is primed for infantry destruction. Forgoing a powerful long range weapon, the GB-120 instead opts for a pair of extremely rapid fire, short range weapons: a rotary railgun with coaxial laser and a tri-barrel plasma ejector. A pair of hip-mounted laser systems are also included. These weapon systems combine to form a potent anti-infantry system, and is also perfectly capable of destroying light vehicles. Due to the nature of the weapon systems, recoil adjustment systems were deemed unneccesary for the most part, leaving only the JARA in place on the GB-120.

A main advantage to this Glitter Boy loadout is the lack of a sonic boom or pylons, allowing better use in urban areas and those battlefields where allies lack sonic dampening.

DATA SHEET
Class: Laser Resistant Infantry Personnel Anti-Infantry Assault Unit
Speed: 100kmph running, 50kmph swimming (max depth 4 km), Height: 3.1 Meters
Width: 1.3 Meters
Length: 1.2 Meters
Weight: 1.2 Tons, fully loaded.
Cargo: A 1'x1'x3' storage compartment in each leg, plus an optional custom utility belt
Armament: PRA-RG-20 Rapid Fire Rotary Railgun w/ coaxial laser (10,000 RG rounds), PRA-PE-12 Tribarrel Plasma Ejector, twin PRA-LWS-5 Laser systems
Sensors: Radar capable of tracking 72 targets at a 20 mile range, IR, UV, Ultrasonic, PSY
Other: 10 gallon refridgerated drinking water storage tank, 4 week supply of high-protein mulit-vitamin nutrient paste, combat computer, targeting computer, laser targeting system, ansible comms, 150 decibel variable loud-speaker, environmentally sealed, temperature control, computer controlled life support, artificial air circulation system (includes humidifier and gas filtration), independant oxygen supply and purge system capable of 8 hours in an oxygen free enviroment, radiation shielding, PSY shielding, insulated to 450 degrees centigrade or absolute zero, polarized and light sensitive/adjusting tinted visor, sonic dampening
Power System: High Powered Fusion, providing a life-span of 100 years.
Cost: 20,000,000 USD



GB-130 Taurus Advanced Power Armor (Artillery Support)

The Taurus Glitter Boy is a dedicated artillery support variant. Bigger and brawnier than a standard GB, the Taurus carries a pair of shoulder-mounted big guns: either high-powered Anti-Aircraft lasers (3km range), or long range mortars (10km range), capable of firing a variety of shells, most often high explosive or smoke. Both systems are virtually identical making it difficult for enemies to determine what they are fighting until it is too late.

Some may wonder why Pale Rider Arms would design a costly suit of power armor for artillery support, when a tank or lightly armored vehicle could be used for similar purposes at half the cost. The answer is simple, concealment and mobility. A tank or artillery unit is easy for the enemy to recognize and target. However, a Taurus in a group of fellow glitter boys is much more difficult to pick out, even with its two guns. Also, the Taurus is a small, mobile, all-terrain suit of power armor that can handle nearly any environment.

The Taurus has the standard pylon and thruster system, although instead of having two pylons, it has a system of four smaller pylons.

NOTE: The Taurus can carry ANY glitter boy weapon, from the PRA-RG-15 Boom Gun, to the PRA-PB-12 Particle Beam, to the PRA-RG-20 Infantry Suppression System. Please enquire for costs for these systems individually.

Data Sheet
Class: Laser Resistant Infantry Personnel Artillery Unit
Speed: 100 kmph running, 50kmph swimming (max depth 4 km)
Height: 4.2 Meters
Width: 2.5 Meters
Length: 2.1 Meters
Weight: 2 Tons, fully loaded.
Cargo: A 1'x1'x3' storage compartment in each leg, plus an optional custom utility belt
Armament: 2 Mortars (10 km range, 12 rounds ea.) OR 2 AA Lasers (tied to fusion reactor, unlimited ammo)
Sensors: Radar capable of tracking 72 targets at a 20 mile range, IR, UV, Ultrasonic, PSY
Other: 10 gallon refridgerated drinking water storage tank, 4 week supply of high-protein mulit-vitamin nutrient paste, combat computer, targeting computer, laser targeting system, ansible comms, 150 decibel variable loud-speaker, environmentally sealed, temperature control, computer controlled life support, artificial air circulation system (includes humidifier and gas filtration), independant oxygen supply and purge system capable of 8 hours in an oxygen free enviroment, radiation shielding, PSY shielding, insulated to 450 degrees centigrade or absolute zero, polarized and light sensitive/adjusting tinted visor, sonic dampening
Power System: High Powered Fusion, providing a life-span of 100 years.
Cost: 25,000,000 USD



PRA-GBT-100 Glitter Boy Transport



Custom designed to carry glitter boys into battle, the GBT-100 is lightning fast and well protected. Able to carry up to ten glitter boys, the transport is an excellent option for delivering forces to the battleground. In addition, running boards allow up to 4 glitter boys to deploy their pylons and act as removable turrets for the transport.

