dragoongfa said:
Camouflage always matter, if you look at the US army they have a camo pattern for every conceivable environment and urban setting. The plates don't even have to be modular, they could be painted over by droids in a matter of minutes which from a logistics side is far more efficient than having numerous camo uniforms for each soldier something that many modern militaries practice.
This is something that Lucas overlooked and it just looks stupid to anyone who has gone through basic military training.
It matters in almost every situation. I still think that, in a future sort of scenario, camo is not really important when boarding a starship. Well, it depends on the tech of the day. If we're talking Star Wars where ships are mostly corridors and relatively small spaces, you don't really need to worry about camo. If ships have huge, sprawling internal spaces (or if you're assaulting a space station) then, yes, something akin to urban camo is probably useful in that context. I just feel like most boarding actions would be over too quickly for it to matter. If you can't seize the bridge and engineering ASAP, the op has more than likely failed.
Painting over the plates by droids is actually a good idea that I hadn't thought of though.
Another option (that some friends and I use in a sci-fi setting we're developing) is having the plates be coated in an electro-reactive meta-material. It changes how it interacts with light when a tiny electric current is passed through it So, all you'd need is a small power-source in the suit (a tiny battery or something), and you could literally alter your plates' camo pattern at the press of a button. Especially in the case of space-based infantry, where you're already wearing a full-on vac-suit anyway, with its own internal power and life-support. The same tech could easily be scaled up to starships too, not that it really matters for anything besides looks, since distances are so vast.
Knights didnt have to hide from bullets but I am glad you agree
What you are describing are modern tactical vests, in short a soldier wears his camo uniform and over it he wears a tactical vest which is modular and provides exactly what you say, here is a RL example:
http://images.military.com/media/equipment/personal-equipment/improved-outer-tactical-vest-iotv/improved-outer-tactical-vest-004.jpg
Pretty much, yeah. Although I think the introduction of more plates is probably going to be inevitable as weapons increase in power. There's going to be more shrapnel, applied in ever more powerful and nastier ways. It really depends on the way that weapons wind up developing though, more than anything, but yeah, a lot of it is just about aesthetics too. Which I'm usually fine with. If you want to take some liberties with aesthetics, that's fine, just try to have some real reasoning behind it.
Like, with stormtroopers in particular, I don't mind the armor itself. There are ways to construct it differently to enhance movement, and the coloring is an issue, but the basic idea could be made to work. The helmets though, jesus those are terrible. I know they're iconic, but they both look silly and are terribly designed from a practical standpoint. I'm a fan of fully-enclosed helmets for infantry, especially as battlefield tech becomes more advanced, and things like HUDs, and more sophisticated communications networks become standard-issue, but the guys wearing them should actually be able to see, lol.
I agree, in one of my novel proposals to GW for a W40K novel (sadly denied) this was the basic weapon of the regiment.
http://dragoongfa.deviantart.com/art/Caledonian-Highlanders-262904709?q=gallery%3Adragoongfa%2F28258413&qo=6
And a direct quote: between a cauterized wound and a bleeding wound, the bleeding one is preferable.
I'm... going to have to give that a full read
Got through the first few pages, and it seems pretty good. Too early on my end to really get into reading yet though. Still waking up.
My personal view of energy weapons though, I'm not a fan of them in an anti-personnel role. Like, anti-vehicle, that's great. But, unless an energy weapon is just outright powerful enough to kill the target, I'd rather have a kinetic weapon that is going to pierce, and rip, and tear and do crippling damage if it doesn't secure an outright kill.
With futuristic materials and coatings, it's (in theory) much easier to armor something against an energy weapon than it is to protect them from a kinetic one.
I already commented on how Power Armor has it's issues, look at my previous posts
Yeah, I've missed a few since I last checked the thread.
I'll say that my main issue is that far too many sci-fi settings treat powered armor like, well, just a suit of armor. In practice, it's really more like a micro-vehicle than it is body armor. It's a complex, highly-technical system that is going to require a lot of maintenance and training to really get the most out of. You can't just, like, store it in a closet and pop it on when you need it.
In short space ships that are traveling at a fraction of the speed of light cannot be targeted due to relativistic effects, you simply cannot know where they are at a given point. Missiles fired at such long ranges will inevitable miss and the only way to hit the enemy is to clash with each other at ridiculous speeds in extremely short ranges.
It may sound ridiculous but that's the only way for relativistic effects to be nullified. Give at least the first book a spin and you will see how even this style of combat can be awesome.
Under completely normal conditions, I'd actually say that makes a lot of sense. I know in the Honorverse books, Weber gets around that due to the ships' propulsion systems. They use an extremely powerful gravity-based drive, and while gravity waves only propagate at the speed of light, in that setting they also radiate ripples along the lowest boundary of hyperspace that travel FTL and can be detected by ships in real-space. So, they can actually monitor the location of an enemy ship in real-time. The main issue with extreme range engagements in that setting is how wildly inaccurate missiles get the further out you shoot, since they have to rely on their internal AI's more and more, as the lag from the host ship increases.
In the sci-fi setting I help with, ships get around that by using recon drones. There's no way to sense a ship faster than the speed of light, but FTL communications do exist, so if you can get a recon drone in range and shadow them with it, it can relay what it sees back to the host ship using its onboard FTL comm to kind of circumvent relativistic issues. Of course, the enemy *is* going to be looking for them to try and pop them, and sending out drones of its own to find you. Our engagement ranges are much shorter than the Honor books though, we just don't have the same level of insane gravity drives to send missiles out that far. 1 light-second is about average for a ship-to-ship brawl, but they can go shorter or longer ranged sometimes.
I'll have to look into those books though. Always looking for some good sci-fi to read ^^
