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Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 12:56 am
by Mobius 1
Yeah, I get the idea that, in order to kill the pilot, you'd have to render the armor inoperable along the way. Which means a couple of things - you've now got a pile of cover, or just scrap blocking your way. Also, is PA ubiquitous enough that you can just leave it behind? Is the tech important enough to warrant some sort of corrosive agent that releases to prevent 'important' parts of the hardware from being recovered? Or can the whole thing just be rigged to self-destruct?

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:19 am
by Booted Vulture
Mobius 1 wrote: Also, is PA ubiquitous enough that you can just leave it behind? Is the tech important enough to warrant some sort of corrosive agent that releases to prevent 'important' parts of the hardware from being recovered? Or can the whole thing just be rigged to self-destruct?
I've been imaging two armies with rough parity going up against each. And yes the armour is ubiquitous to be a common site and regular feature in the OoB: a mature enough tech to be just another weapon in the armory. So yeah, they might be able to just leave it behind. Though then again, they might want to thermite up the circuitry or something to stop design specifics falling into enemy hands.

It's seem harsh to make up PA guys walk around with self-destructs in their personal protection though. Bad for morale I would imagine.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:26 am
by Mobius 1
One would assume it'd be tied to the health of the pilot and only doable with a certain proximity or by manual entry - otherwise you'd get really nervous about someone remote detonating the device. If I was working in the verse I'd be sure to at least throw an episode that way with that as the weekly plot.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:39 am
by Booted Vulture
Depending on the component it could be a system similar to the T888's CPU chip in the 2nd series of T:SCC. Which was coated in an substance that started burning on contact with air.

Of course you can only do that on the bits you're sure aren't going to get hit by the trigger function while the suit and pilot are still function and alive respectively.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 5:58 pm
by Siege
I can't help think it's a seriously Bad Idea to have soldiers run around a warzone with X pounds of thermite locked inside their armor. That shit is volatile: when it goes, it goes. I wouldn't want to be the platoon mechanic who has to service that sort of thing, much less the general who has to worry about the possibility of the fuses on his soldiers' self-destructs short-circuiting because he's engaged in a protracted operation on the Swamp Planet. It's just a better idea to assign a bunch of his fellow Mech Infantry to the task of either get his suit out or blow it up with a Space Grenade. Or have the equivalent of Space SAR do it. Sure, either ties up more resources but at least the politicos back home won't be accused of having ordered suits that might accidentally immolate their own troops.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 6:32 pm
by Shroom Man 777
Yeah, Super Six One didn't have thermite in its cockpit, Sgt. Eversman's Ranger chalk had to move in to secure the crash site together with the Delta operators, and they chucked the thermite on the crashed Blackhawks only when McKnight's humvee convoy together with the Malayan UN peacekeeper forces came to extract them from the Bakaara Market.

Go Blackburn go!

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 8:26 pm
by Mobius 1
I'm pretty sure that space suits will have good enough space explosives to make sure space self-destruct won't go off when the space equivalent of it getting lightly jostled happens.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 8:43 pm
by Booted Vulture
Mobius 1 wrote:I'm pretty sure that space suits will have good enough space explosives to make sure space self-destruct won't go off when the space equivalent of it getting lightly jostled happens.
... in space!!

For my part i was only suggesting very little amounts explosives in key super-secret parts. like say chipboards and memory and so forth. Not to destroy the whole suit. The sort of system that wouldn't be powerful enough hurt the pilot if triggered accidentally. Aside from lowering their suit's functionality of course.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 8:51 pm
by Mobius 1
That was my idea as well - either small explosives or just some acid solution would work.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 8:54 pm
by Magister Militum
Yeah, that's much more sane than what was originally thought.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 11:04 pm
by Siege
What super-secret parts are there gonna be in this suit though? 'Cause that kind of determines where these explosives are going to be.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 11:26 pm
by Booted Vulture
Siege wrote:What super-secret parts are there gonna be in this suit though? 'Cause that kind of determines where these explosives are going to be.
Well. I'm not exactly sitting on details specifications here. But i you just want to take out the harddrive/sensor logs that kind of thing. Anywhere you like potentially.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 11:33 pm
by Ford Prefect
It really depends on the technology involved. Like if you have a reasonably well developed base of nanotechnology (ie. what you'd need for artificial muscles, workable batteries etc), then you can probably use that to catastrophically mess up mission critical storage devices.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2012 11:36 pm
by Booted Vulture
artificial muscles require nanotech?

