Cost of an E-Clip recharger?

[Dustin Fireblade]

Universal E-Clip Recharger: 790,000 credits

Merc Ops pg 118

[Rimmer]

Or just make sure you have an operater in the group.

[runebeo]

Mystic Knight can recharge Eclips with their energy power. If a group has a nuclear powered vehicle or robot and someone with elecrical engineering skill they should be able to rig up a few recharge ports. There's a few weapons that self recharge this also seems like something an Operator could rig up, it may not be as fast at recharging as a real McCoy.

[Ace, TW]

I think the spell "sub particle acceleration" from Rifts: Federation of Magic can be used to recharge e-clips as well.

[Dustin Fireblade]

Mystic Knight can recharge Eclips with their energy power. If a group has a nuclear powered vehicle or robot and someone with elecrical engineering skill they should be able to rig up a few recharge ports. There's a few weapons that self recharge this also seems like something an Operator could rig up, it may not be as fast at recharging as a real McCoy.

Hey Guys, I am the guy that wants that e-clip charger in Koz's group.
Rimmer, could you clarify that please? I play a Psi-Tech, which is essentially the same thing.

Runebeo, I thought the same thing, but I couldn't find anything regarding that. It was decided that if it were that easy, then everybody would do it that way all of the time.

Basically, anyone with the Electrical Engineering, and/or the Electricity Generation skills should be able to set up a system that allows a robot vehicle to recharge e-clips. There's no hard and fast rules for this to the best of my knowledge in Rifts.

On the Mystic Knight, their PPE Channelling ability allows for e-clip recharging for the cost of a PPE points. Might want to make sure you are asking him very nicely though...

[Rimmer]

To slow to answer as posted above.

My coalition PC's simply use a skelebot to charge all of the eclips on the run, it can charge a long clip in about 90 seconds.

He's called "Sparky"

[Thinyser]

So for just over 3/4 of a million credits you get a charger that has its own (tiny as the whole device weighs in at 15 lbs) nuke supply and can charge 8 clips an hour.

Not a bad little device but our groups paid an operator to hook up a 4 slot charger in our nuke powered vehicle. 100,000 credits for parts and labor. Could charge 1 e-clip per hour when vehicle is at full speed, 4/hour when vehicle was at 1/4 speed and 4/half hour when the vehicle was stopped and devoting all power to the charger. It even had a alarm (audio or visual or both) for when they were done.

BUZZzzzz its time to go swap out the e-clips.

so same total as the 8 per hour out of this little charger but 4 done in 30 min and another 4 done 30 min later, but for a hella lot cheaper than the dedicated nuke supply.

[Dustin Fireblade]

Basically, anyone with the Electrical Engineering, and/or the Electricity Generation skills should be able to set up a system that allows a robot vehicle to recharge e-clips. There's no hard and fast rules for this to the best of my knowledge in Rifts.

On the Mystic Knight, their PPE Channelling ability allows for e-clip recharging for the cost of a PPE points. Might want to make sure you are asking him very nicely though...

That seems a bit too easy to me honestly. There are a few weapons out there that specifically talk about being able to recharge off of nuclear batteries, but I think those are the exceptions, not the rule. If it was that easy to get your clips recharged, it wouldn't cost so much to get them charged or cost so much for the recharger (demand would be very low). So I don't think it's supposed to be as easy as getting an operator (whether a PC or NPC) to "rig up" some connection to a nuclear battery and get free recharges for the rest of the campaign, because if it was, every group would do it, every time.

That's how I see it anyway, but I could be wrong of course.

Koz

Well I didn't say it would be easy or cheap.

(Personally I lower the prices on a great many things in Rifts)

[keir451]

Basically, anyone with the Electrical Engineering, and/or the Electricity Generation skills should be able to set up a system that allows a robot vehicle to recharge e-clips. There's no hard and fast rules for this to the best of my knowledge in Rifts.

On the Mystic Knight, their PPE Channelling ability allows for e-clip recharging for the cost of a PPE points. Might want to make sure you are asking him very nicely though...

That seems a bit too easy to me honestly. There are a few weapons out there that specifically talk about being able to recharge off of nuclear batteries, but I think those are the exceptions, not the rule. If it was that easy to get your clips recharged, it wouldn't cost so much to get them charged or cost so much for the recharger (demand would be very low). So I don't think it's supposed to be as easy as getting an operator (whether a PC or NPC) to "rig up" some connection to a nuclear battery and get free recharges for the rest of the campaign, because if it was, every group would do it, every time.

