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[Devastator]

It's feasible but It seems pretty complex and expensive for something that you could probably just do with higher powered actuators for less money.

Hmm, since I assume my current character is dead, and my next would be a melee character, I am basically trying to create a suit that allows incredible agiliy. Somewhat inspired by the Arbiter of Peace. One problem with having a very high speed exoskeleton, would be that it would move faster than the standard human can react.

There's also the issue with momentum.  If the suit pulps the body inside it, it isn't much good.

[Radio Controlled]

I think it's fairly straight forward; you can move it on in the process.

And it's 2 for a token, right? Like what was said initially?

If you guys wanna work on it, thats fine. You don't need my green light to work on things, just to implement them. Coming up with ideas for how something should work or be balanced is fine so long as you realize I might say no at the end.

Well, true, but it's nice to know beforehand what 'order of magnitude' we are working with, so to speak, to prevent wasting our time.
Anyways, I'll see what the council says.


So, that sharkmist limb vat idea from before. Can we finish that up? Most details were worked out already. Here is a preliminary write-up:

sharkmist vat
cost: 10 tokens
It’s a big vat of sharkmist that can grow any limb or organ, but one vat can only grow 1 thing, and it can only be ‘programmed’ once. Limbs can be made to be usable on both sides of a body however. Usable for both people and robobodies (same kind of limbs can be used for both). 10 tokens, can grow unlimited number of the programmed object, but it needs organic material to refill itself, and it takes a while to grow the items. These limbs, once taken out of their production vat, have limited self-repair capabilities. Needs exoskeleton to carry, battlesuit-level strength is better. Limbs/organs can be grown on-ship and taken on mission, though one should check with pw to the limit one can grow like this. Try not to spill it on the ground, though the sharkmist is modified not to give a grey goo scenario. Nevertheless, bathing in the vat is ill-advised and voids the non-existent warranty.

To prevent people from being cute and 'programming' an entire set of organs and limbs they then separate to get around the 'one vat can only grow 1 thing' rule, the size of what can be grown is limited to about the mass of a big arm or leg.

[NAV]

I want to make a giant crossbow powered by robomuscle. Not something for the armoury, just planning on making something from the two spare robot bodies Dubley has lying around.

Basically, take 2 robot bodies, butcher them, and combine all the muscle into one massive strand. House that in the central body of the weapon. Have two "arms", like a crossbow. When the muscle contracts it pulls on the arms, leverage happens, and it flings things at a high velocity.

You guys think this an okay idea? Got any better ideas what I could use the robobodies for?

(Funny thing, if this works it won't be the first game where I've made a ballista from robot parts.)

[Radio Controlled]

I dunno if the robot has long stretches of material strong yet flexible enough to use as bow strings. And you won't be able to make them contract like a muscle without the normal system for that (nerves firing for fleshy arm, probably an electric signal for a robot. And nutrients to maintain the thing). And making a long string out of smaller subunits might make it rather weak.

You could make a frankensteinian robobuddy/roboslave out of it, maybe. Then gather scraps and bits from other things and keep expanding it! A gun here, wheels there, you get the idea. You'd still need a controlling unit for it though, a brain of sorts. And now I just so happen to still have a highly advanced robot CPU lying around from M7 I might be willing to sell for a reasonable price...

[NAV]

Spoiler: Crappy diagram of how crossbow would work, hope it helps. (click to show/hide)

Green is the bowstring
Grey is the arms
Blue is fulcrums for the arms
Red is MUSCLE

As you can see, when the muscle contracts it moves the arms and fires a projectile.

I dunno if the robot has long stretches of material strong yet flexible enough to use as bow strings.

Muscle is not being used as a bowstring.

And you won't be able to make them contract like a muscle without the normal system for that (nerves firing for fleshy arm, probably an electric signal for a robot. And nutrients to maintain the thing).

I can get whatever is needed to power and control the muscles from the robot body. It doesn't require nutrients, only the brain in the robot body needs nutrients.

And making a long string out of smaller subunits might make it rather weak.

Not making a long string, making a thick bundle.

By the way, I'm buying a battlesuit if I survive this mission, and planning on mounting this on one of the arms of the battlesuit.

[Parisbre56]

Sure, you can make a crossbow, it's probably a bit hard, but easy in principle.

The nutrient/generator combo of a robobody can last for months. Yours can probably last much more, since you won't be using it continuously and won't be feeding a brain. And those robot models are (I think) operating within safety limits, if you disable those you could get the full strength and speed of the muscles. Probably not as strong as an exoskeleton, but probably faster. Then again, I don't know what that will do to their service life. But even with normal strength, it should be much more powerful than just throwing something.

And you don't need to concern yourself with the number of muscles. You can combine them indirectly through welds or something similar. Parallel muscles increase strength, serial muscles increase length. Just got to make sure to combine them in the right way so that the thing doesn't snap due to differences in length. Ninja'd: For your design, might be easier to make them all parallel.

