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If so how?

In my Rifts campaign (currently stalled), the characters are fighting the mechanoid swarm from SB2.

The god Hocknar has come to Earth to battle the Mechanoids, and has (with the party's help) raised a decent sized army. He leads seek and destroy missions against the mechanoids, with heavy losses on both sides.

Meanwhile the party is about to make contact with Archie and find out more about the Mechanoids. One of the PCs is a Shemarrian (experimental version with a neural intelligence), and Archie is going to upgrade her a bit to help fight the swarm.

Generally, my players don't like mechanoid adventures though.
Possibly because they get their butts kicked so often.

That sounds alot like my campaign. The "higher power" helping my pcs is Varuna, and he only does so through minions and what not. After buying mechanoid invasion trilogy, I plan to adapt the third book, and have the pcs head to the mechanoid homeworld. Can't wait to get that rolling.

My players really enjoy the challenge the Mechies present, they see it as a big step up from the wash rinse repeat adventures involving the CS that we ran for the better part of 3 years. That and after a few years in one campaign the typical CS or demon encounter was much less exciting than it once was.

I have run a few sessions of Chaos Earth, using the Mechanoids as the Great Cataclysm, rather than some man-made disaster. Basically importing the scenario from Gideon E to Chaos Earth. It works great and is lots of fun.

The one occasion I used mechanoids was in a single player RIFTS game I ran; big mistake. A pair of Wasps annihilated the fully power-armored player in less than a melee. Whoopsie, I guess mechanoids are for large group adventures

Wasps in particular are extremely deadly.

been thinking about using them, but the whole butt kicking thing presents a problem. I think I'll wait until I have a very high level party with vast firepower who need a challenge...

Yeah... and they only popped up because of a random encounter roll. D'oh!

Or just reduce the encounters.
Only one thinman and one runt vs. a group of PCs...
or even wounded mechanoids.

Or run the Mechanoids kind of like the show Firefly deals with Reavers... you never see them directly, just the aftermath... most of the time you just run as soon as you know they're in the area.

Yeah, I've lost a LOT of PCs to random encounters like that...

mechanoids make great villans.
Ive used them once or twice before with
great effect

I like to have the Mechanoids as a random encounter for players. I also like to use the good Mechanoids sometimes as plot devices. Also I like to introduce bionics that don't interfere with psionics as a gift every once in a while. I also soup them up sometimes to give over confident players a real challenge.

I used them in a Macross 2 campaign, with all the players playing Zentranor Meltran. Wasps are pretty nasty with those auto-dodges, but mind you...so can a fully loaded Zentran battle pod with its 72 missile

That's a great idea. Mechys would be the perfect villain for the stagnant Robotech campaign.

Haven't really used them much.

According to Rifter #4 and Aftermath. Archie-Three manufactures Thinman and Runt bots (he learned how during his correspondence with the buggers), so I use them in that capacity.

Jesterzzn Wrote: [/quote]That's a great idea. Mechys would be the perfect villain for the stagnant Robotech campaign.[quote]

Well, not quite Robotech, but still close enough . Only ran it for a few adventures before haveing the combine fleets of Feff/Ishtar and the U.N. Spacy destroying the Mechanoid planet ship (Yeah, I know its big, but several thousand heavy particle beams firing in unison at a given target is a beautiful thing .

Thinking if I run it again, the players will be U.N Spacy Valkyrie Pilots (Heh, Metal Siren would eat wasps for breakfast). Broaden the universe a little more, add colony worlds, different races (Thinking maybe the races from Manhunter because they're cool and they seem to fit in well...with a little adjustment. Maybe developed the Manhunter robots to fight the Mechanoids? Unsure about that one.), add some human m.d.c weapons and armor (similar in damage scale to old Coaltion stuff. Nothing too powerful)

I know this is a little late, but I thought I should share.

Am currently designing a campaign where my heroes force the Mechanoids out of Maryland. I intend to have it last for about 6 months of game time.
I didnt think it realistic for any group of PC's to take on the crashed invaders and win, so I set it up for good role-playing instead of pure combat. I want the characters to discover the Mechanoid threat, get advice from Hagan Lonovich or somebody, make powerful allies with groups who have similar interests (maybe CS, maybe Splugorth) and devise a grand scheme to wipe them out. They started in a small mercenary company, and I have some ideas as to how they progress. I think they should get help from other mercenaries and maybe some kingdoms too.
They should use guerilla tactics to isolate and eliminate mechs one at a time. When most of the field units have been disabled I think the mother brain would pull the rest back to defend the base. This will lead to a great, climatic battle with all the allied forces finishing them off.
As with most of my campaigns I think BIG. I want to have a ton of scenarios leading up to the end. If we start off with a small group of level one PC's, I'd like most of them to be level 10 or so at the finale.