Classification: Fast Response Transport
Crew: 1 pilot, 1 copilot/gunner
Passengers: 10 GBs OR 30 infantry OR any mix therefor of
Length: 25 meters
Width: 10 meters
Height: 7 meters
Armament: 6 short range missiles, 4 glitter boy gunnery positions
Defenses: 1 meter carbon-duralloy plating, aerodynamic force bubble, Otagian mirror field
Max Speed: Mach 10 (Mach 3 with GBs on running boards)

Cost: 2,000,000 USD

You're into Rifts?

Sorta. I love the setting, but can't stand the Palladium rules. Much too complicated, character sheets are a hideous mess, and the hundreds of thousands of OCCs and RCCs make trying to play horrendously difficult. Still, the setting is wonderful, and the tech is nicely detailed. In fact, my entire FT ground forces are based off of the Coalition States, including Free Quebec.

So, any comments on the suits themselves?

They need a name that doesn't remind everyone of Gary Glitter.

Railguns don't have conventional recoil.

I'm really not sure how you could carry ten thousand rounds of anything usefully sized on a 1.2 ton chassis.

Not my fault. Blame the nice people at Palladium, I just work with what they give me.

2mm rounds, which fill up the massive backpack you can see in the picture. Mass may be adjusted later, but with a round that only weighs a few grams, I'm not sure it would make much of a difference.

Um...You can just rename it, you know?

...Odd. Last I'd heard the recoil force acts up and down against the rails themselves, which is why modern railguns destroy themselves during firing.

Hm. Not sure that cutting the round down that small is the way to go when, at FT levels, you'll be facing fairly heavy infantry armour and *really* leet vehicle armour.

Frankly, I like the name. I'd never even heard of Gary Glitter until a few months ago.

As for the small rounds, tiny projectiles going really, really, REALLY fast hurt quite a bit in large numbers.

RIFTs---Me and Scan both Live where Rifts was founded-- Ihave hung out with Kevins daughter(years ago) and been in his house, or at least his old one. If Iwas PMT or FT I would use all the RIFTS stuff---the setting is the best--we always halfazzed their rules and just used good story tell.

It's a bit harder with PMT, at least if you're going with Coalition stuff. Man-portable plasma and lasers only belong in FT.

Any more comments, preferably NOT related to the name?

Is that second pic from a Silver Surfer comic?

Nope, it's from another Palladium Games book. Mutants in Space or some such? It's a combo TMNT/Rifts book that they made.

You forgot slow construction and obscenely high costs. Well, slow construction, anyway. Costs may be debatable.

Well, one would have to be stupid to use lasers against armour to begin with... But other than that, you realise that extreme reflectiveness equals extreme visibility? It may not that good an idea, given that it will be seen and attacked, well, immediately.

Against MT opponents, I'd think so. Against opponents on roughly the same technology level, well...

I don't think so, Tim.

Unless you're merely referring to armoured infantry, rather than proper equivtech tanks, in which case this would prolly be true.

If overkill, and a tad too complex for a mere anti-infantry + light armour role.

See above. Reflectiveness + Low Observability == Does not compute.

Never argued otherwise. The thing is about as heavily armored as your average FT tank, so I think the cost is justified.

I RP with a lot of 40K players, so ye olde AT weapon happens to be a lascannon. As for concealability, I generally use these things as shock troopers, so hiding is right out.

This is why I don't post EXACT stats for the gun. FT is just as prone to numberwank as MT, and "in excess of Mach 10" is a bit open ended, giving me some breathing room. As for what it's used for, the standard 200 flechette cannister round is excellent for anti-personnel and AA purposes, while penetrators and HEAP rounds work well against tanks. Also, note that the text following the stats is a sales pitch, which I write for all my products. It may not be entirely accurate.

Note that I said when in a group of other GBs. While the thing can still be spotted by opponents, it's difficult to distinguish the artillery model from ye olde GB-100.

Well, ok. Still...

It isn't. A 1.2 ton piece of bipedal armour will never be even remotely as heavily armoured as a multihundred-ton - Or even multiten-ton - angled rectangle tank built with similar technological capabilities.

It can easily be as heavily - Or heavier, if I think of my own - armoured as opposing infantry, sure. But tanks are right out.

Sure. Problem is, a tank will always have vastly superior energy resources - What with featuring a vastly bigger reactor in its vastly greater volume - and vastly heavier ammunition, allowing for greater momentum and thus better penetration.

It will also be able to have a notably longer gun, which will in turn increase the velocity of the projectile it fires - Vastly more KE, combined with a shorter time on target.

In the end, this thing has about as much of a chance against an equiv. tech tank as a modern infantryman's M16 or G3 has against an Abrams or Leopard 2.

I mean, heck, I claim that my own light infantry drones and their guns manage to fire projectiles with up to 10km/s (Roughly Mach 30), and that's at 1800 rpm, but dear god, no, they're not going to kill off equiv tech tanks (Not with their standard assault rifles, anyway. But even their actual anti-tank equipment ain't gonna have more chances for success than a modern RPG has against an equiv. tech opponent).

