Supersonic Swords and Gun-Kata

[Connor MacLeod]

I should note that my reading of this discussion is that krakonfour seems to be approaching his writing and worldbuilding more from 'what I like' rather than 'what the audience might like.' Ostensibly he seems interested in internal consistency and detail, but he's rather selective in how he applies that. Certain things receive inordinate levels of attention to detail/worldbuilding, whilst other aspects seem to be rather blatantly handwaved or just blithely shrugged off as if they are easily dealt with.

So in essence you're writing in a way that gives you the worst of both worlds because of how utterly unbalanced this approach is. If you want to have your supersonic sword-power armor warriors then you should just decide to write it that way and ignore all the extraneous detail, because as this thread demonstrates this is just going to cause you problems (and thats not just idle speech - a number of baen authors like David Weber have fallen precisely into that trap, and have segments of his fandom and critics devoted to nothing but picking apart his books over how 'wrong' the worldbuilding is... simply because of the level of detail he interjected.) And if you want the detailed worldbuilding and realism/internal consistency... then you're going to have to stop handwaving or brushing off some of the things people like Simon keep bringing up. I should further note this makes it even more clear that you don't seem to have taken your audience into account that you will intend to write for - casual sci fi fans who would overlook the stuff you handwaved aren't going to care about all the superfluous detail you interject into that story, except perhaps to note how off-balance it makes it and how it pads out the writing. And if you're writing for technical fans.. well... technical types have a wide variety of tastes and interests, variable suspension of disbeliefs, etc. and that disjointed approach is going to invite criticism from them because its going to stand out like a sore thumb to someone (and technical nerds can be some of the most pedantic nerds on the planet, especially when it comes to realism/internal consistency.)

Overall, this 'pattern' of yours is what creates the confusion and frustration most are experiencing in this thread. On one hand you claim to want to discuss it, and seem to want questions answered, but the way you address people's responses makes it clear you either really didn't want criticism, or you're steering the conversation towards specific answers you want, or just haven't really thought this out as much as you think you have (and I suspect I'm not the only one to think this.) If you're actually interested in feedback and criticism, then stop fighting people and listen to what they say, because no one person can know everything and the key to getting details right (apart from not overdoing it) is to listen to people who clearly know what they are talking about.

[Formless]

Ask Connor MacLeod sometime if you want to hear a good rant.

I'm not sure how to take this statement did I make the rant or was I on the receiving end of it (given my past history, etither could apply lol.)

Neither. I mean that you could rant about meaningless meaningful maths (in Star Wars fandom esp.) all day.

[krakonfour]

Downsides: they have to fly low and slow even if they don't want to, and are unusually vulnerable to ground fire.

I wrote before that travelling low and slow was actually the best defense against lasers, since there is no reliable way to armor planes against lasers, so they'd have to use terrain cover to their advantage. As far as I know, helicopters can utilize terrain much better than fixed-wing jet craft.
If they are vulnerable to ground fire, I guess ground-skimming aircraft are too?

In fact, I could see a combined arms tactic where an infantry unit points missiles at the helicopters, the latter break away to give their lasers more time to shoot the incoming projectiles, and in doing so, expose themselves to air-to-air lasers (AALs).

I am not at all sure that's accurate.

There was an articles criticizing the YAL-1 laser by saying that the predicted performance of 600km-range missile interception were based only on countering the effects of thermal blooming (done through adaptive optics), and ignoring the effects of aerosol scattering (which we cannot compensate for) that could cause the spot size to widen exponentially to 1km within 8-20km of humid air, but I'm having a fucking hard to time to find it again.

PS: Did another search, still did not find it, but it turns out '8-20km' is in fact the altitude where aerosol scattering and moisture droplets have a much less significant effect. So yeah, you were right in doubting the figures.

Not necessarily. There are all kinds of battle plans that rely heavily on feints, distractions, diversions, misdirections, and maskirovka. The point is that all these things will be unusually effective against a commander who has to make detailed tactical decisions about how to operate his troops, while thousands of kilometers from the battlefield, without benefit of input from sentient lifeforms actually operating on your behalf.

I was also going to say that the soldiers reporting from the battlefront wouldn't be... perfectly lucid and objective in their reports. There's bullets flying and explosions and you can't expect a man to deliver a clear report.
Then I remembered that even drones have to worry about electromagnetic interference or even hacking attempts.

I think the ideal solution would be a drone army with human soldiers in a 1:5 or 1:10 ratio. The drones would be the ones shooting and taking hits, while the human operator could direct them efficiently and make decisions in place of the command center, reducing the information flow the latter has to deal with. Plus, they can repair the drones.

In fact, military divisions could be like:
-4 drones and 1 operator platoon x10
-1 air defense laser and operator x2
-1 mobile repair shop and operators x1

Of course, you're going to need seriously motivated volunteers to have them follow around a drone army in person without sacrificing the advantages of tirelessness and 24h marches.

Thermal imaging exists (look up IRST); optical imaging is still unsatisfactory but may improve.

Hummm. Thermal imaging should be effective when the plane/missile is clear cut against the sky, but if the user is looking down at the target, it might not be so effective with ground clutter as a background.

As for optical imaging, it'll come down to physical limitations of the camera (resolution, optics ect.) because I've already handwaved away the limitations of the processor when it comes to distinguishing objects and recognizing them.

Lasers aren't really very satisfactory for shooting down ICBM warheads as they fall on you, because they're already armored to resist meteoric reentry. They're effective at shooting down the missiles in the boost phase, but that requires you to be close to where the missile launches from.

I've done quite a but of recent reading about shooting down ICBMs with lasers or anti-missiles. Turns out, the next generator on of nuclear weapon is a MARV: MAneouverable Reentry Vehicle. The US has experimented on nuclear warheads that are capable of moving out of the ballistic trajectory to escape anti-missiles, and the components have been able to perform (and withstand) 200g maneuvers. Other tactics include prematurely detonating one of the several reentry vehicles to create a screen of ionized atmosphere impenetrable to radio waves, shortening the time the defenses have to intercept the following warheads.

That makes very little sense; I can't imagine a mathematically rigorous reason for that to happen which wouldn't routinely cause the field to uselessly screen a random underground space, and to reliably form perfect hemispheres aboveground.

It's simple. Imagine a sphere forming underground. It is expulsed to the nearest cavity capable of holding the field's entire volume. We have three options: the first is open air directly above the generator. Stable equilibrium. The second is an opening underground. It's stable, but how many undetected openings have the required volume? The final option is that it appears on the other side of the Earth. It's an unstable equilibrium, because there is no way the generator can maintain a connection with the field thousands of kilometers away.
Once the entire volume is above ground, it tries to maintain a minimal distance from the generator. The further away the edge of the field is, the weaker the repulsive force holding it in place is after all. If you take into account the field trying to conform to the ground surface, and its own malleability allowing it to deform away from the perfect hemispherical shape, then we have the shape I described earlier.

But that's just like trying to explain the science of magic.

I'm not sure yet, but it really does bear thinking about- personal screens limit the means of offense in ways that not all armies may find desirable, especially if they have ways of coping with screens that you haven't thought of yet, or develop new ones over the course of your story.

Well of course all military technology is transitioning from one configuration to another. Crossbows to muskets, rifles to machines guns, armored cars to tanks... in this setting, we're seeing shields quickly taking over and rendering regular solid shot guns useless, reaching a sort of equilibrium in a few decades once the easy methods of using and combating shields have been established. These would be grenades and close range engagements. However, just as this happens, lasers, who have become a mainstay in aerial warfare, start coming to ground forces and generals have to rethink how they fight when their shields can be rendered entirely ineffective against a certain type of weapon.

Come to think of it, this is how knights must have felt when the musket became more and more powerful and relevant.

[Simon_Jester]

I wrote before that travelling low and slow was actually the best defense against lasers, since there is no reliable way to armor planes against lasers, so they'd have to use terrain cover to their advantage. As far as I know, helicopters can utilize terrain much better than fixed-wing jet craft.
If they are vulnerable to ground fire, I guess ground-skimming aircraft are too?

Jets are fast enough that any gun-based system is unreliable at engaging them. As we've observed, shielding aircraft may be impractical for a lot of reasons involving airflow and air resistance. Without your magic force-screen, it's kind of an open question whether an aircraft highly vulnerable to fire from everything on the battlefield that throws bullets gains more than it loses by flying close to the muzzles of the enemy guns.

I am not at all sure that's accurate.

There was an articles criticizing the YAL-1 laser by saying that the predicted performance of 600km-range missile interception were based only on countering the effects of thermal blooming (done through adaptive optics), and ignoring the effects of aerosol scattering (which we cannot compensate for) that could cause the spot size to widen exponentially to 1km within 8-20km of humid air, but I'm having a fucking hard to time to find it again.

Yeah. That might be right but I don't assume that it is right, especially when we're talking about the relatively thin, cold, dry air up where a Boeing 747 cruises. Since the YAL-1 was tested and at least passed laugh tests, and is in fact the second generation of airborne laser cannon tested, I kind of doubt that it's so totally pointless as that.

I was also going to say that the soldiers reporting from the battlefront wouldn't be... perfectly lucid and objective in their reports. There's bullets flying and explosions and you can't expect a man to deliver a clear report.
Then I remembered that even drones have to worry about electromagnetic interference or even hacking attempts.

I think the ideal solution would be a drone army with human soldiers in a 1:5 or 1:10 ratio. The drones would be the ones shooting and taking hits, while the human operator could direct them efficiently and make decisions in place of the command center, reducing the information flow the latter has to deal with. Plus, they can repair the drones.

In fact, military divisions could be like:
-4 drones and 1 operator platoon x10
-1 air defense laser and operator x2
-1 mobile repair shop and operators x1

Of course, you're going to need seriously motivated volunteers to have them follow around a drone army in person without sacrificing the advantages of tirelessness and 24h marches.

The main problem is that the mobile repair shops need a reasonable degree of security, quiet, and cleanliness to work (getting dirt on the CPU of your drone is a bad idea). In real life, "mobile" repair facilities really mean "we truck in the equipment, we set up the equipment inside a fortified base camp, and the vehicles have to be driven/towed to us," not "we can repair a broken engine in the field."

The task of fixing damaged drones is still going to need fixed installations, so you still have a compromise situation when you try to launch a 'tireless advance.' Even if your repairmen can go all day without rest, they can't go all day without a workbench to do their jobs at.

Human soldiers accompanying the drones have a different problem in that they still need sleep, and that their impressions of the battlefield are made less valuable the more they are willing/required to send the robots in to do the work.

I've done quite a but of recent reading about shooting down ICBMs with lasers or anti-missiles. Turns out, the next generator on of nuclear weapon is a MARV: MAneouverable Reentry Vehicle. The US has experimented on nuclear warheads that are capable of moving out of the ballistic trajectory to escape anti-missiles, and the components have been able to perform (and withstand) 200g maneuvers. Other tactics include prematurely detonating one of the several reentry vehicles to create a screen of ionized atmosphere impenetrable to radio waves, shortening the time the defenses have to intercept the following warheads.

The tactics exist, but it is highly questionable whether they would allow reliable penetration of the defense network. MARVs have fundamental problems, one of the big ones being that if they dodge to sidestep a terminal-intercept attack, they're going to miss the target unless they can quickly return to their base course.

The situation is further simplified if the ABM missiles use nuclear warheads of their own, which is relatively easy to do and makes it less important to have ultra-precise tracking data on the incoming warheads.

[On urban shields, which I still think shouldn't be practical given the way you've pitched this, but whatever]

Once the entire volume is above ground, it tries to maintain a minimal distance from the generator. The further away the edge of the field is, the weaker the repulsive force holding it in place is after all. If you take into account the field trying to conform to the ground surface, and its own malleability allowing it to deform away from the perfect hemispherical shape, then we have the shape I described earlier.

In that case you don't get hemisphere. You get a spherical cap.

Now, that shape actually isn't that bad for screening a large surface of ground. The problem is that there isn't very much vertical clearance relative to the surface area. For covering a large area of tall buildings, and especially if you're worried about nuclear warheads plowing into the screen and the flash igniting things at ground level, you really do want the generator closer to the surface, so that the volume protected is more like a hemisphere in shape. The only problem is that it makes bringing up the screen in the first place take a lot longer.

