My attempt at power armor

[MJ12 Commando]

I'd do it as a combination. Blinding laser systems with limited traverse mounted on the back, chest, and head or so, that you can use both to mark targets (as a laser designator), set people's eyes on fire, and confuse missiles.

Combine that with a few canisters of flechettes built into the chest and back plates that can be launched in the way of an incoming missile.

The hard armor itself should be proof against the resulting fragments, although I personally would want to stay quite far away if I wasn't in power armor because the hard-kill would spew out a lot of sharp bits of fast moving metal.

And explosive reactive armor has to be quite strong to do its job actually. For reactive armor, if he wants that on his suits, I'd use NxRA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_a ... ive_armour) because it's not going to spew jets of shrapnel, the filler is going to be light enough that it has pretty much zero weight penalty, and it doesn't blow up.

[Ford Prefect]

Given that they don't have the power or heat dissipation for a full on missile melting laser grid, I'd think that sort of system would work out well; especially given it has multiple utilities. Also, I'd almost suggest electric reactive armour, but that might be fairly difficult (or unsafe!) for use on something that is basically skin tight.

[MJ12 Commando]

NxRA has the advantage that it doesn't require quite as much power as electrical reactive armor and can be combined with electric reactive armor if the spacing is filled with a nonconductive liner, like, say, rubber or some other insulator.

That way you get both benefits, I believe, which adds quite a bit more to protection. Still not sure if it'll stop a hit dead on from a RPG-7, but it'll probably stop smaller HEAT rounds quite well.

[Ford Prefect]

And hey, it's Advanced Technology (tm). It should be able to do both.

[Ayrix]

And hey, it's Advanced Technology (tm). It should be able to do both.

precisely, my universe, I say it should stop RPGs

I actually like the idea of smoke launcher studs all around the body of the suit along with the integrated laser system, seems that it would be pretty functional.

But anyway, I have a sort of off topic question, from all the talk of artificial muscle being used to support this machine, can you possibly have a larger mech, say one that the pilot sits in a cockpit in the chest, perhaps 8-10 feet off the ground?
Not that Im planning on replacing my loveable power armor but it more of a random thought.

[MJ12 Commando]

You *could* build something of that sort, it'd just be stupid.

That is all.

[Shroom Man 777]

Unless the artificial muscle allows your power armor to leap tall buildings in a single bound and shit.

[Turin]

While my first instinct when I see a detailed description in the course of a story of how a piece of tech works in-universe is almost always "yawn," it seems to me if you're going to do it that you're missing a big chunk of the tech here -- the sensor/coms package.

It seems to me that you've completely missed the point as to the purpose of this technical description. Technical descriptions created for reference are extremely useful to the writer for a variety of reasons. They can define hard limits on what the technology can do, so then you can remain consistent. At the same time, it allows outsiders to view the technology and provide fixes for anything we percieve as being problematic; by creating this technical description, Ayrix has been alerted to possibly nonsennsical parts of the suit's capabilities, and can correct them when it comes to actually writing the story.

There's nothing wrong, and plenty good, with having consistent technology. I just worry when I see someone fussing over the details of exactly what armor materials can save the soldier from an RPG hit. It's really irrelevant as long as the same RPG hit does roughly the same thing each time. Each word written down has an "opportunity cost."

"Knowing capabilities" doesn't necessarily equal "knowing how it works in detail," however, which was where I felt the thread was headed. Thus my warning.

[Turin]

ghetto edit: Ignore that "however"... I changed the order of the sentences around and now it doesn't make sense with that word in. Sorry.