I'm not making it a video game. You guys say no to something, so I just make it work some other way, if I really need it. It's character-based, no? Why would everyone be the same? That's no fun. If the main character of a post just passed the same people, it's no fun.

You say no 'vidya-games.' I just want diversity in what types of troops, plus the military-utilitarian aspect looks quite cool. I'm not looking to turn it into a video game. Is it that you both figure that I'm Rogue, and that you both want to be rid of him? I'm pretty tired of that, plus that it's bad to be 'vidya-game' style, but it's perfectly fine to point out every wrong thing in every post by every other person.

You may not understand, but that's just a different form of 'superiority complex,' as Duck so calls it. You're just going around, thinking you're 'educating.' Some people listen. Some people get fustrated with getting targetting for not being hardcore-accurate in a regular roleplay.

Please, if something says that this is a hardcore roleplay, based on nothing but fact, then obviously you're doing something wrong, because the likliness of a nuclear weapon NOT being launched is very unlikely, so there would be a helluva lot more radiation zones. And no one would trust each other. And people would be more likely to just loot and run, rather than become a nation again. Any place with a real power grid would be out of power, because surely a bomb would have hit one station, and knocked out the entire grid in the process, and set places back a century.

Please, if this is a hardcore roleplay, do tell, and I'll get up and leave. I'm not inclined to sit around with several guys breathing down my neck about every little thing. From location to a type of equipment on a guy, decades in the future.

This isn't meant to be a hardcore roleplaye, just because were keeping things accurate doesn't make it hardcore. Also I wouldn't say Dinh or Village or anyone from Precipice has any form of superiority complex. They are actually pretty fun to talk to, and are just trying to help people improve. Thats not a superiority complex.

Also part of the reason I say No Nuclear Exchange is because its pretty much a 100% chance of the entire world being destroyed in Nuclear Warfare, and that is not the intent of this roleplayer, very far from it.

I know.
I just don't like it when somebody constantly corrects everyone else. I MENTION being better at writing, and igt a giant hissy fit about how insulting and mean I am. While it wasn't a logical reaction, I still don't want other people to be offended.

Maybe perhaps list what they would have in terms of utilities, climate, and resources, and suggest a change for a select group of resources?

And in terms of military technology, war would make much BETTER mil-tech, not set it back. Demand will be met, and in war, miltech has high demand.

Military tech has grown, but Dinh told me stuff like your suits are still a bit of a ways away. We have lots of improvements to conventional weapons, and Rail-Guns and lasers, as well as more improvements to unmanned and air technology.

duck55223 said
Thats acceptable, but that opens up a crisis with the UK. You should also expect mass protest and rioting from those places.

Yeah, all 20,000 people. I will be fine.

duck55223 said
Military tech has grown, but Dinh told me stuff like your suits are still a bit of a ways away. We have lots of improvements to conventional weapons, and Rail-Guns and lasers, as well as more improvements to unmanned and air technology.

So as of right now, we have highly prototype exoskeletons that cost billions of dollars and look like this:



It's been thirty years but as of right now the regular military doesn't like them because they're big, clunky, and need lots of power. That's never going to change. Why saddle your entire land army with something that can run out of batteries and literally stick them and immobilize them somewhere? Where's the logistics for all those batteries going to come from? What happens when you've integrated your weapons into the suit so when you do need to ditch you're left defenseless? Armies would much rather invest in advanced body armor (which we're researching, mostly stuff like thermoplastics and even some exotic stuff like non-Newtonian shear-thickening fluid) that can allow mobility. The key word is mobility here.

Oh, and before you say anything about it's the future, we had prototype mechs in the 1960s:



Why don't we have AT-ATs today? Because they were impractical and nobody wanted to fun them, so we had to start over again with Bigdog and his friends.

Wouldn't an alternate power source potential change the logistics of those suits? I know such things tend to be taken seriously by even hard-science sci-fi writers, so I don't think we can discredit them entirely. Perhaps the best way to handle it would be to not have every one of your soldiers using them. I can see how those suits would be useful in urban combat scenarios where you are clearing a heavily combated area where things like stealth and maneuverability that traditional ground troops have benefit from whatever armor, strength, or heavy weapons advantages the suit guys have.

So you send a guy in a suit, maybe two, who can take the brunt of the fire (well, at least small arms fire. I imagine they aren't going to deflect a tank round). You are still using traditional infantry as the backbone of your military of course.

I can't see any power plants that might work that wouldn't otherwise be a big block on the back that could be about as vulnerable as a tank engine, but more devastating for the man in the suit. You either get batteries that are really heavy to get a long charge, and/or the material outlive the casing and rot the entire thing from the inside out. And often times these big batteries may not be the most effective their output vs discharge cycle rates. So you probably won't be much better off I'd think, if I read everything right.

Otherwise, the Lithium-Ion batteries the defense networks of the world would use have been deemed pretty unsafe.