[krakonfour]

Okay, Krakenfour, I've been busy, but once I got back, it took me a short bit before I realized that you didn't comprehend this whole "quote sphagetti" problem. Certainly once I realized you kept repeating certain points over and over I knew what was going on; then when you started cutting sentences into fragments (really? really?). So I am going to try my best to get to the point.

You might find it annoying, but I find it respectful when someone addresses all of your post, especially if it is a long one you spent hours writing, and not just the one of the general point s/he finds worthy of attention.
Plus, all the quotes are in order and I only omitted the parts I had really nothing to say to.

First, you asked me why I don't care that much about realism and worldbuilding. You have no one but yourself to blame for that, so don't whine to me that I keep talking about it.

Let me get this straight... you're blaming me for your lack of interest in realism and worldbuilding.... in a worldbuilding thread interested in realism?

Second, continually asking me to "reread the thread" is getting annoying. I tried, and it put me to sleep.

I do it when you miss blatant answers to your questions that a simple read-through could have saved you the trouble of asking.

Simon, I mean, managed to do that-- his posting style is rather dry and longwinded (and I'm going to stop there because I don't really want to insult Simon at this time).

His posting style has nothing to do with bothering to read before posting.

The political situation struck me as completely implausible, because laser weapons are hardly as destructive as WMDs, and not comparable to dum-dum bullets because they would actually have a place in war as shield penetrators.

The political situation... has N-O-T-H-I-N-G to do with how destructive lasers are. I mean... it has as much to do with it as bananas have with Obama's re-election.
It was just one of the plausible methods Simon suggested for explaining why the balance of power shift during the war between India and the Chinese forces stationed in Pakistan. In fact, if you had actually read the first page of this thread, you'd know that lasers weren't even involved at all, and thus it's an entirely replaceable explanation.

Laser blinding may be another story, and is already banned, but there are other forms like masers that don't pose such eye hazards. It would be enough to just say the power consumption and storage issues have not been overcome.

Once you have a laser capable of drilling holes in armor plating and shooting down jet planes, then forbidding laser blinding becomes just as stupid as allowing artillery but forbidding shrapnel.
Masers don't pose eye hazards because they boil them at the power levels required to damage anything.
I cannot ignore power consumption and storage issues when the soldiers are equipped with batteries that have energy densities in the order of 1MJ/kg and drain rates of up to 700W/kg.. You could have given a more intelligent argument, like cooling issues, but you didn't read the thread it seems.

However, you seem to use this request for me to reread the thread like a bludgeon, whether its an irrelevant request like the first time you did it (really, what about "I hate pretension more than technobabble" do you not understand? Oh, I guess you were insulted but felt like interjecting for no reason. The essence of quote spaghetti) or whether you are trying to excuse your stupidity by... repeating it. Essentially.

Do you prefer that I go back and copy/paste every section relevant to your question, essentially cutting up the work for you? I'm lazy. Go read the goddamn thread.

And an 'excuse your stupidity...' insult? Get fucked elsewhere.

Everything I have read from you has failed to convince me that your ideas are valid. Swords vs Bayonets: you still don't understand that if you can train soldiers in the latter faster, then you can field more of them and simply overrun soldiers trained in the former. The only times when swords were the primary battle weapons of choice rather than sidearms, peacetime carry, or specialist weapons (like greatswords) was when combined with a shield to protect from polearms. er.... you know, This kind of shield. Plus ignoring all my points made up till that point on an invalid premise that your proposed technologies will make it moot.

Ignoring my points? Did you just call the kettle black?
Maybe my paragraph-long explanations addressing every one of your arguments even when you ignored them the first time wasn't effective. Let's try this approach:

Training times? FUCK YOU. In-field combat has existed for decades and the methods have been generalized already.
Swords primary weapon? FUCK YOU. They are not damage dealers and serve only to reach the enemy's gun. They can be replaced by spears, as I admitted.
Do you need me to explain again why a bayonet mounted on a rifle is inferior to a pistol/sword or pistol/spear combo when the extra barrel length is useless and stabbing is equally useless?
FUCK YOU and READ THE THREAD.

You have to demonstrate these things, which you seem to be incapable of doing (probably because you have little understanding of any form of interpersonal combat).

Sure! Let me go get my working model of a field generator, hook it up to my full-scale model of this setting's power armor to show you how it works. Demonstration.

Your points about guns are even stupider to the point of being ludicrous. You really didn't want to remind me of that, because it makes you look delusional. The troops use heavy armor, so we shoot bullets that cannot penetrate.... heavy armor.

Why are you under the impression that they would be shooting bullets incapable of penetrating the armor they are facing? It was stated nowhere.

You don't see the problem with this? You can barely (if at all) fit more explosive power into a 12 gauge slug than you can fit into a rifle cartridge (in terms of gunpowder), hence less energy.

I see a problem... in the way you pay attention to the words on your screen.
Here's something simple for you:

-Gunpowder charge matters little in this scenario
-Barrel diameters 100 years in the future are NOT going to be anything familiar to what you know today.
-The bullets are miniature HEAT warheads.
-HEAT warheads use the Monroe effect, not explosive force.
-HEAT warheads require explosives like TNT, not gunpowder, because they require a supersonic shockwave
-The armor they face requires 60-100mm of effective RHAeq penetration to go through, so even shotgun-calibre HEAT warheads are enough.
-In close quarters combat, shell velocities of 50km/h+ are more than enough.
-In close quarters combat using HEAT shells, having very high muzzle velocities make them miss their standoff distance and lose a lot of penetrative power from having a malformed stream.

A gun that can penetrate the armor on the center mass can kill the man inside; indeed, you could utterly destroy these mini-mecha by having ordinary soldiers carry shield generators at the squad level, then set up death zones where in order for the armored troops to enter they immediately put themselves at all but point blank range of anti-material/tank rifles and machine guns. Rule of thumb: if it can penetrate an actual tank's armor at that range (and a .50BMG can if you hit the right spots even today) it'll skewer a powered armored soldier. Meanwhile, the squads are quite mobile enough to get out of the way of tanks and have an effective umbrella to protect themselves from artillery, the traditional infantry killer.

Yes, that is true, but this scenario ignores two things I mentioned in another post:
-Your shooting squad will not be able to get their rounds through the opposition's shields.
-Lobbing grenades on top of massed troops is an effective counter to these strategies.
Because of the latter point, I had to abandon pike formations shooting through holes in enemy shields.

Oh and HEAT warheads have the same penetrative capacity whatever the distance because it is independent from... shell velocity

You need a 20mm cannon before warheads start to become practical, and pretty soon you are talking about a grenade launcher rather than a firearm. And if you have a grenade launcher, how the hell does any mecha combat turn into a melee?

Let me laugh a bit at how many times this was mentioned over the course of the thread, and now you're bringing it up by yourself.

Then it gets worse, because you demonstrate complete ignorance of both guns and bombs. Have you never heard of torque? Handguns don't just go straight back into the user's hand, they flip upwards as well. There comes a point where you simply do not have enough grip strength to keep it in your hand unless the barrel of the gun counter-levers it down; in other words, unless it is a rifle, because that same weight makes it impossible to hold upright otherwise.

Oh, the horrific recoil of an air-piston gun is enough to make the pistol fly away from the robotic arm's grip, despite it already being capable of swinging about tens of kg's of armor. I mean, all robot arms MUST have hands and fingers wrapping around the gun's grip, because a gun being fixed to the arm itself is not possible.

And good luck trying to shoot a grenade launcher one handed, that's pure Schwarzenegger action movie cheese. There is a limit to how much a robotic hand will help with grip strength, because a recoiling gun is rotating and will usually defeat your hand the same way a martial artist defeats a strangle hold-- by breaking through the weak area of the thumb.

A grenade launcher like the M203 has a maximal range of about 400m and can be shot by... a regular soldier.

Numbers may be your thing, but they are meaningless if you don't know how they relate to the real world. Ask Connor MacLeod sometime if you want to hear a good rant. And don't get me started on the proposed Piston Gun: that's literally saying you want to take a pop-gun to a machine gun fight. You'll fucking die, and your projectile will drop at your target's feet because it lacks the energy of a bow and arrow. Good job. You made yourself sound crazy.

As long as it touches the opponent, it doesn't matter how much residual energy it has.

Bombs. I take it you do not know the difference between a blast wave and a shockwave. A concussion grenade kills you by transferring kinetic energy not through the hot gasses, but by transmitting it from one medium to another at faster than the speed of sound. That's literally what defines a high explosive, the fact that the shockwave created by such an explosive can do that. Thus, it would not only knock over a mini-mecha, but rupture the pilot's organs, killing him. These weapons literally turn you into a pulp from the inside out. That's why they are used.

Verrry interrresting.
Oh, and they can mount this too.

Related, but at least it doesn't make me irritated with you, jumping. Can the man inside actually survive this maneuver?

A very quick read of my calculations reveal the number (6m/s^2), which is two thirds of a g for the sidestep maneuver.

In many ways, jet fighters are limited by the physical abilities of the pilot. The same applies here: will the jerk from accelerating over such a short timespan cause the guy inside to slam his head into the helmet/cockpit of the robosuit? If so, then a jetpack might actually be a better option because it creates a smoother acceleration. Most of the interior safety features on cars exist to protect the passengers from these kinds of effects.

Good.

jerk, by the way, is a less well known unit of measurement to guage how smoothly something accelerates, and it is exactly this: change in acceleration over time. It reads as either m/s^3 or ft/s^3 depending on if you are using metric or imperial units. Rollercoaster designers apparently came up with it, and they use it to determine the safety margins both for the passengers and for the ride's structural integrity. You might want to study the way they build the passenger seats so you know how they work. Its kind of annoying how many mecha anime show their pilots getting thrown around their poorly designed chairs because all they have is a seatbelt, if that. Hell, Star Trek is even worse about this-- some of their crew don't even have chairs! Its a wonder the Voyager crew didn't suffer more head injuries on that show.

Cool. Didn't know that.
Gundam Unicorn showed airbags in the cockpit, and Neon Genesis Evangelion presumably relied on the LCL to dampen shocks. It can also be handwaved in giant mecha that the whole cockpit is suspended, instead of just the pilot's chair.

That's hilarious, because it gives me the image of a guy in a fat suit trying to wave a sword around.

I see it more as a guy inside one of these:

Except the arms are more badass.

You do realize that, artificial supermuscle or no artificial supermuscle, bulk is a consideration for any practical armor? First of all because of the issue of moving. Again, medieval plate was designed the way it is so that the person inside lost as little of his agility as possible. This isn't just seen in the weight of the armor (which was actually something like ten or twenty pounds less than what modern marines carry) but in the bulkiness, which is less than the kevlar and ceramic plates that modern soldiers wear.

Observe what a bear suit can do, and how it moves. Notice that while the thing can protect the wearer from getting hit by a truck, he is still knocked around visibly by baseball bats and he is clearly quite stiff and has difficulty walking in the second suit. Another video where the wearer specifically says that uphill is difficult, and its clearly the bulk, not merely the weight that is slowing him down. This is the militarized version by the same creator, and you will notice that while the wearer is noticeably more flexible (probably because he talked to real soldiers), you can see that it is much less bulky AND that they placed the protective armor very carefully and left a lot of gaps in a lot of the same places as on medieval plate. He also mentions all sorts of issues he sought to solve, like heat and simplicity of use.

Bomb suits are pretty similar. Mostly made of kevlar and ceramic, the thing cannot be put on by just one person, and the presenter couldn't even walk effectively. Again, its very hot and stifling inside precisely because of all the bulk. This video actually shows the process of putting it on. Imagine what it takes to put the bear suit on... anyway.

Lets talk space suits. Notice all the elements that goes into it, like the diapers-- you can't take it off, and you have to be in it for up to 6 hours! Also a sophisticated temperature control system (more so than the other two suits I've shown due to the extreme environment of space). Pads to prevent the suit from bruising the wearer (remember all the notes I made about kinetic energy and blast issues?). Again mentioned is the need for an assistant. Limited field of view, because the helmet is locked onto the upper torso (no danger of the neck getting damaged). And of course spacesuits are notoriously limiting on mobility and dexterity, and this does not go unmentioned.

