Brawling in Battlesuits

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

Could you grapple and pull their helmet off, or the emergency release pin, or some such? I don't own UT.

UT doesn't say anything either way. Logically, the answer would depend on fine details of the particular suit used. Either yes or no on manual exterior controls is plausible.

Originally Posted by Engurrand

Medieval knights carried knives for this purpose. If hand to hand with other battle suited soldiers is remotely possible, you'd imagine they'd carry a cutting tool that can target chinks in the armor.

A cutting tool is just about always wrong for defeating armor, and a stabbing tool generally won't work either against power armor (which has no gaps and plenty of DR at the chinks).

A shaped charge limpet mine dispenser will work pretty well though.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

A cutting tool is always wrong for defeating armor, and a stabbing tool generally won't work either against power armor (which has no gaps and plenty of DR at the chinks).

A shaped charge limpet mine dispenser will work pretty well though.

Unless it is an AD(10) cutting tool, which makes 3d+1d capable of penetrating DR100.

[Jovus]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

A cutting tool is always wrong for defeating armor, and a stabbing tool generally won't work either against power armor (which has no gaps and plenty of DR at the chinks).

A shaped charge limpet mine dispenser will work pretty well though.

Check me if I'm wrong, but a limpet mine is effectively a very powerful stabbing tool. And so yes, you're both right - a misericord is a low-tech limpet mine.

[Critical]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

A cutting tool is just about always wrong for defeating armor, and a stabbing tool generally won't work either against power armor (which has no gaps and plenty of DR at the chinks).

A shaped charge limpet mine dispenser will work pretty well though.

What would the DR at the chinks be for a heavy battlesuit? Does something like that which is sealed and made of TL 10 composites even have chinks?

[Engurrand]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

A cutting tool is just about always wrong for defeating armor, and a stabbing tool generally won't work either against power armor (which has no gaps and plenty of DR at the chinks).

Yes... I misspoke. I meant to say a cutting tool like an oxyacetylene torch is a cutting tool or other, higher tech version. At any tech level, a muscle powered cutting implement like a knife or a sword would be poor use against chinks in armor unless used to stab, in which case, it isn't a cutting tool.

[Jovus]

Originally Posted by Critical

What would the DR at the chinks be for a heavy battlesuit? Does something like that which is sealed and made of TL 10 composites even have chinks?

If it has any moving, separable parts (i.e., not made of something like living metal or intelligent nanotech swarms or exotic biologies or force fields) whatsoever, it has 'chinks', though what their DR is and how vulnerable they are could vary wildly.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Critical

What would the DR at the chinks be for a heavy battlesuit? Does something like that which is sealed and made of TL 10 composites even have chinks?

It's not stated how the joints are constructed, but it's the nature of joints to be weak spots.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Critical

What would the DR at the chinks be for a heavy battlesuit? Does something like that which is sealed and made of TL 10 composites even have chinks?

Not thinking about it, standard rules give it chinks with half DR in each hit location, with specified hit penalties.

With thinking about it a little, they're probably going to be there for anything where the primary armor material is rigid plates, mostly the bad sides of joints and the like. Should they be half DR, more, less? They probably shouldn't really be exactly half DR, that's just a convenient generic value.

If you're being really detailed, they could vary by model of armor. With some geometry, we could probably figure out how thick inside-joint protection could be without blocking flexibility, and then try to hybridize that with an estimate of DR/thickness for various TLs to figure out maxima, but that's too tricky for me at the moment.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Not thinking about it, standard rules give it chinks with half DR in each hit location, with specified hit penalties.

This (the rule in, I think, LTC2) was the basis for the rules for damaging armor by grappling in, well, the upcoming grappling book.

[Critical]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Not thinking about it, standard rules give it chinks with half DR in each hit location, with specified hit penalties.

With thinking about it a little, they're probably going to be there for anything where the primary armor material is rigid plates, mostly the bad sides of joints and the like. Should they be half DR, more, less? They probably shouldn't really be exactly half DR, that's just a convenient generic value.

If you're being really detailed, they could vary by model of armor. With some geometry, we could probably figure out how thick inside-joint protection could be without blocking flexibility, and then try to hybridize that with an estimate of DR/thickness for various TLs to figure out maxima, but that's too tricky for me at the moment.

So, going with the quick-and-dirty by-the-book method, that's DR 75 for chinks in the torso and head and DR 50 for chinks elsewhere. That is still beyond the ability of the aforementioned brawler to damage, barring various highly improbable critical hit/critical miss events. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just making the observation.