Traditional ion batteries can quickly melt down, especially during re-charge and cause an explosion of breakdown of the batter in or between use. They need to be handled with a considerable amount of care and I imagine the last thing anyone in a power-suit would want is for something to trigger catastrophic heating, melting the battery and shutting him down as hot acid pours down his back or it explodes.

Though Lithium-Ion batteries are safer, they carry a lower discharge rate. You can get higher energy storage though, but you would need a lot to probably get close to the same output as heavier, traditional batteries.

But when they fail...



Lithium-Ion and their cousin Lithium-Ion-Polymer are only really useful in small-scale design like laptops, mobile phones, or maybe remote controlled vehicles or cars. Old-school lead acid batteries would have the discharge rate needed to maybe power a suit of power armor, but then we go back to Evan's point about the military trying to make exo-suits: it just makes them bigger and bulkier. You also can't really recharge them well, so when they're done they're done.

The closest thing to an exoskeleton suit that might even be maintained is bomb defusal armor:



And I don't think you could get a range of motion to throw grenades back, and heavier calibers could still knock you down.

You could probably mod them to strip them down for conventional combat. But you're likely to remove some of the bomb protection features to get a range of mobility needed to fire anything but a handgun, like removing the overlapping armor plates and removing foam blast protection. Joints might be reinforced with something like light-duty kevlar or stay to foam to absorb blast damage still, but might still render them vulnerable to shrapnel or bullet fire. You then got a lack of situation awareness from the helmet.

That's all assuming that battery technology has reached its peak in 2014, and that we will never come up with a superior form of storing energy. Which is ludicrous.

I agree that bodysuits should be bulky, and that they should have weaknesses alongside any strengths they have. At the same time, I don't think we should argue this down to the point that all we have is a 2014 World War simulator. If you are going to RP something in the future, you kind of have to loosen the rules and tech a little bit elsewise you pretty much just rubber band back to the modern day.

I suppose at the end of the day the thing we should be instilling is a tendency toward bending the rules in order to make something cool and interesting in the context of the plot rather than something overpowered and masturbatory as the original suit idea was. We don't want to swing so far to the extremes that we are just playing idea whack-a-mole and only allowing the things that we know to happen.

Suits should have weaknesses that counteract their strengths. If they are well armored and equipped with a lot of implements, then they should be slow. Perhaps soldiers who operate them are required to have certain sorts of cybernetic surgeries that take something away from them psychologically or physiologically. And of course, they shouldn't be invisible.

I can't really see Halo-tier armor being a thing within this century anyways. Maybe lite cybernetics, but not all the way to Turner's masturbatory efforts.

Bomb Suits will probably be the better base I feel, since in the end they're lower cost and don't have the complex engineering as developing Spartan Armor or T-51 armored suits would bring. Complexity is to welcome failure, so simplicity would be the best in the long-run or while grappling with R+D costs running alongside war-costs.

If a protective shell can be built to naturally compliment the natural power faculties of the soldier in the field and address the major concerns associated with certain combat roles, why try to over-complicate it and introduce more fatal points of failure?

Re-fitted bomb suits would probably give the best ballistic protection at low weight, especially in a world of durable low-weight plastics. At the same time for the sake of mobility you're sacrificing the redundant layers of protection to cushion explosive blasts and prevent internal organ failure associated with such things (like Blast Lung). But you could still probably have someone who can man a light machine gun or safely move ammo between members of the squad in high fire.

But sense the redundant measures have been removed and the suit would still need to be removed quickly for medical treatment, you got enough holes that maybe a well-placed bullet could cripple him, or if he got too close to an exploding grenade or RPG he'd get removed from the field.

I'm not looking for halo-tier armor. That's some serious stuff. This is just enough to keep the weight of the suit from falling entirely on the user, and then a bit more. It will not allow someone to be hit by a truck and survive with minor injuries. It isn't invincible: a grenade will shred and disable the armor, and keep the user from doing anything until he's either
A) Dies, from blood loss to a bullet
B) Manages to get out on his own
C) someone else helps him out

Small arms fire just wouldn't be able to penetrate, and the person wearing it would be able to heft a bit more than the usual soldier. Yes, traditional infantry is still the backbone and the main force. These soldiers would just be stationed at very important places, like right outside a server room, or at the entrance to a bunker where a high-priority individual is hiding. That kind of thing. They aren't going to be used in actual combat, like an assault on someone else, unless it is required.

I could have modded bomb-suits for what you just suggested, moving ammunition without getting shot dead at the first few rounds, or use a heavier weapon to keep someone else pinned down, without as much risk.

Vilageidiotx said
That's all assuming that battery technology has reached its peak in 2014, and that we will never come up with a superior form of storing energy. Which is ludicrous.

I agree that bodysuits should be bulky, and that they should have weaknesses alongside any strengths they have. At the same time, I don't think we should argue this down to the point that all we have is a 2014 World War simulator. If you are going to RP something in the future, you kind of have to loosen the rules and tech a little bit elsewise you pretty much just rubber band back to the modern day.