Your mini-mecha needs elements of all three of these suits (and more); the mobility and usability features of the militarized bear suit, the sheer armor of the blast suit, and the life support features of the space suit. Unfortunately, even with the technologies you have proposed, its unlikely that you can mesh the mobility of the first one with the features of the other two suits. Remember, the soldier needs to wear this for an extended period of time, because getting out of it could get you killed. You can't just put it on at a moments notice, because you won't be able to get back into it very quickly. And if you get attacked outside of the suit, then it doesn't matter what features it has. So ambushes, guerrilla warfare, and night attacks become the death of your suited soldiers. It just doesn't seem practical for war. And all of this is due to the sheer bulk implied by all the features you have tried to fit onto it. That's why you don't try to stuff that many features into one kit, unless its a proper vehicle like a tank.

This probably sums up all the issues I have with the suit itself. The combat forms that you do in them is the rest. Now, I still think of those aspects as more important to any real story simply because they are physical and appeal to viewers on a different level than technical accuracy; but I'm sure there are opportunities to learn from these very real objects.

Well, I can never fault you when it comes to military knowledge, so props to you.
However, I have yet to actually design the suit outside of the basic components and capabilities I'll try and take the above into account and provide you with a sketch.

It has an impact on any stories you might write, and this thread supposedly has to do with stories you plan on writing.

Which again, is not an impact on this thread. [...] I invented a story just for this post, three weeks after I started the thread. And if you read it, you'll realize that the actual setting I'm discussing has little impact on the plot.

I've seen enough threads like this that I can't always tell, and you have done two of them so far so why not give you the advice? If it has little impact on the plot, the setting (or element of the setting) should be discarded. Period. Consider it a corollary to the writerly adage "murder your darlings".

PS: Star Wars was a successful film franchise that fit into the mold of successful space operas before it. LOTR started a literary genre. That's enough fans of built-up worlds for me.

Commonly believed, but also completely false. The Well at the World's End is one of the books that not only preceded Tolkien, but is believed to have inspired him. There are others. Lovecraft, for instance, isn't just an inspiration for horror writers but sci-fi and fantasy as well, and he was most definitely contemporaneous to Tolkien, and technically predates him by decades. Tolkien is simply the most ripped off genre writer of all time. Fitting when you consider the suspicious similarity between his work and Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung operas.

It would be a mistake to assume that Star Wars was built as a world the same way Tolkien did so. Lucas started with an archetypical hero's journey epic, and cleverly added details to the ship models and sets that created the cinematic illusion of a world that felt real. Its an approach I obviously appreciate (once you know the difference), but things like the Incredible Cross Sections, or the Essential Guides and other attempts to flesh out the Star Wars universe were done later as ad-hock justifications for what was seen onscreen, ofttimes written by overt fandom like Curtis Saxton or the EU novels. That's the brilliance of the latter method-- hint at just enough that the mind fills in the gaps, and people will go out of their way to justify the setting and their suspension of disbelief. Its just a shame that the same books like ICS have twisted some fans understanding of how it worked.

[/quote]

Like I said, some people, like me just enjoy this stuff. I'll reply to Connor on this subject in my next post. And sorry I got really angry at the beginning of this post. I felt like you weren't even considering the paragraphs and paragraphs of stuff I wrote to answer you or others.

[Sea Skimmer]

-Gunpowder charge matters little in this scenario
-Barrel diameters 100 years in the future are NOT going to be anything familiar to what you know today.
-The bullets are miniature HEAT warheads.
-HEAT warheads use the Monroe effect, not explosive force.
-HEAT warheads require explosives like TNT, not gunpowder, because they require a supersonic shockwave
-The armor they face requires 60-100mm of effective RHAeq penetration to go through, so even shotgun-calibre HEAT warheads are enough.
-In close quarters combat, shell velocities of 50km/h+ are more than enough.
-In close quarters combat using HEAT shells, having very high muzzle velocities make them miss their standoff distance and lose a lot of penetrative power from having a malformed stream.

So much is wrong with this I don’t even know where to start, but considering you’re an asshole who doesnt want to listen to anyone, essentially treating this thread as a chance to complain about people dismissing your brilliance, I wont waste my time unless you really want to know.

[Jub]

@ Krakonfour:

Based on what you're saying with the planes, why wouldn't the enemy just try to force the shields of the enemy to deform enough that their generators burn out? Say by using loads of heavy high velocity shells fired at long range, something like the chain gun on an APC should do the job for infantry scale targets. For maximum shield damaging effect you could have an impact triggered explosive round so you get hit once by the mass and velocity of the shell and then again by the shell exploding against your shield. You could also use really cheap mortar shells at the start of the battle to warm up the enemy's shields before you start with the direct fire. You can also use launched grenades to burn out the enemies supply of counter measures at long range. Again the key is to start the engagement at as a long a range as possible to start wearing down the enemy shields.

On the issue of heat rounds and armor, why wear the armor at all if it can be defeated by a light low velocity round?

Also, what is stopping each side from making specialized shield breaking mines that have the explosive on the end of a pole that tends to poke through shields and blow up against the soldier inside? These could be dropped en mass by aircraft fitted with cluster bomb launchers and we already have systems designed to do just this. Now make these mines JDAM style smart munitions, this should be cheap to do as computer technology has improved vastly from out time, so your minefield lands on target and things just get worse for the enemy.

[Formless]

So much is wrong with this I don’t even know where to start, but considering you’re an asshole who doesnt want to listen to anyone, essentially treating this thread as a chance to complain about people dismissing your brilliance, I wont waste my time unless you really want to know.

I'd love to hear it, if only for completion's sake. You know how HEAT actually works, so for future reference could you explain why miniaturizing it won't work or give you a better penetrator than just using a bigger rifle cartridge like the .50BMG or something? That would be a place to start.

[Simon_Jester]

I too am curious about Skimmer's take on small-caliber HEAT rounds (such as might be fired from a shotgun).

Okay, Krakenfour, I've been busy, but once I got back, it took me a short bit before I realized that you didn't comprehend this whole "quote sphagetti" problem. Certainly once I realized you kept repeating certain points over and over I knew what was going on; then when you started cutting sentences into fragments (really? really?). So I am going to try my best to get to the point.

You might find it annoying, but I find it respectful when someone addresses all of your post, especially if it is a long one you spent hours writing, and not just the one of the general point s/he finds worthy of attention.
Plus, all the quotes are in order and I only omitted the parts I had really nothing to say to.

There's a problem with this, krakon.

What you are missing out on here is reading comprehension. There's a reason why most serious literature and documents aren't written as long lists of bullet points. When you split a paragraph up line by line, clause by clause, you may miss an overall thesis which is made and understood only after you read the whole paragraph, in its totality, and stop to think.

In exchange you get bogged down in details, in many cases details that are meaningless or irrelevant.

Try writing replies at least a paragraph long, to statements at least a paragraph long. It's good mental discipline, it makes you more literate and more prepared to think seriously about the tone of what you write. Since you aspire to write, you might as well practice the skills that make your writing good art.

Let me get this straight... you're blaming me for your lack of interest in realism and worldbuilding.... in a worldbuilding thread interested in realism?

He's criticizing the fact that you seem disinterested in thinking about your basic premises. That you're so bogged down in details of how giants climb walls or how power-armor men fight with swords or whatever, that you're not backing up to consider how to change your setting to make it better.

I think Formless's criticism is only partly correct, but this is a significant issue- you are very slow and resistant when it comes to adjusting your setting to make it seem more realistic in broad. This means that you are going struggle when it comes to giving a setting versimilitude, the 'appearance of realness' in the eyes of an actual reader. For someone who doesn't react to criticism it is hard to achieve.

So that could be a problem for you if you're not careful, because versimilitude is important. As opposed to more realistic in terms of technical minutiae about how the world behaves given the arbitrary rules you've set for a made-up piece of technology- which is not very important, if only because even your closest friends are going to be at most vaguely curious about the physics of how a handwavium force-screen works.

There's a difference between "more detailed" and "better."

However, you seem to use this request for me to reread the thread like a bludgeon, whether its an irrelevant request like the first time you did it [snip] or whether you are trying to excuse your stupidity by... repeating it. Essentially.

Do you prefer that I go back and copy/paste every section relevant to your question, essentially cutting up the work for you? I'm lazy. Go read the goddamn thread.

And an 'excuse your stupidity...' insult? Get fucked elsewhere.

Cards on the table, yes, some of Formless's points are simply wrong. This might make him appear foolish to you. But he is not a fool on the whole, and makes important, valid criticisms that are getting lost when you waste time responding to every little negative thing he says with a separate "go fuck yourself."

Again, I want to repeat: you need to stop and think seriously about the totality of your work, and whether it will offer anything of interest to the reader. In many cases you think you know things, which you do not know or understand, and use invalid models of how a physical process or system works. This makes it hard for you to do your physics accurately. Which wouldn't be a problem if you had strong plotting and story and a compelling premise, but when all you have is "um, there are these dudes with shields and maybe some robots," it's a problem.

You need a broader sensitivity to context, although I know of no way to obtain this except to socially interact with other people who know the subject and understand the context already.

For example, you're bogged down in details of how the suits are armed. Let's ask a question that plotwise is more important, because it's relevant to your soldier-protagonist whether the suit is armed with swords, bows, grenades, HEAT-firing shotguns, or laser eyeballs:

How easy is it to get the suit on or off? Can the suit be worn in adequate comfort, given that it is a physically hard shell that can only have so much padding, and probably requires the pilot to occupy a pelvis-straining position with the legs unnaturally far apart?

We haven't seen much sign of this in your material so far. As you allude later, it's not something you've given much thought to. But why is it somehow less important to you than the weapons the suit is armed with? Storywise, if all soldiers are armed with the same weapons and armor, it matters little what those weapons are, unless the gimmicky nature of the weapon is a core conceit of the story. How the armor is worn and for how long it can be worn may actually matter more than all this worry about details of armament.

This sort of issue is why Formless is not the ONLY person who has a problem with some of what you say. Sea Skimmer, for example, has a vast knowledge of weapons, tactics, and history in general; if he thinks you are wrong you would do well to ask him why.

Bombs. I take it you do not know the difference between a blast wave and a shockwave. A concussion grenade kills you by transferring kinetic energy not through the hot gasses, but by transmitting it from one medium to another at faster than the speed of sound. That's literally what defines a high explosive, the fact that the shockwave created by such an explosive can do that. Thus, it would not only knock over a mini-mecha, but rupture the pilot's organs, killing him. These weapons literally turn you into a pulp from the inside out. That's why they are used.

Verrry interrresting.
Oh, and they can mount this too.

On this issue, I would reserve judgment- a fully enclosed armored suit can in fact provide protection from blast, and Formless is describing blast.

Like I said, some people, like me just enjoy this stuff. I'll reply to Connor on this subject in my next post. And sorry I got really angry at the beginning of this post. I felt like you weren't even considering the paragraphs and paragraphs of stuff I wrote to answer you or others.

This is, again, why I suggest that you spend a little more time trying to read and reply to things in their totality. All this quote spaghetti will not make you a better writer.

[Jub]

You really ought to listen to what Simon is saying here, because he's right and doing a far better job explaining it than I'm able to manage. The best thing I can add to what he's saying is an analogy about painting.

The greatest artists paint something that looks good even at a distance. They start with the broad strokes and then work inwards to prefect the little details that only a few people might ever truly notice. In your case you're like a painter who's painting the worlds prettiest set of facial features and neglecting to paint the person's body or even the face the features should be set upon. This doesn't make for a type of painting that most people will appreciate.

I hope that makes some sense.

[Simon_Jester]

To avoid accusations of passive-aggressiveness in posting style I would like to address some of Formless's technical commentary in detail. Tacking this onto my previous post(s) would have detracted from them in my opinion, so I didn't, but here it is. Krakon covered some of it, but did not address other parts.

The political situation struck me as completely implausible, because laser weapons are hardly as destructive as WMDs, and not comparable to dum-dum bullets because they would actually have a place in war as shield penetrators. Laser blinding may be another story, and is already banned, but there are other forms like masers that don't pose such eye hazards...

As noted, this suggests a serious misinterpretation of the situation. You're criticizing a setting where lasers and politics are related. In krakon's, they're not. So this bit is just plain off base.

