Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Comp"

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psiandco
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Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Comp"

Unread post by psiandco »

(*First: no offense intended. please do not get upset at ANYONE for me writing this)
I find the "Microfilm" fingertip cyberware a bit quaint, antiquated really...
It seems as if much of the Cyberware and bionics, even devices are Outdated by 2022 technology.
Namely smartphones,
or even the "Tricorder project" for some tech

I wish I could attach a word Doc, I have that is entitled "Red Blood Cell sized Supercomputer"
its got the low down on single atom construction tech, a computer design built with single atoms,
and the Ray Kurzweil prediction that in less than 25 years...
*we could have a slew of 1980's supercray (Cray super computers) down to the size of a single red blood cell"

With this kind of Technology becoming the replacement for todays smartphones and other computers.
What else might there be, that renders item descriptions obsolete (in terms of price, size/bulk, etc.)
psiandco
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by psiandco »

maybe we need to write a complete "Technology overhaul"...

(*I mean really, find a new car that doesn't have a "backup camera" )
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by psiandco »

it is my opinion that the "Traveller RPG" is also severely outdated/obsolete, but virtue of its artwork of "high tech consoles" that come equiped with gauges, levers, dials, slides, rocker switches, etc and human manned "workstations" to operate these *MECHANICAL* devices.

I mean, hello! Touch screens! Do you need to see Astro-scan? Swipe to it. Do you need to see a damage report? Swipe to it. Do you need to see weapons/tactical computing a firing arc for a target 12 light seconds distant? swipe to it. Do you need to see Environmental systems? swipe to it! ad infinitum.
Do you need help navigating the obscenely huge void of space? (Seriously it about 200 MILLION miles from earth to the asteroid belt. meh. only 200 million miles, you yawn...)
Hopefully your ship has several A.I. who watch EVERY 360* passive optic to identify threats like a cloud of micro-asteroids travelling 200,000 miles per hour that will intersect your starship's plotted course in 1.32745 day. for shizzle!
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Blue_Lion »

The issue is that things have changed since they where written in the game.
With 90s tech they sounded super advanced, but as things progress rifts tech seams a bit dated. The core to the game was not written in 2022, most of the stuff that is horribly outdated is legacy tech. The issue is that fully removing them would invalidate many books.
(Really you see example of outdated tech thinking in any old sci-fi.)

In game justification could be rebuilding tech base after a dark age. Some areas are more advanced others fell behind. Some towns may have lower tech than others.

The range of the backpack military radio 500 miles is 10X the currant backpack Singars radio used by the US army so some areas are ahead and some are behind.
The Clones are coming you shall all be replaced, but who is to say you have not been replaced already.

Master of Type-O and the obvios.

Soon my army oc clones and winged-monkies will rule the world but first, must .......

I may debate canon and RAW, but the games I run are highly house ruled. So I am not debating for how I play but about how the system works as written.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Nekira Sudacne »

I think the only way to resolve the paradox without comprehensively overhauling the tech is to sort of pull a Fallout and say the technology retained the aesthetics of 1980's technology, when most of the core books were written, and just upgrade the capability. So sure, Cyborgs have microfilm cameras, but they're of insane resolution and frame rate and compactness so they're even better than what we have now.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Crimson Dynamo »

It's probably easier to just assume pre-Rifts Earth was an alternative timeline that capped in the 80s. All the relative military high-tech they had came from, say, the Cuban Missile Crisis (or pick any other similar event of choice) going a completely different way, leading the world into an arms race unparalleled in the real world. Then magic awakens in the 80s, most non-military tech is stuck in that era, and everything works out the way it does in the books. For the most part, anyway. You still have your Glitter Boys, SAMAS, Juicers, Crazies, megadamage materials, and particle beam weapons and railguns, they're just from the 1980s rather than 2100s or whenever it was originally supposed to be.

You'd still have Phase World and whatnot to contend with, but seeing as most people I know who play Rifts tend to largely ignore the greater megaverse anyway (favoring to stay on Rifts Earth), it's not quite as big of a concern to rationalize.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by hup7 »

Yes, some things were written a long time ago.

But there are several reasons to use microfilm and not digital for recording sensitive information. Keep in mind when dealing with high tech attacks and possible psychic attacks - using out of date technology is actually a viable strategy; I have read several papers on security through obsolescence and security through obscurity.

So it is easy to understand why some people might use obsolete tech. Personally I find it easy to adjust as needed on the go, we have access to the internet to get some up-to-date numbers IF numbers matter.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by psiandco »

Crimson Dynamo wrote:they're just from the 1980s rather than 2100s or whenever it was originally supposed to be.


