Eddie replied to me: > So for clarity, Battlesuit equates to what most other high-tech games > call Power Armor and Exoskeleton would be more akin to Ripley's suit > in Alien/Aliens (I can never remember which one it was)?
I was proposing a definition to structure the debate. You're free to suggest a different one. As far as I remember the 3E rules, there is one skill for armed suits and another skill for unarmed suits. Ripley's Powerloader is unarmed, so it gets classed with unarmed military suits. It would make just as much sense to talk about combat suits (with integral or handheld weapons) and civilian work suits. Should suit weapons be built-in? PRO: * The weapon can be integrated with the power management of the suit. The same power cell can be used for motors and beam weapons. * The weapon is protected by the armor and stealth systems of the suit. * It is easier to integrate it with the suit electronics (targeting and diagnostics). The suit computer can override it. CON: * Many weapons have long barrels. Fixing them to the suit can be awkward. * You can't switch weapons easily. * No chance to use the weapon without a suit. > > Other branches would have their own legends. However, the debates back > > then were mostly centered on TL8 or TL9. > > My only issue, and I'm sure the debates in the 90s acknowledged, > Heinlein isn't the only school of thought where battlesuits/powered > armor are a story feature. I hate to weigh my products against his > one vision of how they would be if real. We tried to figure out what the GURPS rules imply, not a specific setting. > > How heavy can a suit be if minor damage to residential buildings is > > acceptable? > > If weight is the limiting factor, then that has to be determined by > the construction materials and methodology of the populace where the > suits are being used. Not knowing where you're going to be deployed > though, you have to make a decision based on what you consider your > average environment will be. More after the boarding/urban > question... I would think that residential buildings are no stronger than they have to be -- if you get stronger materials, the walls get thinner. > > does it make sense to equate boarding actions with urban combat? Or > > does that require smaller suits? > > Yes, you can equate them. While the techniques to establish your > foothold are different in boarding actions vice MOUT, the principles > are the same. Establish foothold, then clear room by room, section by > section. If one hallway is smaller than another hallway, you have to > adjust your tactics but the fundamental doctrine will be the same. MOUT is more than just house clearing -- it covers fighting in the streets, too. And houses are usually more expendable than ships, if you try boarding at all. That suggests bigger suits and more raw power than finesse. > Again, the size of what you anticipate will be your size determinant. Rooms and corridors in houses tend to be bigger than those in ships. > One thing to take into consideration though, as an infantryman, I like > to be small and light so I can move quicker but present a smaller > target. If I were to be wearing a suit of armor that makes me immune > to AK-47s, I'd still probably want to watch out for .50 cal., 12.5mm, > 20mm, etc. If someone were to give me a suit in real life, I'd hope > they would consider those threats as well (which coincidentally does > lead back to the mecha vs. tank argument, I think). If small and light is the priority, why use powered armor at all? Send a guy with running shoes and a rifle. A 1,000-lb. suit is not much larger than a 500-lb. suit, but it is much more capable. A battlesuit requires a battlesuit system with 30 to 40 lbs. The motors have to move that weight plus the operator before there is any benefit. Power systems have to power the motors. Armor has to protect motors and power. You have to cross a tipping point (which I won't try to pin down exactly) before the powered armor pays. The suit at the end of the posting was from April 1st, 2011, but technically it is a valid design. The tech level is absurdly high, but DR and ST are modest. It is below the "tipping point". > > One thing I've been wondering about, the usual assumption in literature > > seems to be that battlesuits are issued to privates fresh from boot > > camp, and that battlesuits replace unpowered troops at one for one in > > an infantry TO&E. How reasonable is that? > > The easy answer is it depends. The driver in a Bradley, Stryker, or > Abrams