How stealthy is BD?

[Renaissance Man]

BTW, also kudos to Jec-10:

Forgive me my obsession with cost effectiveness. For the last twenty years the main Traveller I have played is what we called in the '80s "Rapp's Ten Million Credit Striker"

For me All this speculation about Traveller tech is about generating an arresting set of details for role-playing. But your experience with table-top Travller strategy helps - cost effectiveness is a factor in any army, and your obsession with it is forgiven and lauded.

 

[Anthony]

What sort of protection does military battle dress offer in the GT universe? i.e. is it invulnerable to most man-portable weapons below an FGMP-12 (I think that is the GT equivalent of an FGMP-15, correct me if I'm wrong, not a Gurps man sorry). How does it fare against things like autocannon or RAM grenades?

Military battle dress is armored enough that FGMP fire will not reliably kill it. RAM grenades won't touch it, for autocannons it depends on what you mean by an autocannon. Anti-tank missiles will put it down, however. One of the complaints about GURPS Traveller has been overpowered battle dress, a Redding is about 275kg unloaded, includes an integral grav belt, and has the equivalent of a striker AV of 30 vs kinetics, 35 vs energy, 43 vs shaped charge.

What are the sensor detection rules like in GT? Can you detect a battle dress sized target with radar for instance?

Yes, but it's usually easier with passive sensors.

 

[jec10]

Military battle dress is armored enough that FGMP fire will not reliably kill it. RAM grenades won't touch it, for autocannons it depends on what you mean by an autocannon. Anti-tank missiles will put it down, however. One of the complaints about GURPS Traveller has been overpowered battle dress, a Redding is about 275kg unloaded, includes an integral grav belt, and has the equivalent of a striker AV of 30 vs kinetics, 35 vs energy, 43 vs shaped charge.

Yes, but it's usually easier with passive sensors.

Funny isn't it how the complaints about Battle Dress in CT/Striker/AHL and MT were that it was not heavily armoured enough given the threats out there! I've always wondered how they chose the AV ratings they did for BD in CT/Striker and MT. They don't seem to bear any relation to the threat environment, which I'd expect to play a role (along with how much armour the suit can carry of course!).

 

[Anthony]

Funny isn't it how the complaints about Battle Dress in CT/Striker/AHL and MT were that it was not heavily armoured enough given the threats out there! I've always wondered how they chose the AV ratings they did for BD in CT/Striker and MT. They don't seem to bear any relation to the threat environment, which I'd expect to play a role (along with how much armour the suit can carry of course!).

Well, the equivalent of 5 cm steel is 0.357cm of bonded superdense, with a mass of 54 kg per square meter; as a human has a surface area of about 1.8 square meters, this says the armor on a suit of combat armor/battledress should be 100+ kg (how much + depends on how much bigger BD is than human), which is order of magnitude greater than the canonical weight of combat armor, and at least a factor of two above battle dress. I suspect they just came up with numbers they liked.

 

[Ishmael]

yep..
I once worked out combat armor ratings based on body area and armor thickness that keeps it at a mass that unpowered troopers could handle and still move freely ( unencumbered )

iirc, I got about armor=6 or so (max).

 

[Icosahedron]

Yeah, I did some calculations along those lines and came to the same conclusions. I ended up handwaving it by having the armour 'layered' (cloth undergarment with BSD on top, etc) and then using the Striker 'armour addition' rule to cheat, er, modify the results. I came out with the book values eventually and my BD had a mass of about 80kg IIRC.
Personal armour is not counted toward encumbrance, of course.

 

[Ishmael]

I actually put explosive reactive armor to it to go against heap rounds and energy weapons ( a bit of a handwave for ablat. ) and it has a danger space..hehehehe
Personal armor is counted toward encumberance (MTU only I guess )

I 'build' bd as an afv and treat it like a one-man tank, basicly. They come out more like combat walkers in 2300, but thats perfect for me. Powered armor for infantry support weapons..( specialized firing positions. exoskeleton acts as recoil carriage )...infantry in ca. ERA here too......hvfsds fired from a 20mm anti-material rifle to combat it. No grav tech. IMTU bd is a vehicle.
Personal armor is counted toward encumberance (MTU only I guess )
( I like lower tech stuff than the OTU )

 

[far-trader]

I actually put explosive reactive armor to it to go against heap rounds and energy weapons ( a bit of a handwave for ablat. ) and it has a danger space... hehehehe...

Oh that auto be fun when the punk with the heavy SMG starts hosing your platoon of close formation BD Marines :devil:

Personal armor is counted toward encumberance (MTU only I guess )

Heck no, MTU too, never understood the reasoning of that rule. Well, I suspected it was so a soldier could carry a decent kit without being naked, but it still didn't make sense.

 

[Ishmael]

Oh that auto be fun when the punk with the heavy SMG starts hosing your platoon of close formation BD Marines

naww..era doesn't react to kinetic penetrators ( the underlying armor will stop those ) and if heap rounds are used, it'll look catastrophically fantastic albeit harmless, but if those troopers are so stupid enough to be bunched so close together, they deserve all the grief and grenades/napalm/boom-stuff they get handed....not that they'll get hurt from heaps, etc if the armor is doing its job. ( and it does imtu )

'tis my handwave to make ablat armor interesting....ERA instead. only works against energy penetrators, not kinetic ones.

 

[far-trader]

naww..era doesn't react to kinetic penetrators ( the underlying armor will stop those ) and if heap rounds are used, it'll look catastrophically fantastic albeit harmless, but if those troopers are so stupid enough to be bunched so close together, they deserve all the grief and grenades/napalm/boom-stuff they get handed....not that they'll get hurt from heaps, etc if the armor is doing its job. ( and it does imtu )

'tis my handwave to make ablat armor interesting....ERA instead. only works against energy penetrators, not kinetic ones.

Yeah, what I meant by the heavy reference was HEAP to set off the ERA. And of course I wouldn't expect the troops to get bunched up unless the punks had set it up that way. Of course the fireworks show with the ERA going off is just the prelude to the real action, once that's defeated it's time to burn some holes in the basic armor.



Just having some fun. Not knocking the idea, I like it. Have played with some ERA designs in TNE FF&S but never got it to work quite right. Seemed like any design was better off just going straight armor. The only use for ERA seemed to be a cheap easy add on to already constructed items. And of course the danger space was often a real pain for everything else, even friendlies.

 

[dccarles]

Well, I suspected it was so a soldier could carry a decent kit without being naked, but it still didn't make sense.

I use it, too. Otherwise TL 5 troops have no reason not to wear mesh - ahistorical, except for sniper armour. (But mesh armour is only 2 kg(!) in CT/Striker, so my TL 5 troops end up wearing it anyway.)

--Devin