That's how I see it anyway, but I could be wrong of course.

Koz

Well I didn't say it would be easy or cheap.

(Personally I lower the prices on a great many things in Rifts)

I, too, lower the cost of nearly EVERYTHING in Rifts. 790,000 for a e-clip recharger!!??(more like 7,900 in my games) huh??? were they thinking? I can buy a vehicle for that amount and have my engineer set up the recharging ports in the vehicle.
I've always set it up that e-clips were easily recharged or if I want to dispense w/ the recharging I hook the weapon up to the suits/vehicles power supply so I have unlimited payload.

[GrampaAllen]

If you take the cost versus how long the power supplys last you have to charge alot to turn aprofit espacialy if you dont have a whole lot of customers

[Thinyser]

If you take the cost versus how long the power supplys last you have to charge alot to turn aprofit espacialy if you dont have a whole lot of customers

790,000/2000 cost of recharge = 395.
395/8 recharges per hour = 49.375 hours to recoup your 790,000 credits.

Thats barrely more than two days straight recharges. even if you only did it 8 hours a day thats not even a full 7 day week of 8 hour days. You could easily make your money back in a week of recharging eclips... and it would run for 12 years.

The cost per eclip recharge is wacked out.

It should be more like 100-200/ recharge.

[GrampaAllen]

If you take the cost versus how long the power supplys last you have to charge alot to turn aprofit espacialy if you dont have a whole lot of customers

790,000/2000 cost of recharge = 395.
395/8 recharges per hour = 49.375 hours to recoup your 790,000 credits.

Thats barrely more than two days straight recharges. even if you only did it 8 hours a day thats not even a full 7 day week of 8 hour days. You could easily make your money back in a week of recharging eclips... and it would run for 12 years.

The cost per eclip recharge is wacked out.

It should be more like 100-200/ recharge.

I did that math but you have to have that many customers so lets say you run a trading post what a hundred maybe two hundred e-clips a year and the 12 years goes from day one

[Thinyser]

If you take the cost versus how long the power supplys last you have to charge alot to turn aprofit espacialy if you dont have a whole lot of customers

790,000/2000 cost of recharge = 395.
395/8 recharges per hour = 49.375 hours to recoup your 790,000 credits.

Thats barrely more than two days straight recharges. even if you only did it 8 hours a day thats not even a full 7 day week of 8 hour days. You could easily make your money back in a week of recharging eclips... and it would run for 12 years.

The cost per eclip recharge is wacked out.

It should be more like 100-200/ recharge.

I did that math but you have to have that many customers so lets say you run a trading post what a hundred maybe two hundred e-clips a year and the 12 years goes from day one

I think that you underestimate the need for ammo in Rifts.

I would guess that even at a trading post there would be a hundred a month (3-4 a day) or more.

[Mack]

If you take the cost versus how long the power supplys last you have to charge alot to turn aprofit espacialy if you dont have a whole lot of customers

790,000/2000 cost of recharge = 395.
395/8 recharges per hour = 49.375 hours to recoup your 790,000 credits.

Thats barrely more than two days straight recharges. even if you only did it 8 hours a day thats not even a full 7 day week of 8 hour days. You could easily make your money back in a week of recharging eclips... and it would run for 12 years.

The cost per eclip recharge is wacked out.

It should be more like 100-200/ recharge.

I did that math but you have to have that many customers so lets say you run a trading post what a hundred maybe two hundred e-clips a year and the 12 years goes from day one

Even at 100 per year, you only need 4 years to pay for the system. That gives you 8 years of pure profit.

And keep in mind that if you're at a trading post, there's no reason you can't charge more than 2000 credits per recharge. At 2650 per recharge, the system pays for itself in only 300 recharges (or 3 years at the above rate).

[azazel1024]

The one thing I don't like is there is no cost for an Eclip recharging converter.

The one listed is self powered using a nuclear battery. There deffinitely should be adapters that let you plug some other power source in to an eclip to charge it.

Need to charge it off your suit of power armor, or your car, or a generator, or a power grid, just connect the NG-Universal in to the Clip power port and then connect it to your 1/3/6 phase 90-260v AC/DC power source and the NG-Universal will charge up your e-clip in no time!