is usually the newest private. The commander of a Bradley or Abrams would be a sergeant, right? So is a battlesuit operator comparable to an AFV driver or an AFV commander? > In the late 90s when the US Army started adopting the M4 carbine outside > of special operations forces, it went to infantry unit company commanders, > first sergeants, platoon leaders, platoon sergeants, and squad leaders > first. Then RTOs, then others as the Army acquired enough. Then it started > making its way out to other branches until it's almost impossible to find > an actual long-barreled M16 in most active duty units. Typically they can > be found in brigade level headquarters and non-combat arms fields and > Reserve/National Guard units. The same with body armor. So I'd say that > based on the maturity of the technology in your setting would be the > metric to answer that question. The M4 is no more difficult to use than the M16. Both can be handled by a recruit who comes from basic training. > > What happens to the main weapon in the squad if the dedicated gunner breaks > > a leg? > > This would be the same thing as in real life. You have other people > trained and qualified on the weapon system (be it a machinegun, a > railgun, or a powered armor system). He goes down, you go to your > alternate. Of course, if it's anything like real life, I want to know > when Division Headquarters is going to give us slots for the training > and when I'm actually going to get another one of my guys/gals > through the funnel of the Brigade Command Sergeant Major so I can > have some redundancy in my Company. I was talking about the scenario where just one guy/gal in the squad has powered armor to haul the supporting weapon. The trained alternate would need powered armor, too. It also implies that the supporting weapon is not integral to the suit. And if you have a backup supporting gunner with a backup suit, why not issue a second supporting weapon to start with? That doesn't cost much more. > > Do you put powered armor into sustained operations, or are they for > > short, sharp fights like commandos? > > I see the answer to this question like the US Army's Stryker family of > vehicles. The engineers had a clear intent when they designed the > Stryker that was quickly changed by the intent of the generals and > colonels in charge of the program and completely thrown out of the > window by those of us using them on the ground. If there are both battlesuits and unpowered armor, I could see the suits operating a bit like attack helicopters. Say the commander of a leg infantry brigade has a battlesuit platoon. They are kept back under brigade control until they are committed at the critical point, then they come in and unleash plenty of havoc in a short time, then they go back to the rear to rearm and refuel. A bit like tank doctrine in early WWII. If you send them out in penny packets instead (like my suggestion above that the equivalent of each machine gunner gets a suit) they are much harder to resupply and maintain, and the shock effect from concentrated suits is lost. > > There seems to be a trend these days to reduce the number of rifles > > at the sharp end and to increase the number of headquarters people, > > even at the company level, with intel and operations staff. > > Are you talking real world? Not in my Army. There are two schools > of thought at the moment...the first that I had happen to me, "Hey, > here are all of these different MOS soldiers. Give them a job and > a place to live, Company Commander!" Nevermind that I had too many > people and not enough living space on my FOB. The second is we have > to maintain X number of troops in Blah Theater, we can't go over > that number or the Easter Bunny will beat the Tooth Fairy. Can you > have your gunner load and drive the tank at the same time?" The > whole more multifunctional soldiers with less mentality. I'm just an armchair analyst, but I was talking about the real world. The Marines are talking about the Company-Level Operations Center, the Company-Level Intelligence Cell, and Enhanced Company Operations. > > * A small squad could consist of the squad leader and two four-man fire > > teams. The team members specialize -- team leader, grenadier, automatic > > rifleman, rifleman. Would battlesuits specialize that way, too? > > Here we're getting into doctrinal debates that are still going in my > real life. For us, the US Army, we've found that a 9 man squad is > the optimum configuration for maximizing firepower