Especially if you do like I do and allow vehicles with multiple forward facing weapons to fire them as a volley. I had a Wasp annihilate a Mark V APC in one volley. My PCs were not happy about that.

I've never used the Mechanoids themselves much - but I've gotten a ton of mileage out of the Thinmen and Runts. Those are just awesome minions.

mechanoids vs robotech...not pretty...the first time the RT guys encounter them it was a sad sad day...for them...

That's why you send them after the Invid and other Robotech villain races. By the time they're all done hammering each other, then it'll be a good day for the REF folk.

Funny I plan on using Mechanoids in my Robotech game.

Say what! The first time was with me and you left them as SDC and then we never did get them up to MDC.

actually janus your group was the second i did that to...
my first group was in conneticut

Oh they must be the group that sucked as I remeber we rocked.

of course you guys rocked...you never got to the "mechanoid upgrade" storyline...

Nah, my group rocked because they had me.

I laughed when I read this, because it made me think of CS and Splugorth allied forces who didn't exactly know they were allied. A sort of thing where the PCs swing it so multiple parties attack the ship at the same time and then just as victorious shouts and celebration begins the deadboys realize about 2/3rds of the allied forces are horrible, inhuman monsters, and everything fall silent.

The silence is the broken by someone loudly saying, "Ooh... awkward."

Not really. I didnt think it possible for my PC's to ally EVERYONE. They would have to role-play and maybe some would help them and some would not.
Actually, if they did get too many different allies that could lead to serious problems before, during or after the big battle.

DUDE! You just opened up a butt-load of new campaign possibilities. This could lead to a new campaign of epic proportions! Their desperation to find help with the Mechanoids could lead to a rifts-style World War.

My friend you did exactly what Kevin said to do in the Adventure Guide.
Think BIG.

Well, I just finished running my group through a mechanoid campaign, replete with lots of refugees and carnage. The campaign lasted about 7-8 adventures all told. Ultimately, after working up knocking off some of the recon elements, I had them (with more NPCs than I've ever run before) knock of the main Mech R&D team. They also participated in a climatic battle on the side of a beleaguered Coalition unit, a couple Kittani Equestrians, and even a Hagan robot, holding off and finally destroying the main mechanoid spider fortress and accompanying mechs. I have to give credit, they came up with a really inventive way to deal with the walker that I was not expecting.

All told, 3 characters were killed... rather, 2 fell into coma but their natural regenerative MDC power saved them. One was killed outright, but we'll see what happens on the resurrection front....

I enjoyed the campaign, my players are getting pretty powerful and it was a good way to challenge them combatively. My first Rifts campaign ever that I played in back in '93 was against the Mechs, so it was good to come back to them after all this time

And yes, Wasps were my favorite to throw against the players, followed by a good missile-toting Brute....

Yeah, Wasps have always been my favorite, although the Exterminator is coming in close second. Especially with their special Frag Mini-missiles that do 5D6 over a 20 foot radius each. Doesn't do a lot of damage, but a spread of 6 covers a 120 foot area.

Yeah, I know, it's only supposed to be 20 feet total, not each, but using each is so much more fun.

Yes,In Robotech and in some of my Rifts settings.

Haven't for a while..but that's due to me (stupidly) waiting for KS to get off his (cenosred) and writ ethe next gen Mechanoid book.
My bad... have to work out where to brin them back into the narrative.

Maybe ,In the next year or teo in a sourcebook or RIFTER.

I am starting a new Campaign ... with mainly new players ...

I plan on introducing Archie then Mechaniods etc ...
trying to work it out as close to cannon as possible
(off the top of my head, I am not sure which comes first)

Anyways ...

Yes, I will be using Mechanoids

I anxiously await the new sourcebook one!

Sounds great.I hope in the new sourcebook #1 reprint it will have them as well.

Hmmmmm

I do not know if I would expect any Mechanoid stuff in the new sourcebook...

Afterall, there is an entire book just for the Mechanoids...

We can hope and the new MECHANOID SPACE might be put back as well!

Someone said they used the Mechanoids in HU2 and wil post conversion notes at some point. I think it was Baron of chaos but cannot remember(too lazy to go back and look up name of thread). He said he had used them in a Century City campaign.

That would be a deadly campaign !

It would.