Talking about your hatred of pretension when objecting to a completely imaginary aspect of the other person's story that isn't even in there... looks funny, I'll leave it at that.

Everything I have read from you has failed to convince me that your ideas are valid. Swords vs Bayonets: you still don't understand that if you can train soldiers in the latter faster, then you can field more of them and simply overrun soldiers trained in the former.

This shows a lack of understanding of what the 'swords' are being used for, and frankly a stick would probably work just as well. The melee weapon is to be used in the off hand for close combat as a tool to interfere with an enemy's movement, not to put holes in his body.

My money's on spears because they could conceivably be used to penetrate the armor, at least from favorable angles and directions. A sword could not. I honestly don't know if a pollaxe-type weapon would be viable in this context, but it at least bears thinking on.

Your points about guns are even stupider to the point of being ludicrous. You really didn't want to remind me of that, because it makes you look delusional. The troops use heavy armor, so we shoot bullets that cannot penetrate.... heavy armor.

While he may be flat wrong about how small-caliber HEAT munitions work (and there may be no such thing as a HEAT shotgun shell for that reason), he does at least seriously mention them as a way of allowing bullets fired from low velocity hand weapons to penetrate heavy armor, when fired from inside the zone of effect of personal force-screens.

So your statement is the opposite of true; he said literally that he WAS using bullets that cannot penetrate heavy armor, and you interpret this to mean that he WAS NOT.

This is why krakon is getting annoyed at you and saying "read the thread" over and over, because you are repeatedly criticizing him on things that are simply not true about his setting.

It makes you look... disconnected with the context of the conversation.

A gun that can penetrate the armor on the center mass can kill the man inside; indeed, you could utterly destroy these mini-mecha by having ordinary soldiers carry shield generators at the squad level, then set up death zones...

Several problems with that, again based on details of how the weapon systems work. The force-screen generator would be even bulkier than the ones carried by personal armor because it has to protect considerably more volume, the screen would not necessarily stop launched grenades, and of course such a strongpoint would lend itself to easy outflanking because it is a small death zone. I mean heck, you could just as well plant a command-detonated landmine, or several of them, in the same area, which would also be a death zone for a single enemy soldier.

Rule of thumb: if it can penetrate an actual tank's armor at that range (and a .50BMG can if you hit the right spots even today)

Point of detail: this is less true than you think. It is very much possible to literally armor the whole vehicle with armor heavy enough to defeat .50 caliber weapons.

And if you have a grenade launcher, how the hell does any mecha combat turn into a melee?

Because nearly all effective combat takes place within a few meters, so being able to physically strike or trip someone up helps, while having a firearm that is accurate at long range doesn't.

Then it gets worse, because you demonstrate complete ignorance of both guns and bombs. Have you never heard of torque? Handguns don't just go straight back into the user's hand, they flip upwards as well. There comes a point where you simply do not have enough grip strength to keep it in your hand unless the barrel of the gun counter-levers it down; in other words, unless it is a rifle, because that same weight makes it impossible to hold upright otherwise. And good luck trying to shoot a grenade launcher one handed, that's pure Schwarzenegger action movie cheese. There is a limit to how much a robotic hand will help with grip strength, because a recoiling gun is rotating and will usually defeat your hand the same way a martial artist defeats a strangle hold-- by breaking through the weak area of the thumb.

I can think of several ways to make this entire issue irrelevant off the top of my head with basic mechanical knowledge and common sense- some kind of locking clip comes to mind, as does deliberately screwing with the shape of the 'pistol' grip to provide better balance. "Can be fired with one hand" does not equal "is structurally and ergonomically identical to a conventional pistol."

Numbers may be your thing, but they are meaningless if you don't know how they relate to the real world. Ask Connor MacLeod sometime if you want to hear a good rant. And don't get me started on the proposed Piston Gun: that's literally saying you want to take a pop-gun to a machine gun fight. You'll fucking die, and your projectile will drop at your target's feet because it lacks the energy of a bow and arrow. Good job. You made yourself sound crazy.

There's some rambling here, but I think you didn't clearly understand the concept of the aforementioned gas piston. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure krakon did either.

A firearm that uses a pressurized gas reservoir can actually work rather well; up until the 19th century they outperformed traditional guns in many ways.

Nothing stops you from using compressed air to propel a projectile at speeds of 50-100 m/s, which is more than enough to make it dangerous at the combat ranges he's picturing. You'd need a different weapon for longer combat ranges, but the basic concept is much more valid than you imply when you take this tone.

Bombs. I take it you do not know the difference between a blast wave and a shockwave.

You don't either, because a blast wave is literally a "shock wave;" a supersonic change in pressure such as would be caused by a nuclear device or high explosive. Also, since you yourself linked to some information on bomb disposal suits, I am very much surprised that you do NOT know that such suits protect against blast waves from explosions. Indeed, that's a large part of what they're for; they use a low-density crumple zone to absorb the effect of a shock wave at close range.

Concussion grenades are no different than any other explosive in this capacity. A concussion grenade is a perfectly normal hand grenade, with more explosive and no shrapnel. They don't kill you in any way that any other explosive device couldn't kill you. A bomb-disposal suit could protect you rather well against concussion grenades, and so could any other equivalent armor.

Related, but at least it doesn't make me irritated with you, jumping. Can the man inside actually survive this maneuver? In many ways, jet fighters are limited by the physical abilities of the pilot. The same applies here: will the jerk from accelerating over such a short timespan cause the guy inside to slam his head into the helmet/cockpit of the robosuit? If so, then a jetpack might actually be a better option because it creates a smoother acceleration. Most of the interior safety features on cars exist to protect the passengers from these kinds of effects.

These objections are literate and well-posed; krakon would be wise to think about user-friendliness and whether there are adequate restraints and padding inside his suits.

This isn't 2mm thick medieval plating we're bashing. It's this thing encapsulated in tank armor.

That's hilarious, because it gives me the image of a guy in a fat suit trying to wave a sword around.

You do realize that, artificial supermuscle or no artificial supermuscle, bulk is a consideration for any practical armor? First of all because of the issue of moving. Again, medieval plate was designed the way it is so that the person inside lost as little of his agility as possible. This isn't just seen in the weight of the armor (which was actually something like ten or twenty pounds less than what modern marines carry) but in the bulkiness, which is less than the kevlar and ceramic plates that modern soldiers wear.

This is similarly well-posed; I've said so before, krakon should be thinking about what a man in the suit can and can't do compared to what a man outside it can do.

Heinlein arguably did the whole "power armor" concept a disservice by essentially stating in his 1960 novel on the topic that a man in a suit can do anything he can do without it, including things like dancing a jig. At that time, there was no experience with heavy armor in modern warfare, so Heinlein spoke of matters he knew little of.

Unfortunately, even with the technologies you have proposed, its unlikely that you can mesh the mobility of the first one with the features of the other two suits. Remember, the soldier needs to wear this for an extended period of time, because getting out of it could get you killed. You can't just put it on at a moments notice, because you won't be able to get back into it very quickly. And if you get attacked outside of the suit, then it doesn't matter what features it has. So ambushes, guerrilla warfare, and night attacks become the death of your suited soldiers. It just doesn't seem practical for war. And all of this is due to the sheer bulk implied by all the features you have tried to fit onto it. That's why you don't try to stuff that many features into one kit, unless its a proper vehicle like a tank.

All this is well-posed in my opinion.

This probably sums up all the issues I have with the suit itself. The combat forms that you do in them is the rest. Now, I still think of those aspects as more important to any real story simply because they are physical and appeal to viewers on a different level than technical accuracy; but I'm sure there are opportunities to learn from these very real objects.

Not sure what you mean by this. I'm guessing you mean something like:

"Conveying the physical experience of wearing this big heavy armored suit will matter to the audience, in a way that making everything technically consistent will not." Is that right?

I've seen enough threads like this that I can't always tell, and you have done two of them so far so why not give you the advice? If it has little impact on the plot, the setting (or element of the setting) should be discarded. Period. Consider it a corollary to the writerly adage "murder your darlings".

And THIS is the part I really really wish krakon would be quicker to listen to.

[Formless]

Okay, Simon, since I know that you are able to approach this open mindedly, you deserve a polite response.

As noted, this suggests a serious misinterpretation of the situation. You're criticizing a setting where lasers and politics are related. In krakon's, they're not. So this bit is just plain off base.

Talking about your hatred of pretension when objecting to a completely imaginary aspect of the other person's story that isn't even in there... looks funny, I'll leave it at that.

My apologies, Kraken, then for something I saw suggested earlier in the thread and then... somehow thought handheld lasers were still on the table. Again, its hard to follow an alternate conversation going on in the same quote heavy fashion as the posts addressing myself, and during a major holiday. Again, I was busy.

This shows a lack of understanding of what the 'swords' are being used for, and frankly a stick would probably work just as well. The melee weapon is to be used in the off hand for close combat as a tool to interfere with an enemy's movement, not to put holes in his body.

That's not a valid counter-criticism. ALL melee weapons are used to interfere with an opponent's movement, Simon, Bayonets included. Stabbing someone isn't very well useful if they stab you back: that's what parry-reposit as well as half time/single time defenses exist for. Arguably, when combined with their psychological impact, that was the main purpose of bayonets. Take a look. Notice the parries and pushes on the middle of the rifle? It would certainly need adjusting to take on armor, but then it also seems that this scenario involves point blank shooting so perhaps not by much.

FYI, here's an old US training film for Bayonet. Be warned that it is over an hour long.

My money's on spears because they could conceivably be used to penetrate the armor, at least from favorable angles and directions. A sword could not. I honestly don't know if a pollaxe-type weapon would be viable in this context, but it at least bears thinking on.

Well, yeah.... but the whole point of a bayonet is to make a rifle into a spear or glaive.

I'm confused as to why you would post this reminder given that you are playing devil's advocate.

While he may be flat wrong about how small-caliber HEAT munitions work (and there may be no such thing as a HEAT shotgun shell for that reason), he does at least seriously mention them as a way of allowing bullets fired from low velocity hand weapons to penetrate heavy armor, when fired from inside the zone of effect of personal force-screens.

Uh, Simon? Just because he is convinced that an idea isn't stupid doesn't mean it is automatically defensible. If he is acting like this is realistic, then it can be criticized. Playing Devil's Advocate means making arguments that are.... well, not self defeating.

By the way, I looked HEAT up on wikipedia and while I don't fully understand the mechanism, these stipulations makes it sound inappropriate for infantry caliber weapons:

The stream moves at hypersonic speeds (up to 25 times the speed of sound) in solid material and therefore erodes exclusively in the contact area of jet and armor material. The correct detonation point of the warhead and spacing is critical for optimum penetration, for two reasons:

1. If the HEAT warhead is detonated too close to the target's surface there is not enough time for the particle stream to fully develop. That is why most modern HEAT warheads have what is called a "standoff", in the form of an extended nose cap or probe in front of the warhead. [notes 2]
2. The distance is critical because the stream disintegrates and disperses after a relatively short distance, usually well under 2 metres. The stream material is formed by a cone of metal foil lining, usually copper, though ductile iron and tin foil was commonly used during the Second World War.

The key to the effectiveness of a HEAT round is the diameter of the warhead. As the penetration continues through the armor, the width of the hole decreases leading to a characteristic "fist to finger" penetration, where the size of the eventual "finger" is based on the size of the original "fist". In general, very early HEAT rounds could expect to penetrate armor of 150% to 250% of their diameter, and these numbers were typical of early weapons used during World War II. Since the Second World War, the penetration of HEAT rounds relative to projectile diameters has steadily increased as a result of improved liner material and metal jet performance. Some modern examples claim numbers as high as 700%.[3]

So you both have an issue of point of detonation, meaning that every bullet needs a miniaturized mechnism to detonate it at the right distance, and on top of that the bore hole starts relatively small and only narrows as it penetrates. It may not start large enough to make any kind of difference. Whereas an armor piercing bullet stays roughly the same diameter the whole way through its target, and may even tumble on its way out, gouging a larger hole in whatever or whoever is behind.

Your points about guns are even stupider to the point of being ludicrous. You really didn't want to remind me of that, because it makes you look delusional. The troops use heavy armor, so we shoot bullets that cannot penetrate.... heavy armor.