and maintaining > command and control. Certain Army units and the USMC are similar but > they add a third fireteam, I believe the machinegun team. More later... Again from my distant armchair, I thought the 9-man squad was a compromise solution between manpower limits, the capacity of afforable APCs/IFVs, and the need for firepower. Without those limitations, wouldn't 11-man or 13-man squads be better? A notional platoon of three infantry squads, platoon leader, platoon sergeant, and radio operator will always get weapons teams, medics, forward observers, translators, dog handlers, EOD teams, ... who will have to ride somewhere, and four Strykers only have room for 36 dismounts, right? > > * Does the firepower of a battlesuit allow smaller squads? > > Potentially, but squad configuration isn't just about firepower. FREX, > the US Army classifies a 9-man squad with only 7 personnel as combat > ready. Six or less as combat ineffective despite having their full > load-out. That six man squad is still bigger than a four-man fire > team that is expected to fight. Because the full-strength fire team doesn't have to split for fire and maneuver. But a battlesuit has heavier weapons, improved sensors, etc. could two suits maneuver on their own? > > * Can a squad fight with fire and maneuver, or does it take a platoon to > > maneuver different squads? > > Absolutely. That's why we have the composition that we do. One team > provides fire, while the other maneuvers and kills the enemy. If you look at the history of IFVs and their dismount squads, that doesn't go without saying. Look at the Bradley platoons with two or three dismount squads split between four vehicles, and the trouble to get them into action. > I think I've pretty much addressed everything I had a thought about. > Bear in mind, a lot of my responses were doctrinal based (which is > the ideal in the absence of enemy and terrain) and based on my own > experiences. That said, I've been doing this (without battlesuits, > power armor, or mecha :'( ) since 1996, I'm not an expert but I > worked with/for some pretty smart people in my time. > > Eddie The hard part is to find out what suits will change. Easy Case: All infantrymen have battlesuits; unpowered infantry is about as relevant as pikemen are today. All other vehicles get tougher as well and the principles still hold: battlesuits support tanks in close terrain, artillery forces everybody to hunker down, ... Almost as Easy Case: A few infantrymen get battlesuits, where they are deployed they devastate unpowered troops and give armor a headache, but they are too expensive/experimental/maintenance-intensive to replace ordinary leg infantry in all applications. Difficult Case: Battlesuits are one more ball to juggle, they don't replace unpowered infantry but augment it. Regards, Onno And here the April's Fool suit: Jump Suit v1.0 (TL14) Copyright 2011 by Onno Meyer For obvious reasons, the Jump Suit is the garment of choice for interstellar adventurers who want to hop from world to world at a moment's notice. Subassemblies: Body +0, two Legs -2, limited-rotation Turret -2, two Arms -3. Powertrain: 0.35-kW leg drivetrain; two 300-lb. vectored mega reactionless thrusters; 0.15-ton jump drive; 40-kW total conversion power plant, 540,000-kWs rechargeable power cell. Occ: Battlesuit crew station rated for 180 lbs. pilot weight. Armor F RL B T U All: 4/32 4/32 4/32 4/32 4/32 Equipment: Body: Inertial navigation system; 1-man full life system. Turret: Two medium radios; 2-mile AESA; 2-mile PESA; surveillance sound detector, level 1; transponder; global positioning system; C8 small computer. Arms: ST 16 arm motors. Statistics Size: 7'x2'x2' Payload: 180 lbs. Lwt.: 300 lbs. Volume: 6.25 cf Maint.: 77 hours Price: $68,137.1 HT: 14. HPs: 23 Body, 8 each Leg, 8 Turret, 8 each Arm gSpeed: 12 gAccel: 8 gDecel: 20 gMR: 2.75 gSR: 1 Very Low Ground Pressure. Full Off-Road Speed. aSpeed: 360 aAccel: 20 aDecel: 30 aMR: 7.5 aSR: 3 sAccel: 2 Gs. sMR: 2 Design Notes Body is 3.6 cf. Legs are 0.75 cf each. Turret is 0.75 cf. Arms are 0.2 cf each. Structure is medium, advanced. Armor is advanced composite. Sealed. Computerized controls. 0.32 cf of empty space in the body, 0.23 cf in each leg, 0.18 cf in the turret. Empty weight is 120 lbs. The vehicle uses the design rules from Vehicles [second edition, third printing, December '09 errata] and VXii (including the armor volume rule) with the text format from Vehicles Lite. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
