Battledress and Battlepods

[davidence]

Whats the difference between Battledress and Battlepods?

I play CT and came across Battlepods in "At Close Quarters". What are their features? It seems they weigh as much as a car. Are they mini-mechs?

 

[mike wightman]

The BattlePod was introduced in T4's Emperor's Arsenal. It is basically an ovoid, heavily armoured, single person TL14+ grav-vehicle.
The operator sits/lies in a form fitting, cramped control area.
It offers the advantages of greater mobility and heavier armour for a given volume (at least that's what it says in the book ) and is not much larger than a standard suit of BattleDress.

 

[davidence]

Does it mount weapons?

 

[mike wightman]

Yep, an FGMP and a point defense VRF laser. It also has a couple of "arms" for manipulating objects.

 

[tucker2]

Damn, that is a fine idea. Surplus or civ versions for Belters or shipyards, like that. It seems like a good merc tool as well, less expensive to maintain than battledress and easier to procure if the armament were more like RAM-autoGL and missiles or just a MG and lasers.

 

[Vargas]

I always figured the precursor to battledress was a much clunkier 'more vehicle than armor' suit. Think of the cargo loader from Aliens streamlined, armored and armed.

 

[davidence]

I have been reading John Ringo's books as of late. "A Hymn Before Battle" and "Gust Front". Pretty fun reads. They talk about Armored Combat Suits (ACS). I kind of imagined battledress. But the ACS equipment seems far more bluky, and more like a Battlepod.

The ACS equipment has some cool features. Waste is recycled into food. Slow drugs are injected at request. Fast drugs too. In the book an ACS platoon is trapped under the rubble of a building. Since there is no chance of immediate revocery, the ACS injects a Fast drug to suspend the trooper until his is recoverable. Very cool.

The ACS also has a winch with a universal connector.

The ACS seems to have grav ability, but the main mode of locomotion is legs. It seemed that the grav was just enought to suspend the suit at 0G. It help in case of a fall.

Anyone else read these books and care to comment?

-David

 

[jfwking]

Good books.

The ACS run on suit batteries apart from O'neals custom job with its antimatter pile. They also encounter lots of problems with the hyper velocity guns using a lot of power when they switch to local (earth) tech ammo.

The battle pods were intended to get around the problems with putting armour around a human being (the odd shape). They become 1 man grav tanks.

However they also remove a main point of using infantry since they are unable to perform unimportant details like going through normal sized doors or operating in buildings and ships (sarcasm off).

The pods are a mid point between powered personal armour and crewed vehicles and would be around at all tech levels past availability of grav. As scout/raider vehicles they are fine. You still need proper infantry though.

 

[LordVince]

Yup. You can use all the fancy Weapons and Tech and Vehicles and such to TAKE the territory -- but you still need the common Grunt With A Gun on-site to KEEP it!

 

[mike wightman]

You're not going to keep it long if they counterattack with meson artillery support

 

[davidence]

So, for the heck of it, I used the CT Robot book (Book 8) and tried to design something like the ACS. This is what I came up with. Let me know what you think?


Model: ACS-100X
URP: 75372-A6-LM320-PFB3(F)
Cost: 1,392,250 Cr.
Mass: 595 kg
Fuel: 24 l
Duration: 5 days
TL: 15
Hits/Armour: 40/100 (combat w/reflect)
2 med arms
4 v. light tentacles {I thought 4 tentacles comming out of the suit would be cool }
2 visual sensors ( +tele +LI +AIR )
2 audio sensors ( +sen )
1 touch sensor ( +sen )
1 spotlight
1 speaker
1 power interface
1 brain interface
1 program interface
1 zero-g package
1 radio (500km)
1 obscuration device
1 holo recorder (3D)
i holo display (3D)

1 gauss rifle
1 RAM grenade launcher

Notes:
1. The suit has 130 l of space for pilot.
2. No software is installed except for the Logic (High Auto) and Control programs (Full). And the brain is just big enough to hold that software.
3. Electronic Circut Protect could be added.
4. Even though the suit's main locomotion is legs, I added 6 LT Grav Modules to provide 600kg of thrust to keep the suit true to those mentioned in the books.

 

[tucker2]

I was thinking that a g-lift gundog would be a great companion for the battlepod, maybe even docks on the thing. It would allow some of the door-knocking stuff, especially if it fed sensor data to the pod direct.

Maybe just some drones for scouting work, if the user is cheap, or disposable help is needed.

 

[slyen2002]

whats the point of the tetincales other than cool factor?

how come it doesn't have legs?

 

[jappel]

Tentacles are for manipulating things you don't want to blow up.

As for legs - once you have cheap & effective anti-gravity, legs become superfluous, or so goes the thinking.

John