combat armor

[sabredog]

Is combat armour in YTU lighter than the TL8 stuff that's worn by troops from 1st-world nations now? It in itself is still heavy, especially after wearing it for several hours without a break.

Even more important, it's great at retaining heat. That's nice in cold weather (unless it's so cold you need CW clothing, in which case it's a pain to have to wear that stuff underneath) but hellacious in hot weather. There's no surer way to lose weight than to have to have that stuff on for days at a time in unpleasant arid locations in summer. In those circumstances I'd be giving players -DMs because of the distraction the sweat, and the fatigue it generates.

IMTU battle dress, being sealed and powered, is cooled, making it sooooo much better to wear in a lot of environments!

You're right, and my perspective it kind of counter-intuitive. But there is a logic to my madness.

I understand the heat issues from wearing body armor of various types all day myself, and you're right: it is like wearing a wetsuit under a wool uniform, and all the gear on top of that just makes things so much worse. Mainly, from my perspective and that of other people I know, the "more tiring to wear" part comes from having to wear a "full suit" of armor as opposed to being able to just wear components needed at the time.

For example, if I had to respond to a call requiring I also put on an assault vest loaded up with all the tacticool crap we had to have and its associated trauma plates, plus then put on a full gas mask because gas was going to be used, then I'd start to feel pretty constricted. It gets exhausting in various ways just wearing a mask for hours. MOPP was even worse - you felt you couldn't breathe at all and some guys freaked out from claustrophobia at various times in the suits. But at least police masks are more (slightly) comfortable.

And the armor is a pain to wear, and uncomfortable, but not so much as people think once you get used to it and how to wear it. And how to wear your gear with it. And move. And...oh, yeah, it's a pain, but getting shot is worse so...

I just assume that by the time the future 'arrives' combat armor will be lighter and more self-supporting as far as the load goes and so, more comfortable to wear and strapping yourself into a walking coffin.

I equate wearing battle dress to wearing powered MOPP gear in a lot of ways. The suit pretty much wears you, and while it is self-supporting, it is still fatiguing to wear it since you have to wear the whole suit - you can't just wear, say, the clamshell upper and helmet. I do assume IMATU that combat armor also has an exhaust and cooling system in it given the TL the stuff shows up in in the strange alternate universe Traveller posits.

The best TL-15 BD IMATU has a full virtual reality helmet display that makes it seem as if the wearer isn't even wearing a helmet. THat helps some from the psychological direction. But still, being sealed inside a moving sarcophagus for days at a time is going to have its own psychological and physical challenges for the wearer and in my book it will be an assorted of things that fit under a generic "tiring".

But, as always, your mileage may vary in your own games.

 

[sabredog]

That heat exhaust could be considerable; people show up really neatly on TI even without the mechanism of having all their generated heat shunted out of a single port. Exhaust systems on vehicles a like beacons on that system. In that sense the narrative may be a little off.

Have you ever read The Forever War? There is an interesting scene in it where the trainees are on a frozen world (realllly frozen) and they are wearing their powered suits. The cold makes the suits run worse, but more importantly, the exhausts on the backs are dangerous because of the cold ground. They are warned to not let the exhaust touch the ice or it could be bad.

One recruit has that happen when she is tired and sits with her back to a chunk of ice - boom. The explosion from the heat exchange between the subliming ice and the exhaust takes her head off.

So many ways technology can be used to torment players.

BTW: Mercenary rules has chiller cans for masking the exhausts on combat armor and battle dress from thermal imaging. Always carry chiller cans....something players always forget.

 

[Condottiere]

You could say, she head it coming.

 

[sabredog]

Bah-dum-bum!

 

[Ulsyus]

Have you ever read The Forever War? There is an interesting scene in it where the trainees are on a frozen world (realllly frozen) and they are wearing their powered suits. The cold makes the suits run worse, but more importantly, the exhausts on the backs are dangerous because of the cold ground. They are warned to not let the exhaust touch the ice or it could be bad.

One recruit has that happen when she is tired and sits with her back to a chunk of ice - boom. The explosion from the heat exchange between the subliming ice and the exhaust takes her head off.

So many ways technology can be used to torment players.

BTW: Mercenary rules has chiller cans for masking the exhausts on combat armor and battle dress from thermal imaging. Always carry chiller cans....something players always forget.

The effect of the chiller cans may be to cool the exhaust unit: they heat up simply as a function of their operation. But even after the unit itself is reset to an ambient temperature (and we'll ignore for now the effect that may have on the material of the unit) the exhaust heat itself would still continue to be emitted and so visible to TI or multi-spectral sensors.

