Swarmbot weight

[jspade]

Has it been anywhere established what microbots and nanobots swarms weigh? If a character just wants to carry an inactive swarm, without the hive, how much does a square yard encumber him? "Negligible" isn't really a useful answer, since that ends up with "well, I can carry an infinite number of them..."

[munin]

"A one-square-yard swarm weighs about two pounds." (p. UT37, under the statistics table).

That's the same for microbots or nanobots.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by munin

"A one-square-yard swarm weighs about two pounds." (p. UT37, under the statistics table).

Yep, that's what it says there but in the Swarm Warhead section on p.37. the 10lb Swarmbot Hive is also on that page.

However, the implanted Swarmbot Hive on p.213 in the Bionics section fits inside a single cp of Paylaod and that's only 2lbs for an average human. Besides any other possible components of a hive it includes a 0.5lb C cell. So that swarm can't weigh 2bs.

Then you backtrack to the Swarm Warhead on p.165 and there you can fit an entire 1 hex swarm inside a 40mm hand grenade which weights only 0.25lbs total.

The grenade probably constitutes MA's "lightweight packaging".

So if you want a guess, my best guess is that a hex of microbots probably weighs 2 ounces rather than 2 lbs. A hex of nanobots should weigh even less. A hex of nanobots ought to weigh less than a square yard of paint.

[vicky_molokh]

Transhuman Space microbots have a mass of one pound per one 'hex' (12HP). Not sure if UT for 4e changed that.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by jspade

Has it been anywhere established what microbots and nanobots swarms weigh? If a character just wants to carry an inactive swarm, without the hive, how much does a square yard encumber him? "Negligible" isn't really a useful answer, since that ends up with "well, I can carry an infinite number of them..."

Carrying them loose is probably a good way to damage them though.

Admittedly I don't quite see why you need a hive that has 5 times the weight of the swarm just for that, so there may a lightweight packaging that works for simple transport. Hives must include something other than just protective packaging and recharging docks to be as heavy as they are. It may well be capable of some routine maintenance that is necessary but otherwise not mentioned, or that the swarm can't function at all if there isn't a hive nearby to do some sort of critical coordination or reference frame establishment or something.