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2012 2:40 am
by Ford Prefect
Not necessarily. You could be using hydraulics or power screws or electroactive silicon, but when people say 'working powered armour' I typically think 'oh carbon nanotubes'.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:24 am
by Magister Militum
I'm trying to come up with a name for a bunch of transgalactic, starship-living, hardcore transhuman nomads, but I can't think of any. All I know is that the formal name of their alliance of fleets would have the word 'diaspora' in it. I love the sound of Alistair Reynolds Ultranauts, and I would definitely like to come up with a word that matches the epicness of that word. Anyone have any ideas?

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 4:23 am
by Ford Prefect
Alphanaut.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 9:58 am
by Booted Vulture
Apexes. The Peak of humanity.

'The Diasporia Apex' for the group name.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 3:07 pm
by Zor
Zero gravers small.jpg
Zero gravers small.jpg (78.51 KiB) Viewed 24416 times
My Zero Gravers.

Zor

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 12:33 am
by speaker-to-trolls
Magister Militum wrote:I'm trying to come up with a name for a bunch of transgalactic, starship-living, hardcore transhuman nomads, but I can't think of any. All I know is that the formal name of their alliance of fleets would have the word 'diaspora' in it. I love the sound of Alistair Reynolds Ultranauts, and I would definitely like to come up with a word that matches the epicness of that word. Anyone have any ideas?
Not a neologism, and not really on the same lines as the Ultras, but how about The Purposeful, as a way of expressing their superiority to other, more aimless people, and to combat any descriptions of them as 'cosmic wanderers' or anything of the sort?
My Zero Gravers.
'Who's that in the picture?'
'Oh, this is Shelly, she's my girlfriend, I met her while I was travelling last year,'
'...Wow... Uh, wow, she's... hot?'
'What?'
'What? She's a stunner, man, really, you're very lucky...'
'No; You have that look on your face when you want to say something either I or decent society or both would find crass and offensive, I know that's what it is, so just man up and say it!'
'No, dude, really, she's very good looking, looks like a nice girl,'
'Hmmm.'
'I just didn't realise you'd been backpacking in the Uncanny Valley,'
'Asshole'
:)

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 3:37 am
by Invictus
The Final Diaspora, especially if it happened thousands of years ago. Theirs is the irreversible path that diverged and diversified transhumanity for ever! Theirs is the only diaspora that still matters!

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 5:59 am
by Zor
speaker-to-trolls wrote:
My Zero Gravers.
'Who's that in the picture?'
'Oh, this is Shelly, she's my girlfriend, I met her while I was travelling last year,'
'...Wow... Uh, wow, she's... hot?'
'What?'
'What? She's a stunner, man, really, you're very lucky...'
'No; You have that look on your face when you want to say something either I or decent society or both would find crass and offensive, I know that's what it is, so just man up and say it!'
'No, dude, really, she's very good looking, looks like a nice girl,'
'Hmmm.'
'I just didn't realise you'd been backpacking in the Uncanny Valley,'
'Asshole'
:)
To be fair, i did not design them to be models of beauty. Not hideous, but weird looking.

Zor

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 6:15 am
by Mobius 1
I think he's suggesting you need to take a look at basic anatomy classes.

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 6:17 am
by Destructionator
I don't get it :S

Re: Random ideas (again)

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 7:19 am
by Shroom Man 777
Their faces should be parabolic dish-shaped, with one ear higher than the other, giving them owl faces. Hoot hoot!

The feathers will also insulate them from the coldness of spess. Beaks can eat space food more efficiently than teeth, and will have less risk of teeth floating around loosely in case of zero gravity gingivitis.
Aha, instead of feathers they can get scales then, and their parabolic dish-faces will be partly done with a lizard frill. The act of molting off scales wholesale makes it neither as messy as feathers nor constantly-shedding skin. Their spacefood might not have to be chewed, or they eat food like owls or snakes by swallowing them whole - with or without the dislocation of the jaws. Owl-like poops will be more manageable due to their compactness too.
i changed the beak into a proboscis :v