To prevent that there'd need to be some sort of chiller unit that dealt with the exhaust heat, but that has to be powered somehow, leading to more heat from the power, and the chiller would, AFAIK still need some sort of heat exchange. Now if the heat generated could be used in some sort of closed-cycle system to augment power generation in the suit, that may solve part of the problem. It wouldn't be enough to power the whole system, but it might be enough to act as a way of dumping the heat within the unit and so eliminate messy telltale signs that uncooperative threat forces could easily pick up.

 

[sabredog]

The chiller cans cool the exhaust gases to mask the heat signature. It might seem clunky, and IMHO it is, but there it is. I think no matter what you do to generate it, the generation of and/or expenditure of power is going to generate heat that has to go somewhere. The wearer's body generates enough heat to cook the person if they can't vent it somehow. And the heat can't just be cooled or stored.

This is a huge reason why I don't buy the idea of flying battle dress or grav belts on infantry except maybe to make it easier to get over some terrain, like a river. Even now if you are out in the open FLIR will find you and the only protection is really hiding in the rubble and terrain masking. If infantry in a world with far more advanced detection and tracking systems is caught in the open - and flying is as "open" as it gets, they will be easy prey.

And this is just talking about heat, we haven't touched on electronic signatures like you probably have with battle dress. Which could be another reason to favor combat sometimes, or in the majority with BD being kept for special forces. The more comm gear, guided weapons, high energy weapons, and signal leakage off electronic servos, powerpacks, etc.., the more things there are to track you with. Even with the logistics train of BD suits will probably start having all sorts of emissions problems as they get used in the field for an extended period in combat since they won't be in the shop every night for maintenance.

A good analogy is a tank. They spend far more time being worked on to just keep running than they do actually fighting. Once they are engaged in combat operations the time the crew can spend working on them to keep the tracks tight, the gun bore-sighted, the electronics tuned, the engine running, the wheels lubed, etc.. is reduced dramatically. Depending on a particular military's doctrines the tank might only get serviced in a depot and the crew barely know how to put a thrown track back on.

SO every day in combat operations means the tank's relative combat effectiveness drops. If it gets too far away from the logistics train and something breaks it might stay broken. And that can have a cascade effect. Statistics on the German Panzer Divisions in Russia from Barbarossa to Bagration are revealing on what happens surprisingly quickly to even that tech level of complicated combat machines in extended operations.

Just imagine the same thing with Battle Dress. Now granted a hit from an FGMP is pretty decisive and the matter becomes moot, but assuming that most of the time the BD trooper will be fighting lower TL forces and what will happen in a lot of continuous battering and stresses brought by explosives, slug and energy fire, and running around. What do you think the reliability of BD can realistically be? What if the suit is 'killed' by a malfunctioning power pack or damaged knee joint? How many extra suits need to be in supply to keep the unit combat effective? How are the suits (and the trooper inside) recovered?

BD gets complicated. Combat armor doesn't. If the relative protection is close (I have it within a point or two in the same TL) then CA is the better way to go for the vast majority of troops. Special forces trained to operate as commando units, extra hazardous/exotic environments, and maybe in Space are good uses for BD.

Just some thoughts on the overall subject I rarely hear anyone mention, if at all.

 

[mike wightman]

You just use makers to fabricate the replacement parts... :devil:

 

[Condottiere]

The more complicated a piece of equipment is, the more likely it will breakdown.

You could have maintenance points to keep track of that, and how many support personnel it takes to keep it running.

But the central piece remains the human soldier, who'll also need downtime.

Ye battledressed battalion flying column could be used principally as reconnaisance, assault, and flanking, with the rest of the troops busily trying to catch up and secure the area seized, maybe even carry on pursuit, more slowly.

 

[mike wightman]

Discussions like this always need reminding from time to time that we are talking about stuff as far removed from us as the Greek phalanx.

TL13 BD will be made of self repairing machinery, the suit will be so smart that today we would consider it an AI, that sort of thing.

 

[infojunky]

Ok, I have a thoroughly mid tech game in my head, so looking at this question I find myself translating into terms I have borrowed from various Wargames, notably Stargrunt 2. Thus Battle dress is powered armor large and clumsy, while combat armor is a full Hardsuit.

In traveller terms I use the numbers given in AHL/Striker.

Flak Jacket	4
VaccSuit/Cloth	5
Combat Environment Suit	6
Combat Armor	8
Battledress	10

I also must admit these are what I can get miniatures for, thus the visual elements drive available game elements around here.

Now I generally follow CT standards in that suits don't generally have weight in play, now if you get hit in the power pack that is subject to change.

 

[infojunky]

is there any thread on the board or any document elsewhere that discusses how combat armor actually works? if it is unpowered then given the weapons it is meant to deflect or reduce, making it light enough for a soldier to wear and still be mobile seems an issue.