So your statement is the opposite of true; he said literally that he WAS using bullets that cannot penetrate heavy armor, and you interpret this to mean that he WAS NOT.

This is why krakon is getting annoyed at you and saying "read the thread" over and over, because you are repeatedly criticizing him on things that are simply not true about his setting.

It makes you look... disconnected with the context of the conversation.

Okay, now I think you are reading things into my words that aren't there. I know full well that he knows that this isn't able to pierce his armored suits except by using high explosive mechanisms. I think his delusion lies in believing high explosive rounds are realistic or make up for the obvious contradiction where velocity and armor piercing ability is concerned. He wants to act like this is realistic, but that seems highly unlikely to both of us, and even more-so to me given my experiences with firearms.

Several problems with that, again based on details of how the weapon systems work. The force-screen generator would be even bulkier than the ones carried by personal armor because it has to protect considerably more volume, the screen would not necessarily stop launched grenades, and of course such a strongpoint would lend itself to easy outflanking because it is a small death zone. I mean heck, you could just as well plant a command-detonated landmine, or several of them, in the same area, which would also be a death zone for a single enemy soldier.

This was based on his statement that the shields merge at ~5m. That's almost point blank, but not so far away when you consider historical battles during the black powder era or urban combat. You would certainly end up stacking the bodies pretty quick, especially given their bulk, but unarmored men could stand pretty close together at the squad level (definitely closer than armored ranks). The portable shield doesn't have to be bigger than the ones carried by the suits themselves, but just two of them could protect a squad of twelve I reckon. Its not uncommon for squads to have one man carry heavy specialist equipment that the rest rely on, but cannot carry themselves due to weight. Bazookas and RPGs, for instance (and don't forget that with those weapons you have to carry the ammunition as well as the launcher). At least, that's my understanding. If it can work on a mine, it can work from a normal infantry backpack. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think he ever established the exact weight of the shield. I'll grant you, if he did I may or may not propose such a solution. Although trench warfare would still be on my mind.

Because nearly all effective combat takes place within a few meters, so being able to physically strike or trip someone up helps, while having a firearm that is accurate at long range doesn't.

It helps, but at the same time long range is irrelevant to the argument. Effective range is always much shorter than theoretical range, but that doesn't mean we stop issuing assualt rifles/carbines in urban combat. It just means we aren't using them to snipe, but to penetrate cover and armor. That's important enough to even bring them into buildings, where you not only have less than a few meters of distance between you and the enemy but tons of blind corners and cover as well. Melee combatives and pistols are always for emergencies, not your primary weapon.

I can think of several ways to make this entire issue irrelevant off the top of my head with basic mechanical knowledge and common sense- some kind of locking clip comes to mind, as does deliberately screwing with the shape of the 'pistol' grip to provide better balance. "Can be fired with one hand" does not equal "is structurally and ergonomically identical to a conventional pistol."

You also need your hands to manipulate the environment, so locking a weapon to your hand so you cannot let go of it is a bad idea. Common sense loses out here to military experience. Remember, killing enemy combatants is only one objective in battle. Helping injured comrades, getting out specialist gear or grenades, reloading... battlefields aren't neat and tidy like academic discussions of battlefields can sometimes mistakenly lead you to believe. There are many times where you must put down your weapon so you can do other things, and a mechanism that locks it to your hands makes that much more complicated. And it would make it more complicated to draw the weapon, for that matter.

Pistols are also designed the way they are so that they naturally "point" when you outstretch your arm, and line up with your eye so that you can aim. Reducing muzzle flip is about bringing the barrel down towards your hand, but even the very best (such as the Chiappa Rhino and other revolvers designed by Emilio Ghisoni) can only do so much, and still wouldn't stop something like a .500 S&W Magnum from having muzzle flip. You need a strong grip and wrist for that. And to pierce this kind of armor, you need something stronger even than a .500 S&W Magnum. And the high caliber HEAT rounds he was proposing is just begging to be part of a long-arm.

The feed of a semi-automatic pistol traditionally comes in through the handgrip, but that places a maximum size limit on how big the bore can be before it can no longer fit a human hand. On the other hand, you could put the magazine in front of the handgrip like on the Mauser C96 (Han Solo's gun), but that again makes the gun heavier in front of the hand, thus less balanced. Some of those early semi-auto pistols could be described as a carbine without the stock, hence why so many of them came with a detachable stock option. People honestly thought that was the way of the future, but history proved it to be flawed thinking. A revolver of course is another option, but limits the number of shots you have in the gun at one time, so you have to reload more often.

Now, you might think "why not make it more like a punching dagger? Have the barrel point directly from the fist." But again, that has problems. Palm pistols exist, and there are historical examples as well. They have never taken off. The mechanisms are more exotic, reloading is more difficult, and generally the idea has never been for guns that you aim so much as use at point blank like a derringer. You can't use any of the traditional semi-automatic mechanisms because your hand is now actually in the way of any theoretical slide or ejector. It has too little room to go backwards. And again, in this case the rounds are too big to be put inside the grip, and I can't think of any way to put a magazine or cylinder on a palm-gun without making them even more awkward.

Edit: oh, and another thing I want to add before the edit window runs out is that anyone who has shot both pistol and rifle knows how much more a pistol barrel "dances" than a rifle does. Every slight twitch your body makes causes the gun to shake and twitch, throwing off your aim, so its not enough to just stabilize the arm either. Rifles are just plain more accurate, because they have a more stable platform built in.

I'll grant that you are trying, and I thought of the same thing before making my argument. But it just doesn't work. Pistols have already been optomized ergonomically as much as is pobably possible. I didn't think it was necessary to bring these alternative designs up, because I thought that talking about weighting the barrel would illustrate the practical limitations of pistols more clearly.

There's some rambling here, but I think you didn't clearly understand the concept of the aforementioned gas piston. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure krakon did either.

A firearm that uses a pressurized gas reservoir can actually work rather well; up until the 19th century they outperformed traditional guns in many ways.

Nothing stops you from using compressed air to propel a projectile at speeds of 50-100 m/s, which is more than enough to make it dangerous at the combat ranges he's picturing. You'd need a different weapon for longer combat ranges, but the basic concept is much more valid than you imply when you take this tone.

I took that tone not because I am unaware of airguns (and I have talked about their limitations in the past: suffice to say, you get more bang for your buck by storing energy chemically than by physically compressing air in a metal can) but because his proposal seemed to imply that a weapon with a ballistic coefficient that drops off at only a few meters was somehow sane. Again I would like to point out that a gun's theoretical range is usually much higher than its effective range. I should add now that this is good. If it isn't higher, the bullet drop would ensure you never hit your target. You need it to be moving in a (relatively) straight line when it impacts the target, so that it moves through the target. Even the HEAT inspired round needs to do so, even if it can't actually penetrate without its gimmic.

The "meaningless maths" bit was specifically aimed at the part where he talks about jumping in terms of force, but forgot to account for the man inside and what forces he can withstand. Remember, my post was originally going to be more quote-by-quote style before I revised it into its current form, and this might have been more apparant before the edit.

You don't either, because a blast wave is literally a "shock wave;" a supersonic change in pressure such as would be caused by a nuclear device or high explosive. Also, since you yourself linked to some information on bomb disposal suits, I am very much surprised that you do NOT know that such suits protect against blast waves from explosions. Indeed, that's a large part of what they're for; they use a low-density crumple zone to absorb the effect of a shock wave at close range.

Actually, on looking it up on wikipedia and a few web searches, all three of us are mistaken. A shockwave is part of a blastwave, the leading part. There are other parts such as low pressure winds that follow. But this is somewhat pedantic anyway: the main point was the difference between a low explosive (which undergoes deflagration) and a high explosive (which undergoes detonation) and the way their mechanisms differ. The shockwave of a high explosive is in fact able to travel from medium to medium and cause shattering and other internal damage to structures. Low explosives are still more limited.

As for bomb suits, they are NOT intended to protect you from a high explosive blast of appreciable power. The are made from ballistic resistant materials like ceramic ballistic plates and kevlar (or rather, whatever ballistic resistant fiber they use now. Kevlar, I am to understand, is actually one of the weaker materials avaliable now). Neither of these materials will do much to protect you from the blast wave (getting knocked off your feet is going ot hurt no matter what), but it will protect you from a face full of shrapnel. If an explosive is believed to be appreciable in power and high explosive content, that's when bomb disposal crews break out the robots just to be safe.

*skipping much agreement* Not sure what you mean by this. I'm guessing you mean something like:

"Conveying the physical experience of wearing this big heavy armored suit will matter to the audience, in a way that making everything technically consistent will not." Is that right?

Yes, and I believe that includes the experience of fighting in it, which comes back to the tools and methods of fighting. Human beings want to read about human experiences. You don't read many cyberpunk novels that go in depth on the basic math and logic of computer theory because all of that is happening at a level that is literally too small and too fast for humans to percieve. The same is true of much technology: it goes in in the background until someone who understands it interacts with it on that level.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, yeah.... but the whole point of a bayonet is to make a rifle into a spear or glaive.

My main observation is that a rifle has little actual function for this subtype of combat (screened armored soldier versus same), because muzzle velocity doesn't matter, so a long barrel isn't particularly desirable. It might actually be better to have a one-handed weapon which can beat opposing melee weapons (including bayoneted rifles) out of line to open the enemy up for a pistol shot.

A bayoneted long-gun would still perform adequately if loaded with more or less the same ammunition as this hypothetical pistol. But to make use of the bayonet would necessarily take the gun out of line with the opponent, creating a role conflict.

Uh, Simon? Just because he is convinced that an idea isn't stupid doesn't mean it is automatically defensible. If he is acting like this is realistic, then it can be criticized. Playing Devil's Advocate means making arguments that are.... well, not self defeating.

By the way, I looked HEAT up on wikipedia and while I don't fully understand the mechanism, these stipulations makes it sound inappropriate for infantry caliber weapons:

Basically, a shaped charge jet is commonly used for HEAT rounds on rockets down to, oh, about two inch diameter without trouble. The concept can be scaled down easily to 40mm grenade rounds, as with this old Japanese rifle grenade design.

Cutting it down to a roughly ~20mm shotgun shell might be hard, or it might not. I don't know.

So you both have an issue of point of detonation, meaning that every bullet needs a miniaturized mechnism to detonate it at the right distance, and on top of that the bore hole starts relatively small and only narrows as it penetrates. It may not start large enough to make any kind of difference. Whereas an armor piercing bullet stays roughly the same diameter the whole way through its target, and may even tumble on its way out, gouging a larger hole in whatever or whoever is behind.

Fuzing can be handled by having a pointy bit on the nose of the HEAT round trigger the charge when it impacts, I gather- the Japanese were handling it in the weapon I linked to, and they never had anything like proximity radar fuzes.

As to making a hole, this is a serious concern... but then, if the armor is good enough to deflect anything else that can feasibly be made into small arms, you take whatever you can get which drills holes in it.

I'm not sure; would like to hear from Skimmer.

Okay, now I think you are reading things into my words that aren't there. I know full well that he knows that this isn't able to pierce his armored suits except by using high explosive mechanisms. I think his delusion lies in believing high explosive rounds are realistic or make up for the obvious contradiction where velocity and armor piercing ability is concerned. He wants to act like this is realistic, but that seems highly unlikely to both of us, and even more-so to me given my experiences with firearms.

Personally I know of no reason why a 20-25mm HEAT cartridge couldn't be made, or for that matter a 40mm HEAT cartridge used on some kind of wrist-mounted launcher for these suits.

Skimmer knows more, but for myself I am reluctant to dismiss the basic idea on my own knowledge.

This was based on his statement that the shields merge at ~5m. That's almost point blank, but not so far away when you consider historical battles during the black powder era or urban combat. You would certainly end up stacking the bodies pretty quick, especially given their bulk, but unarmored men could stand pretty close together at the squad level (definitely closer than armored ranks). The portable shield doesn't have to be bigger than the ones carried by the suits themselves, but just two of them could protect a squad of twelve I reckon. Its not uncommon for squads to have one man carry heavy specialist equipment that the rest rely on, but cannot carry themselves due to weight. Bazookas and RPGs, for instance (and don't forget that with those weapons you have to carry the ammunition as well as the launcher). At least, that's my understanding. If it can work on a mine, it can work from a normal infantry backpack. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think he ever established the exact weight of the shield. I'll grant you, if he did I may or may not propose such a solution. Although trench warfare would still be on my mind.