I mean no offense, I wish to slightly disagree with you. I Like the official cannon.
Lose approximation;
"The south american country invaded by 12 glitterboys resulted in a whole city being reduced to rubble (at a Nexus of a dozen ley lines). Then the thermonuclear retaliation by the wounded country (and it's allies) in the year 2096, during a planetary, celestial, (Galactic?) alignment, the vaporization of a few million lives at the site of a MAJOR NEXUS of multiple Ley Lines dumped Billions of P.P.E. points into earth's global energy grid. The other nations fell into world war 3, launching *EVERYTHING* they had. Nukes, space weapons, space stations, Space fleets, and So much more on the ground...

Soon after; Seven or so Super volcanos blew all around the world. Dozens of volcanoes blew. Tectonic plates Shifted and heaved. Dominant Faultlines Snaped nations apart. A Geo-storm was unleashed with blizzards, firestorms, lightning clusters, tornadoes, water spouts, floods, tsunami, The northern polar ice cap was shoved 120 miles south west through alaska and british collumbia...

But the real Poopy storm hadn't hit, oh no. not by a LONG SHOT. Ley lines erupted, severing communications making regular travel by road and air impossible, Electromagnetic pulses Oblitered technology that was plugged into public energy grids, Nexus points Shredded reality and huge zones began displacing. Many earth cities reappeared on alien worlds throughout the five galaxies: Milky way, thundercloud, anvil, the corkscrew, and the chunzadellee? (*The Chun Li galaxy? :shock: ) Many Alien cities appeared on earth, eruth, raspadar, dirt, water, snowball, xonxijo, foregollan, thrassiak, and many thousands more. the effects even reached the SugkhornVi woven globular cluster!

I pitty those mortal beings whose cities shifted to Tomb-worlds. Rumor has it, the San diego comic convention center appeared on Mars: everyone inside choked to death on a fatally thin carbon dioxide atmo, or waited to freeze to death when the earth side heat and air finally bled off into the martian -132* frozen hell. The mars base rescue mission failed as it was attacked by a squadron of Zentradi aliens!

To compare something bill Muray may have said from the Original Ghost busters movie...
"Dogs and Cats living together, pigs and cow farts falling from the sky", who knows what he really said! :-D
Last edited by psiandco on Sat Jul 02, 2022 1:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
psiandco
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by psiandco »

however, I agree with the reasoning of everyone in this thread.

it's because Technology wasn't universally spread, nor was it Equally spread.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by psiandco »

hup7 wrote:Yes, some things were written a long time ago.

But there are several reasons to use microfilm and not digital for recording sensitive information. Keep in mind when dealing with high tech attacks and possible psychic attacks - using out of date technology is actually a viable strategy; I have read several papers on security through obsolescence and security through obscurity.
So it is easy to understand why some people might use obsolete tech. Personally I find it easy to adjust as needed on the go, we have access to the internet to get some up-to-date numbers IF numbers matter.


yeah. I get you. High speed no drag spy gear like "Microdot" tech and Beta Max camcorders... 8-)
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Crimson Dynamo »

I'm not sure how that conflicts with my last post.

Those events still occurred. It's just that if you move the start of them to the 1980s instead of 2096, it allows the antiquated tech levels in the books to be more plausible than they are. I mean, when the authors themselves essentially say "we give up trying to update the tech as we suck at predicting where it's going," it's pretty clear that their original intent was for it to be more plausible to the 2096 era than the 80s; they just gave up on the idea of keeping up with the breakneck pace of the real world.

So it honestly works fine, especially since the only reason to have it jumped up to 2096 in the first place was only to explain the high tech of the mil-spec gear like Glitter Boys and particle beam weapons. So with there being a catalyst that allowed for their development prematurely in an alternative history, it works out the same and explains all the old electronics.

And it's not beyond reasonable either, as if say the Nazis won WWII, modern tech would be vastly different than it is, as touched upon by tons of alternate history stories proposing that very idea.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Orin J. »

there was a massive loss of technical infrastructure dring the apocolypse, they're mostly developing in terms of what's robust and not in worry of crapping itself if it gets dropped a few times. the production base is a LONG way away from the kind of disposable smartphones we have (and i sorta hope they take another route anyways, these things break if you look at 'em funny)
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by taalismn »

Orin J. wrote:there was a massive loss of technical infrastructure dring the apocolypse, they're mostly developing in terms of what's robust and not in worry of crapping itself if it gets dropped a few times. the production base is a LONG way away from the kind of disposable smartphones we have (and I sorta hope they take another route anyways, these things break if you look at 'em funny)


Just as planned....
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Than the Sage among his Books,
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The Armies and Works that you hold Dear,
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To be turned over with the Flick of a Finger,
And the Turning of a Page"

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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Blue_Lion »

taalismn wrote:
Orin J. wrote:there was a massive loss of technical infrastructure dring the apocolypse, they're mostly developing in terms of what's robust and not in worry of crapping itself if it gets dropped a few times. the production base is a LONG way away from the kind of disposable smartphones we have (and I sorta hope they take another route anyways, these things break if you look at 'em funny)


Just as planned....

