Battlesuits for smaller users...

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

In a battlesuit, the movement of the limbs is performed by the wearer's muscles. The suit assists, but it doesn't replace.

I suppose that really we ought to sum BL scores for the suit and wearer. It's not right that a cybersuit should add 168 lb to the max lift of a ST8 person and 296 lb to that of a ST16 person. If it's assisting, it should add the same to both as in the usual rules for assisting lifts (B.353).

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by Icelander

You know that a car has more than one gear, right? So putting the foot down and keeping it down succeeds only at revvying the engine high enough to burn it out eventually and nets you less than half the maximum speed of the vehicle.

See that wall over there? Enjoy watching while I pound my head against it. :-P

Okay, how about a sound amplifier. We can get the woman from Police Academy, who never talked above a whisper. And a screaming hard-rocker. Put them both on the amplifier, with its settings set to double the volume.

Now double it again. And again. Eventually, it's going to reach the engineer-designed limits. Eventually, the amount of amplification for Whispering Wendy will be much greater than the amplification for Screaming Sammy.

I don't care how strong someone is. They're not using THEIR muscles to make the battlesuit (for instance) lift a recon car off of trapped soldiers. It's all the "muscles" of the battlesuit. So why does the battlesuit suddenly get weaker when a pudgy accountant gets into it? Do they have to drain off some hydraulic fluid, or reduce the power level of the installed reactor, or something?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

So, if I'm driving a forklift, I can get it to lift 2000lbs.

But 'Roid Rage Randy over there, he can get it to lift 3000lbs. (Not a real person, just an extreme example.)

Gotcha. Because, using our muscles somehow is the limiting factor of what ST the forklift has in its hydraulics.

Going back to the racecar example, it doesn't matter if it's me driving or Jeff Gordon. There's no way that even the best driver in the world can get a Ferrari to break the sound barrier, because it's not designed to be able to do it.

The machinery of the battlesuit has an upper limit of what it can get out of it. It doesn't matter if it's me driving the battlesuit, or if it's "Randy." The hydraulics/myomer/whatever that supplies the ST will top out.

In which case, it should be a simple matter of recalibrating the settings on the amplification, rather than adding an "11" to the scale. (Spinal Tap reference...)

No, because it's not a forklift. That's the entire point. Power armor is completely unlike a forklift.

With a forklift, there is a machine doing the entire job. Unless you are using it very, very strangely, your muscles have nothing to do with the process. Obviously.

With power armor, your arms are doing the lifting. Not a pair of robotic arms under your direction. There are powered components that complement your muscles, but your muscles and the machinery are cooperating.

Imagine, if you will, that after locking the controls to attempt a heavy lift, you got out of the forklift and pulled the tines upward by hand.

There is indeed an upper limit on what the power armor can do. But that doesn't determine a maximum that you can lift while wearing the power armor. It determines how much more you can lift than you could without the power armor.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Brett

I suppose that really we ought to sum BL scores for the suit and wearer.

Yeah, I concur.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

However, it would probably make more sense for the ST to vary the square root of a constant plus the square of the user's strength. With the constant chosen for consistency to the case of a ST 10 user. Which will be fairly similar to fixed suit ST for human-range users.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

I don't care how strong someone is. They're not using THEIR muscles to make the battlesuit (for instance) lift a recon car off of trapped soldiers. It's all the "muscles" of the battlesuit. So why does the battlesuit suddenly get weaker when a pudgy accountant gets into it? Do they have to drain off some hydraulic fluid, or reduce the power level of the installed reactor, or something?

I figure it's an abstraction to represent the fact that the pudgy accountant can handle far less powered assistance without injuring himself.

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

With power armor, your arms are doing the lifting. Not a pair of robotic arms under your direction. There are powered components that complement your muscles, but your muscles and the machinery are cooperating.

Assuming two users, ST 10 and ST 15. With the ST 15 user, the battlesuit is capable of acting like it has ST 25. How much contribution is the user's ST 15 adding? (ST 25 gives BL of 125. ST 15 gives BL of 45. The battlesuit is capable of contributing 80.)

Now we put in the ST 10 user. Suddenly, the battlesuit is capable of only contributing only 60 (ST 20 = 80; ST 10 = 20; 80-20= 60).

So what happened to the other 20lbs of BL? That's a 25% decrease in the strength of the battlesuit's muscles based on who's operating it.

What's the upper limit on the amount of BL the battlesuit can contribute? If we (bizarrely) manage to get someone with a ST of 20, will the battlesuit act like it has a ST of 30 (BL contribution of 100), or a ST of 25 (BL contribution of 45)?

If the amount of power supplied by the battlesuit isn't fixed, then the maximum power should be available to the user, whether their ST is 10, 15, or 20. Simply make an Armory (or whatever...) roll to recalibrate the responsiveness of the battlesuit's muscles.

*****************

Mind you, I know that the game designers went for a ST bonus, rather than a fixed amount of BL contribution, for simplicity. I just think it's weird that a battlesuit gets weaker based on the user's strength.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Assuming two users, ST 10 and ST 15. With the ST 15 user, the battlesuit is capable of acting like it has ST 25. How much contribution is the user's ST 15 adding? (ST 25 gives BL of 125. ST 15 gives BL of 45. The battlesuit is capable of contributing 80.)

Now we put in the ST 10 user. Suddenly, the battlesuit is capable of only contributing only 60 (ST 20 = 80; ST 10 = 20; 80-20= 60).

So what happened to the other 20lbs of BL? That's a 25% decrease in the strength of the battlesuit's muscles based on who's operating it.

What's the upper limit on the amount of BL the battlesuit can contribute? If we (bizarrely) manage to get someone with a ST of 20, will the battlesuit act like it has a ST of 30 (BL contribution of 100), or a ST of 25 (BL contribution of 45)?

If the amount of power supplied by the battlesuit isn't fixed, then the maximum power should be available to the user, whether their ST is 10, 15, or 20. Simply make an Armory (or whatever...) roll to recalibrate the responsiveness of the battlesuit's muscles.

Didn't I address that back in post #18?

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Mind you, I know that the game designers went for a ST bonus, rather than a fixed amount of BL contribution, for simplicity. I just think it's weird that a battlesuit gets weaker based on the user's strength.

...if you know that it's a math-phobic kludge, why pretend otherwise?

I would have described the issue as the suit getting stronger rather than weaker, but it's the same thing from a different angle.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

So what happened to the other 20lbs of BL? That's a 25% decrease in the strength of the battlesuit's muscles based on who's operating it.

Armour won't fit people of a different size and build. The two battlesuits aren't the same battlesuit.

The one for the stronger (and probably also larger) person will be more powerful to take advantage of his greater tolerance and more space to put cybermuscle.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Armour won't fit people of a different size and build. The two battlesuits aren't the same battlesuit.

The one for the stronger (and probably also larger) person will be more powerful to take advantage of his greater tolerance and more space to put cybermuscle.

This only works if you rescale your power armor by user...if the big guy's armor has higher performance, it should also weigh and cost more and possibly have higher DR.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

This only works if you rescale your power armor by user...if the big guy's armor has higher performance, it should also weigh and cost more and possibly have higher DR.

Sure, if you want to go into such small details.

In reality, all armour weight and cost should scale by the build of the wearer. GURPS rules ignore this, for the sake of playability and simplicity. Personally, I modify armour weight and cost according to build.

DR shouldn't change, though. It is equally thick, just with more surface area.