The screen generators mass some tens of kilograms, I think.

Meanwhile, the other problem you have is that if you are clever, it is literally possible to walk up to one of these screens, poke a gun barrel through, and fire into the interior. An enemy protected by screens cannot do this without removing his protection, but the screens can either be switched off, or a bizarre sort of weapon designed that ignores the problem- for example, a fragmentation grenade on a telescoping pole. In any case, squads operating a (static) screen generator cannot assume the enemy will walk into their screen to be killed by close range antitank weapons, so there are some basic problems.

You also need your hands to manipulate the environment, so locking a weapon to your hand so you cannot let go of it is a bad idea. Common sense loses out here to military experience.

The firearm doesn't have to be locked in place so that it cannot be removed. It could be attached with electromagnets that turn on and off at the push of a button (or the entry of a keycode verbally from inside the suit). It could be on some kind of rotating pivot mount that easily twists into a "locked" position or out of it to be put aside. There are any number of ways to mount a gun barrel on something large and heavy like the arm of a power suit which are flexible enough to be removed quickly, but strong enough to withstand the recoil of even a fairly large firearm.

You're thinking well in terms of ergonomics, but you're not being imaginative enough about your engineering approach.

Edit: oh, and another thing I want to add before the edit window runs out is that anyone who has shot both pistol and rifle knows how much more a pistol barrel "dances" than a rifle does. Every slight twitch your body makes causes the gun to shake and twitch, throwing off your aim, so its not enough to just stabilize the arm either. Rifles are just plain more accurate, because they have a more stable platform built in.

I had the same problem with an oscilloscope once. Solution: make the inputs inside the armored suit that tell the suit where to move be responsive only to relatively persistent movements, or movements with significant force behind them, or both- some kind of time-averaging. Thus, if your muscle twitches for a twentieth of a second the armor does little or nothing, and if you try to change posture only slightly the armor does little or nothing, but if you dive for the floor or point a firearm at a drastically different angle, it reacts fairly quickly and accurately.

At that point getting it to work right is a formidable challenge in software engineering, but far from unmanageable by the standards of existing anti-jitter software.

The shockwave of a high explosive is in fact able to travel from medium to medium and cause shattering and other internal damage to structures.

It is, but shockwaves propagate differently in different materials- they are much more dangerous in water than in air. Suitably chosen materials act as a 'crumple zone' and tend to dissipate the effect of a shockwave to a limited extent.

Side note: the military often uses "blast" as a general term for the effects of a shockwave on bodies and objects.

As for bomb suits, they are NOT intended to protect you from a high explosive blast of appreciable power. The are made from ballistic resistant materials like ceramic ballistic plates and kevlar (or rather, whatever ballistic resistant fiber they use now. Kevlar, I am to understand, is actually one of the weaker materials avaliable now). Neither of these materials will do much to protect you from the blast wave (getting knocked off your feet is going ot hurt no matter what), but it will protect you from a face full of shrapnel. If an explosive is believed to be appreciable in power and high explosive content, that's when bomb disposal crews break out the robots just to be safe.

If we're talking something like a 155mm shell wired to a timer, then yes, they will, because that's powerful enough to overmatch any protection a man can carry. But for something the size of a grenade, not so much- the aforementioned 'crumple zone' materials CAN help protect against that. The armor isn't purely ballistic, it is designed to protect as much as possible against both blast and shrapnel, which is logical since it's designed to protect a man who is literally cuddling up to a (small) exploding bomb.

Blocking the shrapnel does nothing if the blast turns his lungs into chutney. So the suit does have some protection against overpressure/blast/shockwaves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Bomb_Suit

[krakonfour]

I should note that my reading of this discussion is that krakonfour seems to be approaching his writing and worldbuilding more from 'what I like' rather than 'what the audience might like.' Ostensibly he seems interested in internal consistency and detail, but he's rather selective in how he applies that. Certain things receive inordinate levels of attention to detail/worldbuilding, whilst other aspects seem to be rather blatantly handwaved or just blithely shrugged off as if they are easily dealt with.

The thing is, I want to give inordinate levels of attention to everything related to the setting. The problem is, I have to start from somewhere, and I prefer completing the main objective of this setting first, before I delve into the details of world economy and future history.

And what is my main objective?

It's two fold.

This setting started as a simple vision: Two augmented soldiers face each other inside a field that protects them from modern weaponry. It's a miniature arena where they start at arm's reach. Inside this enclosed space, I wanted to think up of all the myriad moves and techniques you could use to defeat the opponent.
Having them swing their swords and clubs at supersonic speeds is just a bonus. It's the gritty intensity of walking up the opponent, and entering the field ready to die. The guns are powerful, and will penetrate the armor, but they're not a sure hit at those distances. You'll have gunkata samurai duels.

The rest of the setting came afterwards. I was tired of America always dominating the international scene, and it was either that or the UN. I wanted to give some of the other countries a chance.

My approach to creating this setting is a take it or break it mentality. If the idea or suggestion going against this setting changes it unacceptably (lasers), then I have to find ways to break it in a way that requires the least suspension of belief, and with minimal side-effects. Handwaving lasers away because of cooling or aiming problems is plausible. Handwaving them away by saying that the magical fields can block light opens a whole can of worms. IF I cannot do the above, then I will try and incorporate it into the setting a way that least modifies the final result. Grenades for example. There is no way I could eliminate such an effective counter to field technology without breaking the illusion of realism. So, I try and minimize its effects and allow for the main scenario to unfold under some situations.

So in essence you're writing in a way that gives you the worst of both worlds because of how utterly unbalanced this approach is. If you want to have your supersonic sword-power armor warriors then you should just decide to write it that way and ignore all the extraneous detail, because as this thread demonstrates this is just going to cause you problems (and thats not just idle speech - a number of baen authors like David Weber have fallen precisely into that trap, and have segments of his fandom and critics devoted to nothing but picking apart his books over how 'wrong' the worldbuilding is... simply because of the level of detail he interjected.)

Is it too hard to ask for a WOW!OMGCOOL! setting that doesn't require that you break a dozen rules of physics and crush the reader's suspension of belief every so often just for a fancy light and sound show? David Weber wanted the WOW! factor of having ships engage in sail-era fleet battles without slogging through the solar system for months, while maintaining a set of hard rules and maths to back it up. His fault was rendering the numbers public down to the last decimal place. If he screws up, he's going to get defeated at his own game. I think the lesson learned from his was 'keep the numbers to yourself and just write MUCH MISSILE YISS LASERS'

And if you want the detailed worldbuilding and realism/internal consistency... then you're going to have to stop handwaving or brushing off some of the things people like Simon keep bringing up.

I only brush them away when I haven't started thinking of that aspect at all. Otherwise, I always take Simon's points (always interesting to read his posts! ) into consideration and try and apply the treatment mentioned above.

I should further note this makes it even more clear that you don't seem to have taken your audience into account that you will intend to write for - casual sci fi fans who would overlook the stuff you handwaved aren't going to care about all the superfluous detail you interject into that story, except perhaps to note how off-balance it makes it and how it pads out the writing.

Remember Gundam Unicorn? Some would watch it because mecha in space is enough. I loved all the well-thought-out easter eggs they included in the story or setting. The O'Neill spheres could have been random habitation blocks transported into space if they didn't care about realism. They could have had artificial gravity make them walk on the spacestations instead of the tracted elevators pull them around. The spaceships didn't need a deployable heatshield or a radio-blocking plasma sheath for the scene to work. But they did it anyway. They worked out all the hard sc-fi realism and dropped a fat giant mecha in the middle of it. I want to reach that level of juxtaposition between scientific and magical.

And if you're writing for technical fans.. well... technical types have a wide variety of tastes and interests, variable suspension of disbeliefs, etc. and that disjointed approach is going to invite criticism from them because its going to stand out like a sore thumb to someone (and technical nerds can be some of the most pedantic nerds on the planet, especially when it comes to realism/internal consistency.)

Overall, this 'pattern' of yours is what creates the confusion and frustration most are experiencing in this thread. On one hand you claim to want to discuss it, and seem to want questions answered, but the way you address people's responses makes it clear you either really didn't want criticism, or you're steering the conversation towards specific answers you want, or just haven't really thought this out as much as you think you have (and I suspect I'm not the only one to think this.) If you're actually interested in feedback and criticism, then stop fighting people and listen to what they say, because no one person can know everything and the key to getting details right (apart from not overdoing it) is to listen to people who clearly know what they are talking about.

I love doing this. A hazy idea that people poke holes into as I work the details out. It's a great motivator to learn and investigate a hugely varied field of topics. I accept criticism. I am interested in feedback, but I want to gain from it and integrate it into the setting. If I'm being called stupid, and the criticism is on a closed type (this part is wrong, there is nothing you can do about it except tear the whole scenario down and rebuild it into something you didn't set out to make), then the FUCK YOU's are going to fly.

[biostem]

So if the idea is to apply a huge amount of force to try and overcome the shield, while keeping the means of delivering that force portable/manageable, perhaps a slightly different approach could be used. For instance, imagine a type of coilgun that fires extremely dense, but very narrow, (to the point of coming to a single-atom thick point), darts, which focus their hypersonic speed on such a small area, that the amount of force is immense. Keeping these darts long and narrow would also help reduce friction on the rojectile, so they don't simply burn up or deform, thus eliminating their ability to deliver all their force onto such a tiny point.

Another idea would be melee weapons which can apply short duration momentum fields of their own, so as to try and overcome your opponent's field. In order to save weight and costs down, these could use some sort of disposable capacitor that discharges the moment of impact - so you'd see fights where each hit pops off a "spent casing'.

Another idea might be to create specially hardened suits, with extra bracing for their shield modules, as well as some other way of dispersing the force applied to them - they may sacrifice speed/mobility to be able to stay in the fight longer, with their main weapon being some melee implement, because they can't carry around a lot of ammo...

[Simon_Jester]

The thing is, I want to give inordinate levels of attention to everything related to the setting. The problem is, I have to start from somewhere, and I prefer completing the main objective of this setting first, before I delve into the details of world economy and future history.

And what is my main objective?

It's two fold.

This setting started as a simple vision: Two augmented soldiers face each other inside a field that protects them from modern weaponry. It's a miniature arena where they start at arm's reach. Inside this enclosed space, I wanted to think up of all the myriad moves and techniques you could use to defeat the opponent.

Here is my advice. If this setting is your baby, is important to you, then you need to take a breather. One of the big problems you're running into is a lack of familiarity with the nature of combat in armor, of how weapons interact with armor, and (this is important) how hand to hand fighting works. So take a breather. Find a local society devoted to, for example, fighting with swords to tell you what it's like. Read some books on infantry combat, medieval combat, and the interaction between weapons and heavy tank-quality armor.

Learn a bit about how soldiers move and operate. Read autobiographies. Go hiking. Things like that. That will tell you more than any Internet thread could.


Another possibility is that if THIS is the thing you really want most, then you might want to set up a deliberately fantastic world, where the aforementioned duels with this technology are combined with other (anachronistic) technologies. The anachronism allows you to set up a social milieu where questions like "but what about antitank missiles" are not applicable. Read "Northworld" by David Drake for an example of this. The whole trilogy set in this context is available for free:

http://www.baenebooks.com/p-694-northworld-trilogy.aspx

Warning: David Drake is a better writer than anyone I know personally, and I know some people personally whose writing I genuinely value and appreciate- and who would approve this message. You may not be able to match his quality.

---

My approach to creating this setting is a take it or break it mentality. If the idea or suggestion going against this setting changes it unacceptably (lasers), then I have to find ways to break it in a way that requires the least suspension of belief, and with minimal side-effects. Handwaving lasers away because of cooling or aiming problems is plausible. Handwaving them away by saying that the magical fields can block light opens a whole can of worms.

1) OK, but you should have told us you were doing that five pages ago, because it affects how people talk to you and what kinds of statements it's worth the trouble of making to you.