The cell phone makers want you to keep replace them as often as possible that increases their profits.
The Clones are coming you shall all be replaced, but who is to say you have not been replaced already.

Master of Type-O and the obvios.

Soon my army oc clones and winged-monkies will rule the world but first, must .......

I may debate canon and RAW, but the games I run are highly house ruled. So I am not debating for how I play but about how the system works as written.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Slider65 »

Personally, I have always found it a bit wonky that the Chicago Public Library was where the CS got their entire tech-base from. Didn't know I could check out complete plans for building Mil-Spec hardware like power armor and such from my local library. I mean, there's the various Jane's Books of Fun, but beyond that?

As for the rest of it? I can see a lot of old pieces of tech being recovered, and that are a lot easier to produce than stuff that needs micro-processors and semi-conductors. The circuit boards of an older tech radio, VCR, or similar items are much easier to produce with available resources.

Take things like semi-conductors or micro-processors that would need an entire industry to be developed before you can even begin manufacturing them. I have no idea how the illiterate population of the CS is being taught to work and produce those items on the scale the CS needs to keep their military supplied, or how the Black Market, Northern Gun, etc. are managing it. I think that logistically ARCHIE would be the only place in North America where such facilities exist, and that could conceivably manage to produce them on an industrial scale. ARCHIE would make a bloody killing selling that tech, but would he?
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Nekira Sudacne »

No, the library had science and medicine. All the military hardware designs canonically came from the Lone Star Complex, which was a military skunkworks.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by guardiandashi »

not all of it came from lonestar, some came from other sources I believe.

the other aspect is that a lot of the actual production tech the coalition and others is things like 3d printers and similar that do not need a literate population to do their parts of keeping the machines running the real skilled and literate people are on the R&D side of things and loading the files the machines use to actually produce the product
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by jaymz »

Let's be honest, even in the 80s their "hitech" wasn't lol

Their biggest mistake was trying to equate to known real world terms and such. It's fiction. Make **** up. Just like they do in comics and movies in the first place.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Nekira Sudacne »

guardiandashi wrote:not all of it came from lonestar, some came from other sources I believe.

the other aspect is that a lot of the actual production tech the coalition and others is things like 3d printers and similar that do not need a literate population to do their parts of keeping the machines running the real skilled and literate people are on the R&D side of things and loading the files the machines use to actually produce the product


Okay, it's more accurate to say all their *starting* of what we consider CS hardware came from Lone Star, and they expanded from that baseline.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Warshield73 »

jaymz wrote:Let's be honest, even in the 80s their "hitech" wasn't lol

Their biggest mistake was trying to equate to known real world terms and such. It's fiction. Make **** up. Just like they do in comics and movies in the first place.

I have to agree with jaymz on this one. I added tons of crap to Phase World over the 20+ years I ran it just making things up. It turned to total crap and became grotesquely complicated when I tried to tie it to real science.

It never hurts to use sciency sounding words for the tech but don't give real world values for the capabilities of the tech just give it in game terms and move on.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Crimson Dynamo »

The game kind of loses some of its charm if you strip away the "this is the future, as perceived by someone from the 80s who doesn't really have much of an imagination for that sort of thing" vibe that all of Rifts has going for it. It'd be like renaming all of the "Glitter Boys," "Dog Boys," and other cringy names in the game to something else. It's just part of what makes the game what it is.

If you want to run around in your giant robot armor shooting ion beams at gargoyles and swarms of vampires, you damn well better be using a briefcase-sized "portable" phone (that somehow survived fully-functional through the apocalypse but not the turn of the century in real life) to call in your buddies for backup, dammit! :) Even if, you know, it only has a range of a few miles and stuff. Because, you know, super tech-savvy reasons.
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Re: Rifts tech vs my smartphone, Vs Ray Kurzweil "RB Cell Co

Unread post by Nevermore »

Crimson Dynamo wrote:It's probably easier to just assume pre-Rifts Earth was an alternative timeline that capped in the 80s. All the relative military high-tech they had came from, say, the Cuban Missile Crisis (or pick any other similar event of choice) going a completely different way, leading the world into an arms race unparalleled in the real world. Then magic awakens in the 80s, most non-military tech is stuck in that era, and everything works out the way it does in the books. For the most part, anyway. You still have your Glitter Boys, SAMAS, Juicers, Crazies, megadamage materials, and particle beam weapons and railguns, they're just from the 1980s rather than 2100s or whenever it was originally supposed to be.

You'd still have Phase World and whatnot to contend with, but seeing as most people I know who play Rifts tend to largely ignore the greater megaverse anyway (favoring to stay on Rifts Earth), it's not quite as big of a concern to rationalize.


This is what we do in our game, too. It's been a lot easier accepting the technology level by just accepting the era in which it was first imagined. It's sort of like Conan O'Brien's old "In The Year 2000" segments where they talk about the distant future.
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