Have you looked at CT's book on the Zhodani? It has a section on Combat armor.

 

[sabredog]

Discussions like this always need reminding from time to time that we are talking about stuff as far removed from us as the Greek phalanx.

TL13 BD will be made of self repairing machinery, the suit will be so smart that today we would consider it an AI, that sort of thing.

Doesn't that venture into the realm of magic tech? What is it repairing itself with, and to what extent can it do that while the wearer is still inside? What if the wearer is dead, does the suit just keep going? And if the suit is that good, why wouldn't the enterprising trooper just let it do the fighting while he went off to get a sandwich?



I prefer the idea that the suit is there to try to protect the soldier as best as can be done on a nuclear battlefield in exotic environments and be a cool thing for players to have once in a while because science fiction says so. Like grav belts and starships. Getting too far into the details tends to kill that for me other than as a purely intellectual exercise.

Dammit Jim, I'm a game referee not a rocket scientist.

 

[kilemall]

After the above clarification about what Chadwick meant by CA, I now think of CES as stormtrooper armor (with a helmet added), CA as noted as powered armor that neutralizes the weight, and BD as the heavy support version that carries big lasers and RP-As for squad firepower, with additional sensors and integrated equipment.

Look at that, chiller can on the belt, environmental equipment on the stylized back position, with possibly exhausts.

 

[flykiller]

Here's a picture I found

Frank Chadwick gave a talk about Striker at Celesticon back in 2011.

thanks.

Have you looked at CT's book on the Zhodani? It has a section on Combat armor.

the section lists its features, but not how it works. thanks though.

 

[sabredog]

After the above clarification about what Chadwick meant by CA, I now think of CES as stormtrooper armor (with a helmet added), CA as noted as powered armor that neutralizes the weight, and BD as the heavy support version that carries big lasers and RP-As for squad firepower, with additional sensors and integrated equipment.

Doesn't that contradict Chadwick's own descriptions of CES and Combat Armor in the Mercenary book he wrote? Not to mention the illustration inside it.

 

[kilemall]

Doesn't that contradict Chadwick's own descriptions of CES and Combat Armor in the Mercenary book he wrote? Not to mention the illustration inside it.

I only recall the cloth-armored laser FO illustration.

The Mercenary description does indeed say CA is not powered but does say it is similar in construction and provides similar protection.

I was trying to reverse engineer BD and CA via Striker to deal with the crazy powerful RAM GL, and kept running into weight issues, yet the armor ends up being far cheaper then the finished CA product. So the retcon makes far more sense then the original LBB4 description.

Most of the more modern BD rules skip over that CT bit about BD providing surprise bonuses. I try to definitely keep that.

 

[aramis]

CA has often been interpreted as "Stormtrooper Armor" - especially in fanzines.

 

[mike wightman]

Going by Frank's description I would use the battle suits in the Expanse as examples of combat armour, battledress capable of carrying around up to 200kg of heavy weapons is going to be much bigger, unless the TL13+ strength augmentation machinery is some sort of super-strength artificial muscle...

 

[jec10]

Going by Frank's description I would use the battle suits in the Expanse as examples of combat armour, battledress capable of carrying around up to 200kg of heavy weapons is going to be much bigger, unless the TL13+ strength augmentation machinery is some sort of super-strength artificial muscle...

Sure. But as already noted, Frank is contradicting his earlier self. If Combat Armour is actually a powered suit then that wasn't communicated well at earlier stages of Traveller's evolution. And it raises new issues like, how is it powered? What endurance doez it have under power? Can the suit power weapons, communicators, sensors, etc?

 

[mike wightman]

A contradiction in Traveller? Surely not :CoW: :devil:

Frank Chadwick and Dave Nilsen contradicted just about all previous Traveller technology canon in TNE

More seriously, change one word in the LBB:4 entry for combat armour and we get:

Combat Armor: Similar in construction to battle dress, combat armor provides comparable protection and (unlike the combat environment suit) may be pressurized for use in vacuum or conditions of extremely low air pressure. Combat armor dampens heat signature in the same fashion as the combat environment suit. Combat armor is not augmented and thus troops so equipped may not fire high energy weapons designed exclusively for use with battle dress (PGMP-13 and FGMP-14).

Note that in LBB:1 vac suits have a mass that counts against character carrying capacity, while heavier and more bulky combat armour does not. This suggest there must be some sort of aid to dealing with its mass and bulk.

As to how it is powered, if it is electrically powered artificial muscle then TL11 battery and energy conversion technology probably obviate the need to track energy usage.

By the way does anyone know what is the battery life of a suit of battledress is?