IF I cannot do the above, then I will try and incorporate it into the setting a way that least modifies the final result. Grenades for example. There is no way I could eliminate such an effective counter to field technology without breaking the illusion of realism. So, I try and minimize its effects and allow for the main scenario to unfold under some situations.

It also gives you compelling secondary narratives- such as the great warrior who is brought down by 'lesser' fighters who 'treacherously' use grenades on him. This is part of the medieval heroic archetype: on the one hand, a mighty warrior might do something amazing, like Horatius at the bridge. On the other hand, clever opponents might well find a demeaning way to make an end of him, like the warrior who tried to pull a Horatius at Stamford Bridge and got a spear through the balls for his trouble.

Medievals were aware both that they could win renown through heroism, and that heroes can die. Both kinds of story have a place.

Is it too hard to ask for a WOW!OMGCOOL! setting that doesn't require that you break a dozen rules of physics and crush the reader's suspension of belief every so often just for a fancy light and sound show? David Weber wanted the WOW! factor of having ships engage in sail-era fleet battles without slogging through the solar system for months, while maintaining a set of hard rules and maths to back it up. His fault was rendering the numbers public down to the last decimal place. If he screws up, he's going to get defeated at his own game. I think the lesson learned from his was 'keep the numbers to yourself and just write MUCH MISSILE YISS LASERS'

Yes, and when I write space battles I do the same thing.

Weber makes other mistakes too, but technical digression is the biggest. Part of the problem is the extent to which he interacts with his own fanbase online, answering their technical questions... to the extent that he gets the idea that detailing the technical aspects of the setting is a kind of fanservice.

I love doing this. A hazy idea that people poke holes into as I work the details out. It's a great motivator to learn and investigate a hugely varied field of topics. I accept criticism. I am interested in feedback, but I want to gain from it and integrate it into the setting.

Point.

If I'm being called stupid, and the criticism is on a closed type (this part is wrong, there is nothing you can do about it except tear the whole scenario down and rebuild it into something you didn't set out to make), then the FUCK YOU's are going to fly.

The real key is to be up-front about this, which so far you've been... patchy about.

[krakonfour]

Jets are fast enough that any gun-based system is unreliable at engaging them. As we've observed, shielding aircraft may be impractical for a lot of reasons involving airflow and air resistance. Without your magic force-screen, it's kind of an open question whether an aircraft highly vulnerable to fire from everything on the battlefield that throws bullets gains more than it loses by flying close to the muzzles of the enemy guns.

I was just supposing two things:
-Lasers will hit immediately, from any range they can a LOS to the target. It only has to swivel a mirror after all.
-Lasers need a certain 'time on target' to deal any damage. Swooping past your objective won't allow you to deal any meaningful damage.

With those in mind, your aircraft are just as vulnerable 20km from the target's defenses than 1km away, or even more so, since they are easier to track.

The main problem is that the mobile repair shops need a reasonable degree of security, quiet, and cleanliness to work (getting dirt on the CPU of your drone is a bad idea). In real life, "mobile" repair facilities really mean "we truck in the equipment, we set up the equipment inside a fortified base camp, and the vehicles have to be driven/towed to us," not "we can repair a broken engine in the field."
The task of fixing damaged drones is still going to need fixed installations, so you still have a compromise situation when you try to launch a 'tireless advance.' Even if your repairmen can go all day without rest, they can't go all day without a workbench to do their jobs at.
Human soldiers accompanying the drones have a different problem in that they still need sleep, and that their impressions of the battlefield are made less valuable the more they are willing/required to send the robots in to do the work.

Couldn't advances in 3D printer technology allow you to make the less complicated spare parts on the field? And is there really no way to empty a large truck and make a repair shop out of it? Or heck, two trailers that can open up to create a platform.


PS: Dirt in the CPU? Rip the whole thing out and install a new module.

The tactics exist, but it is highly questionable whether they would allow reliable penetration of the defense network. MARVs have fundamental problems, one of the big ones being that if they dodge to sidestep a terminal-intercept attack, they're going to miss the target unless they can quickly return to their base course.

The situation is further simplified if the ABM missiles use nuclear warheads of their own, which is relatively easy to do and makes it less important to have ultra-precise tracking data on the incoming warheads.

But how bad does it have to be if you're willing to detonate nuclear bombs over your own land just to shoot down incoming missiles?
I just had an idea!
Instead of shooting down the incoming warhead, you could crush it when it impacts against a field.
The ABM could mount a shield generator and a heft capacitor. Or instead of capacitor, an explosive EMP-pulse device. When it gets near the target, it detonates the explosive device and uses the electromagnetic surge to pump out a momentum field. The field could easily be generated... if you had enough explosives...

[On urban shields, which I still think shouldn't be practical given the way you've pitched this, but whatever]

They're not. 2.8MJ/m3 is just too much.

Now, that shape actually isn't that bad for screening a large surface of ground. The problem is that there isn't very much vertical clearance relative to the surface area. For covering a large area of tall buildings, and especially if you're worried about nuclear warheads plowing into the screen and the flash igniting things at ground level, you really do want the generator closer to the surface, so that the volume protected is more like a hemisphere in shape. The only problem is that it makes bringing up the screen in the first place take a lot longer.

A flexible field would try to swallow up the buildings. If the nominal height is 3, it shouldn't have a problem covering a building 4m tall, at the cost of lowering the rest to 2m. The problem with really tall buildings, relative to the nominal height, is that they'd poke out and open a hole in the field.

By the way, just what proportion of the bomb's energy goes into flash-igniting exposed surfaces? I've read 35-55% 'thermal radiation' produced, but some of that is X-rays and gamma rays with little fire-starting ability.

So much is wrong with this I don’t even know where to start, but considering you’re an asshole who doesnt want to listen to anyone, essentially treating this thread as a chance to complain about people dismissing your brilliance, I wont waste my time unless you really want to know.

Okay! Have fun elsewhere!

Based on what you're saying with the planes, why wouldn't the enemy just try to force the shields of the enemy to deform enough that their generators burn out? Say by using loads of heavy high velocity shells fired at long range, something like the chain gun on an APC should do the job for infantry scale targets. For maximum shield damaging effect you could have an impact triggered explosive round so you get hit once by the mass and velocity of the shell and then again by the shell exploding against your shield. You could also use really cheap mortar shells at the start of the battle to warm up the enemy's shields before you start with the direct fire. You can also use launched grenades to burn out the enemies supply of counter measures at long range. Again the key is to start the engagement at as a long a range as possible to start wearing down the enemy shields.

Well, for several reasons.
The first is that deforming the shield has no effect on the generator. It doesn't heat up if the field is bent. It only heats up when it stops and object and absorbs part of the kinetic energy.

Now, while a hail of bullets or a string of explosions contains a lot of energy, it doesn't translate into a lot of heat, especially if not all of it is going into the generator, and that's without cooling.

As I have it right now, a 60kg generator without cooling would require a 3.2 second burst from the GU-8 avenger's AP-HE-I rounds (425g, 990m/s) to go up by 50 degrees C. For it to overheat, it would require a 4.9 second burst. Considering that an A-10 warthog can only fire for 15.3 seconds.... it's a lot.
Oh and an efficient air-cooling system can remove up to 1MW of waste heat.

On the issue of heat rounds and armor, why wear the armor at all if it can be defeated by a light low velocity round?

Because the armor serves as protection from grenade blasts and fragmentation, as well as protection enough from small-caliber HEAT rounds.
HEAT rounds have penetration proportional to their diameter. An explosive charge forced a cone of metal into a long half-molten stream of metal the burrows into the armor at supersonic speeds. The earliest HEAT rounds achieved penetration depths of 1.5-2x the cone's diameter. Modern HEAT rounds can penetrate up to 7x their diameter, so I am confident that a 30mm HEAT round can penetrate the 50mm ceramic plate of a power armored trooper.

Also, what is stopping each side from making specialized shield breaking mines that have the explosive on the end of a pole that tends to poke through shields and blow up against the soldier inside? These could be dropped en mass by aircraft fitted with cluster bomb launchers and we already have systems designed to do just this. Now make these mines JDAM style smart munitions, this should be cheap to do as computer technology has improved vastly from out time, so your minefield lands on target and things just get worse for the enemy.

Minefields were proven to be effective early on in the thread. The problem with explosives-on-a-pole is that you can only enter the field slowly. This gives time for the user to run away, or for active defense systems to shoot it down.

I'd love to hear it, if only for completion's sake. You know how HEAT actually works, so for future reference could you explain why miniaturizing it won't work or give you a better penetrator than just using a bigger rifle cartridge like the .50BMG or something? That would be a place to start.

Miniaturizing it works, and in this setting, you can get more penetrative power out of a small HEAT rounds (50-100mm of RHA equivalent penetration out of a 30mm round) than from an armor piercing round, because the latter requires a long barrel, huge propellant charge, extreme recoil and several other problems that are highlighted when you are merely 3m away from the enemy. You'd end up waving a sniper gun at the guy in front of you.

[Simon_Jester]

I was just supposing two things:
-Lasers will hit immediately, from any range they can a LOS to the target. It only has to swivel a mirror after all.
-Lasers need a certain 'time on target' to deal any damage. Swooping past your objective won't allow you to deal any meaningful damage.

With those in mind, your aircraft are just as vulnerable 20km from the target's defenses than 1km away, or even more so, since they are easier to track.

On the other hand, the beam attenuates with distance, especially through air at low altitude, which is an issue.

Couldn't advances in 3D printer technology allow you to make the less complicated spare parts on the field? And is there really no way to empty a large truck and make a repair shop out of it? Or heck, two trailers that can open up to create a platform.

My fundamental point here is simply that you need to be sensitive to this issue-

But how bad does it have to be if you're willing to detonate nuclear bombs over your own land just to shoot down incoming missiles?

It has to be exactly as bad as having a nuclear missile falling on your head. I would much rather have a small nuclear explosion happen twenty miles above my head than have a large one happen in my flowerbed.

I just had an idea!
Instead of shooting down the incoming warhead, you could crush it when it impacts against a field.

If you can get that close, a kinetic-kill warhead will work just as well. The point of nuclear-tipped ABM is to give a kill radius measured in hundreds of meters; no practical force-screen can match that.

By the way, just what proportion of the bomb's energy goes into flash-igniting exposed surfaces? I've read 35-55% 'thermal radiation' produced, but some of that is X-rays and gamma rays with little fire-starting ability.

X- and gamma radiation still ultimately gets deposited as heat OR radioisotopes; either way you lose. My advice is to not try to calculate that figure, and instead rely on more easily known parameters like "how far from the blast do you have to be to avoid getting third-degree burns on exposed skin?"

[Zeropoint]

Supersonic swords keep coming up, and I'm not seeing where they come from. Humans can't move their arms fast enough to swing swords at supersonic speeds, and power armor, no matter how much force it can apply, won't let you move any faster if it's just following your body. For the same reason, it wouldn't let you jump any higher or run any faster. The only way around this limitation would be to use some sort of direct brain interface that allows the armor to react at full speed to your intentions, without waiting for the sluggish meat. Of course, this raises problems of its own--I would expect the user of such a suit to come out quite sore, at best.

-Lasers need a certain 'time on target' to deal any damage. Swooping past your objective won't allow you to deal any meaningful damage.

This is true, a laser does need a non-zero dwell time on target. However, for a laser delivering a short train of high-power pulses--which is exactly what you'd want to drill through armor and such--that time is one or two milliseconds at most. To human senses, it'll be instant.

Regarding the production of gamma rays by a nuclear bomb: air absorbs gamma rays more effectively that intuition would lead one to believe--this page gives a half-thickness for air in the range of 3.6 to 6.2 meters, meaning that about 97% of your gamma ray flux will be absorbed within 31 meters, and 99.9% within 62 meters. The energy dumped into the air superheats it, resulting in a surge of visible and infrared light as well as the familiar blast effects.

[krakonfour]

So if the idea is to apply a huge amount of force to try and overcome the shield, while keeping the means of delivering that force portable/manageable, perhaps a slightly different approach could be used. For instance, imagine a type of coilgun that fires extremely dense, but very narrow, (to the point of coming to a single-atom thick point), darts, which focus their hypersonic speed on such a small area, that the amount of force is immense. Keeping these darts long and narrow would also help reduce friction on the rojectile, so they don't simply burn up or deform, thus eliminating their ability to deliver all their force onto such a tiny point.