They're going to get slaughtered by equiv. tech tanks.

Now, I can see specialised ammunition, as you've mentioned it now, doing some sort of damage to weaker points of armour, assuming they're lucky enough to get into the right position - Unlikely, given their reflectiveness, and thus visibility - but of course, that's not what you wrote in the original text.

And generally, I'd advise against using sales pitches in an ooc discussion forum. May be missunderstood.

To dig this up - I can't really see Glitter Boys going up against tanks outside the RIFTS system where GBs are artifacts from a better, lost techbase and contemporary tech is only beginning to catch up, with specialized anti-GB designs at that.

So if they were limited-number artifacts they might be the equal of your tanks. Cool plot device and all that. But if you can armor your tanks on the same tech level, the GBs will be vastly more fragile than the tanks. Same thing for firepower.

As they stand now... well, they're decent enough as Shirow-style landmates. The big-gun one will pack a great deal of punch though I never could figure why GBs muck around with those stabilizing rod thingies rather than going prone. They're pretty big powered armor, unstealthy, hardened against whatever laser frequencies the armor can reflect. That can be pretty damn nice.

A couple notes.

GMC: A railgun will indeed have recoil. It might suffer from loads of internal stress as well, but ultimately it tosses a thingy out the muzzle really fast, and so there will be recoil. With the real fastness there will be less recoil momentum for a given muzzle energy, and there won't be recoil from a bunch of gas going out the muzzle as well, but there will be a net recoil. The backblasting JARA thingy's a nice way of handling that I guess - but it will introduce a need for JARA fuel.

Khurgan: See above, but it strikes me that you might use compressed air in the JARA.

And yes, I rather like the RIFTS background. I hate the system and I'd need to straighten out the worst inconsistencies in my head before running it, but there's oodles of stealable ideas.

Territory: You bring up some valid points, but the fact that the GB is constructed at the molecular level while most FT stuff still uses standard construction techniques does tend to heighten its relative armor at least somewhat.

As for the prone comment, it's mostly due to the fact that they'd STILL go flying according to the fluff. Even the Tarantula steps backwards a few meters when firing a boomgun, and its designed to do it without using the pylons, with more JARA and stabilizing fins instead. The recoil would most likely pick them up off the ground. And which one do you mean by "the big gun one?" All of them but the Glitter Girl have big guns.

On using compressed air, I'd just be worried that there wouldn't be enough pressure to offset the recoil. Of course, this is FT, and I claim to store metallic hydrogen in liquid form, so pressurizing it that far shouldn't be that hard....

Well, the primary question would be why constructing it on the molecular level would make it better.

Oh, it certainly makes sense for reallyreallyreally tiny stuff, where you have to go (Macro)molecular to build, say, engines in the sub-cubicmillimetre range, but frankly, I don't see the advantage for macroscopic products (Like this things). It might increase costs, it'll definitely increase building times, and the already questionable advantage of 'Pure' constructions without any kind of 'error' on the molecular scale - Admittedly not utterly stupid, but I doubt the plus in quality would be all that great, if noticeable - is ruined by whatever you use for the molecular-scale construction screwing with the end result, anyway, due to its sheer presence.

At least partially.

Mind, so much for feasibility. I can see it as gameplay-worthy, assuming that numbers are kept reallyreallyreally low, with some explanation along the lines of 'We can't produce enough of $Material for proper tanks, so we build a few super-infantry suits'

Which doesn't help its firepower, but it'd probably mean that they become spearheads for infantry assaults, withstanding the average Power-Armoured opponent.

One could even make the armour vaguely sensical... Glitter so you draw fire which would otherwise hurt the more common units.

Which reminds me. What are ya doin' when the opponent resorts to ultraviolet/ x-ray wavelengths, rather than visible light, in his or her lasers? XD

One note. Railguns do not detiorate because of up and down recoil. They deteriorate because of FRICTION, because railguns with a slow armature often create enough plasma to fuse together into a lump.

Actually, they deteriorate 'cause of the excessive magnetic forces involved, which, due to repelling each other, warp the rails. Compared to this, friction is a minor problem (And indeed, they're having far more sucecss reducing the friction problem than reducing the warping-rails problem).

For once, that's an easily solved problem, at least in FT. Simply use memory materials which spring right back to the appropriate position after firing. Far less feasible in MT, of course.

Ummm... No. Such materials would in all likelyhood have horribly weak tensile strengths/ heat capacities etc..

An 'It's strong enough to survive $Number_of_Shots' approach is IMHO notably more feasible.

I really have to dissagree. I know from first hand experience that the electrical and magnetic forces applied surround the armature with plasma, often melting the rails.

Odd, the literature I've had disagrees... Ah well.

Then why do the rails have a tendency to disintegrate as the gun fires? IIRC some railgun test shots have clocked the speed of parts of the gun instead of the projectile.