Considering the power levels something like this should be able to charge an Eclip from something else with a nuclear battery in say an hour, from a car in 6hrs and from a generator or the power grid in 2hrs.

Also cost a lot less. All you need is some way to modify the incoming power to something that will charge an eclip plus a charge regulator to prevent overcharing the eclip.

Crap, something like that should cost more than a couple of hundred bucks in todays dollars and even super sophisticated 'Use almost any powersource' electronics should cost more then a few thousand credits to manufacture.

I see something like that costing 10,000 credits and being about the size of a pack of a paperback book with a port for an eclip on it (or a univeral power plug for non-standard size eclips, such as the Triax front loading e-clips, energy canisters, etc) and a power cable 10ft long to connect to the charging source. Since eclip recharging at a time.

As for cost of recharge, I agree whole heartedly. The price for gasoline is fairly low, and the general state recharge times of various things and power delivery makes it pretty clear that your average generator could really recharge an eclip in an hour or two. That isn't more than a few gallons of gasoline. Maybe 100-200 credits max cost to charge the eclip. Even paying of investment costs and profit I can't see charging more than 500 credits (MAX) in a well developed area like Merc Town, the burbs, Kingston, etc. In a far out trading post a cost of 2,000+ I think would be more likely (supply and demand), but even then it would mostly be price gouging to the extreme (the equivelent to seeing $20 a gallon gas today somewhere).
-Matt

[Dustin Fireblade]

4. Is this just another case of Rifts rules not making sense?

What do you people think?


Koz

Yes.

[azazel1024]

#4 of course. A couple of places the price of gasoline is mentioned. Okay, well I can only think of one and that is in Rifter #50 vehicle construction rules, but I feel like it is mentioned a few other places. At between 5-20 credits a gallon. Average generator at full output maybe consumes 4-5 gallons per hour for a very heavy duty geny. 800 credits means you'd have to run something like 40-160 gallons of gasoline through a fairly heavy duty generator (16-20kw geny) over the course of 8-32hours depending on exactly how much we are talking to charge a single e-clip. Assuming 100% efficiency an E-clip would then have a storage capacity of 128-640kw/hr of energy. A truely massive amount.

This would be enough to drive a car 500-2,500 miles depending on the exact energy storage that this would equate too and the vehicles efficiency (on a highway of course). Eclips store a lot, but I doubt we are talking 32hrs on a high powered geny just to charge one. 8hrs, maybe and that even seems a little high.

And actually if you look at the new vehicle construction rules it talks about how an electrically powered vehicle will run about 400 miles on an eclip. So that brings you down to around 6hrs charging on a high powered generator using probably about 20-25 gallons of gasoline to do this. At least if you are extrapolating from the new vehicle construction rules that are supposedly canon in Rifter #50.

That is a cost of 100-500 credits (500 on the very high end sourcing your gasoline in a remote trading post) to charge an eclip.

Direct power from whatever city grid would probably cost you at least slightly less than this, though it would probably take longer to charge come to think about it.

I revise what I was mentioning before, based on the vehicle construction rules, I'd rule it takes 24hrs to charge an E-clip from a vehicle not modified to do so (and uses 25 gallons of gas to do it), from a vehicle with a power port designed for such high drain applications it would take 8hrs and use 20 gallons of gasoline (more efficient). A high powered generator can do it in 8hrs as well at the same 20 gallons of gasoline use. Nuclear batteries from vehicles and robot vehicles can do it in 2hrs, and power armor and cyborgs can do it in 4hrs (they aren't designed for quite as high an output).

Power grids take 24hrs to charge as well without some kind of specialized high power adaptor in the home or business (otherwise it sucks down to much power and overloads the regular wall outlet). 4hrs on the specialized wall outlet.

Of course that doesn't cover what this E-clip charger with its own nuclear battery can do. It is specially designed to charge E-clips, not running off some other power source (IE why vehicles, borgs, etc with nuclear batteries should be able to charge an E-clip as fast, they either have to run other systems at the same time, or else they don't have the power conduits that can handle the huge load specifically for charging E-clips, though a specialized field mechanics nuclear powered vehicle might, everything else is the equivelent of plugging the E-clip charger/E-clip in to the cigarette lighter of your SAMAS).
-Matt