If the dart you are firing is narrow, then the tip will be immobilized by the field and bends are the remaining length is too thin to hold its shape. You'd end up with a metal accordion.

If the projectile is so thin that we'd have to start handwaving away aiming and drag issues (plus the fact that it'd sag under its own weight), then the field wouldn't react at all. It'd go right through based on the same principal that allows air to go through: not enough momentum being transferred.

The usefulness of such a weapon is debatable though.

Another idea would be melee weapons which can apply short duration momentum fields of their own, so as to try and overcome your opponent's field. In order to save weight and costs down, these could use some sort of disposable capacitor that discharges the moment of impact - so you'd see fights where each hit pops off a "spent casing'.

Interesting idea, but you have to take into account three facts:
-When you are at melee weapon range, the fields would already be merged and thus there would be no advantage to having a weapon with its own shield. The other possibility is a very long weapon (3m+), but that becomes impractical very quickly.
-Shielded volume is very expensive energy-wise. It's 2.8MJ/m3, which is huge. Even for small volumes, the energies transferred will greatly degrade the generator and whatever wiring you are using if you switch it on and off several times. Plus, when you stop feeding the generator, it stops pushing against the field, allowing the energy contained in the field to trickle back into it as heat.
-Mounting a generator on the end of a melee weapon then bashing the opponent with it is a Bad Idea.

Another idea might be to create specially hardened suits, with extra bracing for their shield modules, as well as some other way of dispersing the force applied to them - they may sacrifice speed/mobility to be able to stay in the fight longer, with their main weapon being some melee implement, because they can't carry around a lot of ammo...

I did describe a system that handles momentum transfers. It mostly involved the generator held against pressurized liquid, and any movement would increase the pressure and push against magnetically-dampened pressure valves. Don't worry about it. The transfers only become a problem when the explosive charge is over the kilogram size or when standing up to tank weaponry and field guns.

Supersonic swords keep coming up, and I'm not seeing where they come from. Humans can't move their arms fast enough to swing swords at supersonic speeds, and power armor, no matter how much force it can apply, won't let you move any faster if it's just following your body. For the same reason, it wouldn't let you jump any higher or run any faster.

The way I have it, the soldier's arms are not mechanically enhanced. There's an extra set of entirely robotic arms which are installed over the wearer's shoulders and can act independently of what his biological arms are doing. The legs however are strengthened by having artificial muscles wrap around the exterior face. The inner face of the thighs is a weakspot.

What this results in is the ability for the soldier to move his arms much faster than he could biologically.

The only way around this limitation would be to use some sort of direct brain interface that allows the armor to react at full speed to your intentions, without waiting for the sluggish meat. Of course, this raises problems of its own--I would expect the user of such a suit to come out quite sore, at best.

Oh yes, human/computer interfaces are pretty well developed, to the point where thinking the arms into action is a mundane thing. The user will come out sore because he is expected the take concussion grenades to the face, not because he is moving faster than human speeds.

This is true, a laser does need a non-zero dwell time on target. However, for a laser delivering a short train of high-power pulses--which is exactly what you'd want to drill through armor and such--that time is one or two milliseconds at most. To human senses, it'll be instant.

I understand, but unless the lasers are in the multi-megawatt range, these short burst won't be doing meaningful damage to an aircraft, and much less so to a ground vehicle. Sure they'll go through an aircraft's skin, or dig a hole through a car, but will they put components out of action? Will a 0.5mm wide needle poke bring down a jet fighter?

And accuracy. Even if the bursts are milliseconds in duration, the beam would travel by 11cm at least (400km/h), up to 60cm at double mach speeds. I no expert at laser mechanics, but I do know that pulsed lasers rely on supersonic drilling through the target armor by pounding the same crater over and over again with pulses of energy, and that spreading the pulse train over a several-cm trail will result in nearly zero damage.

Regarding the production of gamma rays by a nuclear bomb: air absorbs gamma rays more effectively that intuition would lead one to believe--this page gives a half-thickness for air in the range of 3.6 to 6.2 meters, meaning that about 97% of your gamma ray flux will be absorbed within 31 meters, and 99.9% within 62 meters. The energy dumped into the air superheats it, resulting in a surge of visible and infrared light as well as the familiar blast effects.

Whoah, okay.
On the other hand, considering that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings detonated at an altitude of 550m, then the ionizing radiation quickly dies out before it reaches the ground.
In fact, it sounds like biggest threat of a nuclear bomb is simply the blast wave and the fires it starts.
I wonder then how this shielding technology would stand up to conventional bombing....

[Jub]

Here's an issue, you don't know enough science to be doing this sort of a setting.

For one thing "pressurized liquid" isn't physically possible as you can't compress a liquid.

What kind of material are these swords made of to not bend and/or shatter when they hit a gun at super sonic speeds. Also, what is the advantage of a sword over a club or baton if the only goal is to get a person's gun out of the way? Why not use something like an elephant goad, to knock away and keep control of the enemy's weapon at the same time? Have you even though of what sort of weapons and melee fighting styles would develop if the sole goal of close combat is to knock the enemy's weapon of target and shoot him yourself?

On that note, why wouldn't the suits have shoulder mounted weapons in addition to hand held weapons? Thus if the enemy knocks away the hand held weapon, the shoulder one fires, and if they bash the shoulder weapon the one in the soldiers hand fires. That makes melee worthless and suddenly you're right back to guys carrying either more or better guns.

People can't run or dodge at super sonic speeds if they still have flesh and blood legs surrounded by mechanical muscles. They would dodge, and the bones in their legs would be broken and the muscles twisted and torn. Plus, how do they start dodging the instant the laser hits? The laser is invisible, and will have to do damage before the suit will even be able to realize that anything is hitting it. Then the computer has to process the signal, the person inside has to twitch his muscles, and only then can the suit dodge. End result, the laser pulses have already done the damage the need to.

[krakonfour]

Here's an issue, you don't know enough science to be doing this sort of a setting.

Pretty ironic you're telling me that, considering this:

For one thing "pressurized liquid" isn't physically possible as you can't compress a liquid.

What kind of material are these swords made of to not bend and/or shatter when they hit a gun at super sonic speeds.

Well, only the tip would be realistically supersonic. If you do manage to get it up to those speeds, it doesn't matter if your sword survives or not. The gun is weaker against impacts, and would be ruined, completing your objective and with it goes the need for a melee weapon.
In any other case, you're either misusing it (you hit the armor) or swinging it wildly for the fun of it.

If you really had to drive your sword to those speeds and bash it against something, the best option would be a segmented sword with a paper-cutter like configuration. You smash the tip against the target, it falls off, and you move onto the next bit.

Also, what is the advantage of a sword over a club or baton if the only goal is to get a person's gun out of the way? Why not use something like an elephant goad, to knock away and keep control of the enemy's weapon at the same time?

No advantage. In fact, it might be worse as a melee weapon in this situation than a sturdier baton, because little cutting or stabbing is used. Other have suggested spears or hammers already.

It depends on what you are trying to do.
With a baton, you are aiming primarily at the enemy's gun. You need to maintain a certain distance between you and the opponent, and the swings have to be short and precise, since unlike in regular melee combat, a long swing that misses allows your opponent to shower you with bullets.
With a spear, you can reasonably engage the enemy from the moment the fields merge. You will be the first to attack the gun and/or the arm, and your thrusts will be fast. However, the opponent can close the distance without fear of running into your spear, since he is immune to most stabbing attempts. At arm-length, the spear is at a disadvantage.
The hammer is very good at batting the gun away, and is the most effective at dealing secondary forms of damage (aiming at the optics, destroying ERA bricks, jamming joints), but its end-heavy design slows it down and renders it impractical when it comes to blocking the opponent's weapon.

The sword... is an all-rounder. Thick enough to bash with, sharp enough to stab and dent, and light enough to block with the flat side quickly.

Have you even though of what sort of weapons and melee fighting styles would develop if the sole goal of close combat is to knock the enemy's weapon of target and shoot him yourself?

Quite a lot. Read previous posts.
Another, less optimal objective is to render the opponent incapable of shooting anything but your front chest plate, where the best armor is. Also, because of the way HEAT rounds work, you could reasonably grab the opponent's barrel, and pull the point against your chest. The round will never reach the stand-off distance required for it to detonate.

On that note, why wouldn't the suits have shoulder mounted weapons in addition to hand held weapons? Thus if the enemy knocks away the hand held weapon, the shoulder one fires, and if they bash the shoulder weapon the one in the soldiers hand fires. That makes melee worthless and suddenly you're right back to guys carrying either more or better guns.

Well, first off, the shoulder-mounted gun has limitations as to where it can aim and shoot. Most of its target cone is filled with the opponent's toughest armor. Secondly, any movement of the user will throw off the aiming, and with opponent also pointing a gun at you, you'll end up having to decide between dodging or shooting and taking damage. As I have detailed before, this is an survivable situation both fighters will strive to avoid.
Also, the current gun size and number is perfectly sufficient. One volley to anywhere but the front plate and the opponent is down. In fact, even the front plate is destroyed if the hits are close to each other.
On a final note, no amount or positioning of guns will remove the fact that melee and grappling engagements will dominate in this scenario. It's a simple, practical consequence of two opponents with superfast power armor and improved reflexes facing each other at an in-you-face distance of three meters. They won't even be standing at three meters. There's an entire art as to how and when to merge the fields.
For example, if you are spotted, you have to dance around the enemy while he tries to keep his front and gun pointed at you. If you have better melee weapons and armor, your objective is to charge the opponent at an angle, swipe the opponent's gun away or stay outside of its firing arc and basically smash into the enemy. If you are at a disadvantage, you try and keep the fields separated, and only step in for a moment when you believe that you can fire without retaliation. The whole scenario is complicated by the use of terrain (keep your back to a wall and the opponent's can't enter the field from a favorable angle) and grenades (time delay grenades that drop through the field, impact grenades that can trip him over if he is trying to dodge at that very moment) and other battlefield tricks, such as having allies.

Imagine the mess of three-four opponents attacking from multiple angles and merging when they feel best, all while laying mines and throwing grenades and watching out for aerial laser artillery and terrain features.

People can't run or dodge at super sonic speeds if they still have flesh and blood legs surrounded by mechanical muscles. They would dodge, and the bones in their legs would be broken and the muscles twisted and torn.

Why would they ever.... they can't. There is a major difference between swinging a sword with a robotic arm hard enough for the tip to reach the speed of sound... and moving the whole 500kg suit up to supersonic speeds. They' re faster with the power armor on, stronger too... but just how fast do they have to be when your battlefield is a 6x3m oval?

Plus, how do they start dodging the instant the laser hits? The laser is invisible, and will have to do damage before the suit will even be able to realize that anything is hitting it. Then the computer has to process the signal, the person inside has to twitch his muscles, and only then can the suit dodge. End result, the laser pulses have already done the damage the need to.

Now this is an entirely different set of problems. Lasers are not used in infantry vs infantry combat. When facing the enemy, you shouldn't be receiving laser shots... that would only happen if planes are flying overhead with complete air superiority (Why? Because anything less and the loitering laser-artillery will get shot down by anything pointed at the sky). As I'm trying to convince Simon, ground-vehicle mounted lasers are impractical too unless laser power levels skyrocket.

As for your description of laser weapons... just how different are they from today's rifles? Instead of a 1 second burst of machine gun fire, you receive a 0.1 second train of laser pulses. The tactics used in gunfights today will be no different from those used against laser-armed opponents, and that holds true until you start clearing the 600-800m distances of sniper engagements.

[Simon_Jester]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Laser_Avenger

At the moment this is all we've got in the way of ground-vehicle mounted lasers... but if we compare the performance of a 1970s artillery piece to an 1890s artillery piece, or something of that nature, we see exactly the sort of order-of-magnitude improvements in performance that make this at least worthy of consideration.

There will, of course, be a lot of times and places where laser weapons are not relevant to the land battlefield. But I think excluding them entirely is a mistake, and one that arguably weakens the themes of warfare in your setting by... oversimplifying them.

Then again, I could be wrong.