I suppose at the end of the day the thing we should be instilling is a tendency toward bending the rules in order to make something cool and interesting in the context of the plot rather than something overpowered and masturbatory as the original suit idea was. We don't want to swing so far to the extremes that we are just playing idea whack-a-mole and only allowing the things that we know to happen.

Suits should have weaknesses that counteract their strengths. If they are well armored and equipped with a lot of implements, then they should be slow. Perhaps soldiers who operate them are required to have certain sorts of cybernetic surgeries that take something away from them psychologically or physiologically. And of course, they shouldn't be invisible.

I believe in the bolded part, and I am working on the underlined part. They are slow, and they will be slow to turn. But they can also take more hits, and they can carry heavier weapons, such as a minigun, without as much strain or risk. They will have restrictions: They probably won't be able to aim upwards very well, nor would they be able to reach downward very well. But, they could aim a sniper rifle better than many others, because they can hook it up to their helmet, and use the suit's arms to make small adjustments according to wind, distance, etc.

They are no means invincible or superduper. They're just sacrificing speed, range of movement, money, and time, for armor, accuracy, slight strength.

The problem with repellng all small arms fire is that it can't. Heavy rounds can go through IFV armor. Even lighter rounds hitting the guy won't go through, but they'll still leave an impact. It'll knock you on your ass even in power armor, and it would be able to disrupt the delicate machinery inside.

Not to mention the previous ergonomic concerns, along with logistics and whatnot.

Well this is, what, 30 years in the future? I hope we're not so hopeless that we're still using regular armor by that time. Rounds would certainly impact, that's for sure, but with the research that the corporation's entire purpose was for, it wouldn't knock the armored soldier down unless he had his feet planted north/south, and the round hit the chest from the east/west. Properly braced, with the suit 'powered' up [because it obviously wouldn't just be an armor plate, with electronics and stuff right underneath], no, then it certainly would not knock the person down.

And I never said it was more powerful than a tank. When I say small-arms, I mean generic rounds, not armor piercing. I didn't say it was a tank all on its own.

Perhaps between here and there armor gets updated. We level up and get mithril. I dunno.

And also, quite exaggerating my point. I said that I'd only have a few of these suits, that they were expensive, and that they'd only be at high-priority places or people. Not that I'd have an entire army of them.

I say a few, and you go off on some kind of educational rant about how stupid it would be to arm my entire military with the suits, about how we're not supposed to have these Halo high-tier suits.

THEY AREN'T THAT POWERFUL. THEY AREN'T THAT NUMEROUS.
The APIRCA was funded by the UN, but mainly the US, before they broke apart. While the US Dollar would probably be worth even less, the story is that they were funded heavily by them. That way, they had developed the technology, and it wouldn't be lost because the APIRCA is based on hundreds of ships, that are constantly moving, and meant to be hard to find in the first place. There would be no major loss from a war of bombings and missile strikes, because APIRCA would be moving around in all directions, so effectively crippling them would only be by taking down those they purchase supplies from. And they can buy supplies from anyone who wants weapons, or body armor, or tools, or any of that.

I'm just saying that while nations would probably have a decrease in technology, due to the bombings and war and everything, the APIRCA, which is waterborn, mobile, and funded by the UN, would have a BOOST. In times of war, funding would increase for better tech, and more people would be moved over. Resources would be assigned, and generally, the war would have APIRCA flourish. So in the aftermath of the war, when APIRCA's masters have disintegrated and fallen, they will have free reign, no longer held up by anyone else. The North American Federation [I think it's called] would know of it, but wouldn't inherit the contracts that bind the former US to the APIRCA, nor would they be the same government, so the restriction policies and everything put into place could be called invalid, and so the APIRCA would legally and officially become independent, not just in name.

And so there could be a whole host of new things they could have designed in the time between their creation, and then end of the war.

The UN doesn't have enough money to fund research with. They're not that kind of organization. And they certainly wouldn't be now.

For weapons research, you're gonna most likely be reliant on an actual nation to fund you. Though I suppose private investment could also be used so long as you can show profit.

In the end the UN isn't a good place to claim initial funding from, or if they're even a party to it. What little they get is from voluntary payments by their member states, and across all functions they have to budget (currently) for five and a half billion dollars. This goes to just about everything they run, with the exception of UNICEF and their international food programs. They don't have anything that'd make a significant impact to, or start international R+D firms.

By contrast, the US military budget is six hundred-sixty four billion dollars, funding everything involving the maintenance of our armed forces, oversees costs, and subsidies for defense technology budget by the many numbers of defense firms operating in the US. And I don't think they often share the same company with anyone for very many projects.

And private company security, in-so-far as I know is shifting more to software focus and hacker defense. Gone now are the days the CEO of Hershey's can pass himself off as a normal person and get himself employed as guy on the factory floor to learn how his competitors are making chocolates. It's more likely that if they're going to contracted for corporate security there might be a larger anti-hacker emphasis and to watch, direct, and track data traffic in the company network to seal holes in firewalls should they arise.