Mechanoids are indeed deadly
I liked them from the first time i saw the source book in the Earlie 90's. Never Game mastered Rifts until a couple of weeks ago, played it a few times though. And all except one of the players haven't played or read anything about Rifts before, so that they are completely without previous knowledge about the mechanoids or anything related to the world.

But the main story line in the my campaign is going to center around the Mechanoids, the group have just started the A.R.C.H.I.E. introduction scenario from Source book one (the old one). But when they get to Maryland the Mechanoids have been there for a time and the whole area is a big battle zone

As the group is only level 1 or maybe level 2 when they get to Maryland they will probably just get to watch the devastation from afar, because the random encounters will wipe them out

But it will be interesting as one of the players are a dragon with Telemechanics and Machine ghost and one is a techno wizard. We also have a operator, so they will really like the new technology and stuff that the mechanoids brings.

It shouldn't take much work to run the old Mechanoid Trilogy version in HU. I've used the basic campaign from SB2, as well as using Runts and Thinmen to rile up the Kittani in Atlantis.

That sound very good idea for a plot line.

It is straight out of the books.

Cool.

always interesting to have a group of PCs end up getting rifted to the Mechanoid homeworld on occassion... lots of brains crawling around, some of which are not in robot suits - easy to squish.

I've used the Mechanoids in several campaigns.
Most of my players run in terror when they see even one thinman now.

My Glitterboy won a Medal fighting Mechanoids.


Said Medal was well deserved. I would rather not do it ever again. They are definately tough.


In our game, the Mechanoids came to Rifts Earth because they were being chased. Dunno the whole story behind it, but it was pretty fun.

Our group has had several encounters with the Mechanoids.

Long ago, my mind mage and our wizard were on a wierd astral battle with some nasty old one worshippers and we ended up floating astrally over what we both agree must have been a mothership. A month later one of our group ran a series of Mechanoid games, glorious deaths abounded!

About 2 years ago to get the old and new characters together and give them a reason to at least work alongside each other, our GM ran a series of scenarios which ended up in a huge battle to get rid of the remaining (known) Mechanoids and their worshippers. The battle involved a few different groups who would have normally attacked each other, but "the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy, but alot weaker that these guys" philosophy won out.

Recently, a plotline involving the Motherframes on our Heroes world was revealed to be the takeover plan of a AbM Brain (of diabolic alignment) to take over that world (and build its own eternal empire spanning, yada, yada continue to insert evildoers plan here)

My mind mage also had been having "visions" of the Mechanoid Homeworld and an urgency to go there. I ended up going and found out the history of the Mechanoids and that the race they came from was a small clan of Atlanteans that left Atlantis to perfect science and psionics, though at least one of the leaders of the clan was/is a worshipper of the old ones, probably Tar-Kim-Toe (sp? I do not have my books), whose minoins we have run into before, and manipulated the events that led up to the Mechanoid creation, and even after (we believe one of the leaders was gifted immortality and is now a Mechanoid Overlord, possibly a witch too). That was contained in the psionic log of the clans only magic user, a stone master, which was left in his magically hidden pyramid. We believe he died, trying to stop it, right at the end when the Mechanoids attacked the creators.

The old ones plan make sense since it sends hate and vengence, etc across the megaverse, but also given the intelligence and long term thinking these beings have, but it is theroized by several of our members who have seen the way the old ones are restrained (at least we assume they are like Syth, in the place of magic), that the magic that is drained from them is actually funneled away to another plane, each drain needing a reciever of some sort which is located (we think) in a planet or sun depending on the strength of the drain magic, each old one or minion having multitudes of these to keep them from drawing on the magic. Now, we guess the Mechanoids can somehow target these planets/suns, and actually the power crystals they use can only be made from these places.

Proudly I came up with most of that theory because I wondered WHY, if they are so bent on destroying all humanoids, that they left quit a few, many in fact in their own neighborhood before going to another universe (which is what that disk thing was according to information we gathered). They were left because no more drain recievers were left in that universe.

Things like that caused all sorts of theories and such our GM loves to see the charcters come up with and discuss, like:

Possibly the incidents of psionics/magic on planets like Gideon (from history logs and ooc memory), the phi-warpers, those magic symboite entities, other races that had psionics and or some magic could mean that they had a drain reciever on their planet (or systems sun) which caused a higher occurance, possibly even a rifting or such.

Right now we have decided to have a meeting with several groups (such as atlantis, shemarria, the spike heads, and a promeathean from the 3 galaxies, as well as some magic groups to lay out the information and see what comes of it. because we have no clue as to what to do right now (which may be what is what the GM wants, he does not always lead us about, seeing that we get into trouble on our own easy enough)