I assume muscle crossbows gain energy in two ways:
a) by the muscles pulling at the string which in turn pulls an elastic material that forms the front part of the bow (don't know the name), thus storing energy (you can also utilize some sort of lever or gear system between the muscle and the string that will reduce the speed with which you load an arrow but allow you to use less muscles to do so, perhaps getting inspiration by steam train engines)
b) by the muscles forming the string contracting, thus lessening the length of the string, similar to how a slingshot works, thus further increasing the energy provided to the bolt on top of the energy stored in the bent part in front of the bow (only problem with this is that it might stress the weapon too much).
Both of those can probably be achieved without any major problems, assuming you can keep it from ripping itself apart. But that's why you have tinker to work out the details before you try it on ship. Find out how strong you can get this thing before it breaks and find out the best way to combine the muscles.

As for controlling them, most muscles use the standard nerve plug architecture used in most prosthetic limbs. Those things that are interchangeable, that allow the same robotic arm to be installed both in a robot and on a human. You just need to study that and find a way to stimulate the muscles you want. Which probably just means testing the current passing through the plugs or looking at their specification in tinker.

Only problem is it wouldn't be very good at penetrating heavy armour (like civil defender's longcoat, although I assume it won't have trouble with the MCPs), but I'm assuming that's not what you want it for. I'm assuming you're looking for something either made for utility or for delivering grenades or special gauss rounds converted to grenades, a cheaper version of the hand cannon.

If you need to penetrate something hard (but again, probably not as hard as most armour) or send something further away, you could use Sean's robomuscle overcharge function to create a sort of overcharge mode, similar to the gauss rifle one.

Ninja'd: Ah, sure, just using it to pull is the easier and more logical solution. But with something like robobody crossbow, I thought you'd want it to look like something a crazy robo-cannibal would make.

And sure, battlesuits are great. Grab a heavy laser one and we'll have one of each. Or a howitzer one, like the one the sods had, essentially a bit below the LESHO one but a bit above the gauss cannon and it doesn't need to lock up to fire, meaning you can keep fighting when losing a limb or in enclosed places.

[Unholy_Pariah]

Actually the crossbow is a pretty good idea.

If all the muscles in your body could pull in a single direction you could lift 3.5 tons.
Portable ballistae anyone?

[piecewise]

It's feasible but It seems pretty complex and expensive for something that you could probably just do with higher powered actuators for less money.

Hmm, since I assume my current character is dead, and my next would be a melee character, I am basically trying to create a suit that allows incredible agiliy. Somewhat inspired by the Arbiter of Peace. One problem with having a very high speed exoskeleton, would be that it would move faster than the standard human can react. Even though this is more of a question for the on ship thread, is there any way we could get an implant that would basically replace the users nervous system with tons of fiber optic wires, and a coprocessor in the brain in order to improve speed and dexterity? Maybe 8-10 tokens?

Well we already had the nuerophotonic spinal column for 14 tokens, but i think iit lost its function in the transition to the new system...

Perhaps we could get a new function for it?

We could indeed change the effect of the spine into allowing faster then normal human reflexes.

Based on the guy the AM spaced during the first mission, I assume the X-ray mode of camEyes can be used to strip-search people and vehicles for concealed objects, like those scanner things they use in some airports and customs stations?

EDIT: And a clarification to the Black Halo. Could I use it to deprive people of senses, instead of altering them? Could I, for example, make them NOT feel my hand as I pickpocket them?

And would they have to be looking at me for this to happen or just be ABLE TO see me, while not necessarily seeing me? I mean, it won't break if they blink or close their eyes or turn their head away from me, right?

And how far does the camera thing go? Is it the moment the "illusion image" "passes through" something electronic it turns normal or something a bit more vague, like "as long as the image reaches their optic nerves directly, it can affect robotic eye replacements"? For example, would the illusion affect someone in a robobody/synthfleshbody? Someone in a battlesuit? Someone with their faceplate down? Someone using camEyes? Someone using camEyes to look at you through a wall?

Could Miyamoto wear one and make his Avatar look tiny? (The most stealthy Avatar! Unless you're using cameras.)

Well, no. Actually she ejected him for reasons unrelated to nudity and seeing through clothing.

Maybe.

And no, they just need to be able to perceive you.

Cam eyes will make it impossible to fool their vision, but you can still fool other senses.

He could, so long as it was just people looking at him with their eyes and such.

I think it's fairly straight forward; you can move it on in the process.

And it's 2 for a token, right? Like what was said initially?

If you guys wanna work on it, thats fine. You don't need my green light to work on things, just to implement them. Coming up with ideas for how something should work or be balanced is fine so long as you realize I might say no at the end.

Well, true, but it's nice to know beforehand what 'order of magnitude' we are working with, so to speak, to prevent wasting our time.
Anyways, I'll see what the council says.


So, that sharkmist limb vat idea from before. Can we finish that up? Most details were worked out already. Here is a preliminary write-up:

sharkmist vat
cost: 10 tokens
It’s a big vat of sharkmist that can grow any limb or organ, but one vat can only grow 1 thing, and it can only be ‘programmed’ once. Limbs can be made to be usable on both sides of a body however. Usable for both people and robobodies (same kind of limbs can be used for both). 10 tokens, can grow unlimited number of the programmed object, but it needs organic material to refill itself, and it takes a while to grow the items. These limbs, once taken out of their production vat, have limited self-repair capabilities. Needs exoskeleton to carry, battlesuit-level strength is better. Limbs/organs can be grown on-ship and taken on mission, though one should check with pw to the limit one can grow like this. Try not to spill it on the ground, though the sharkmist is modified not to give a grey goo scenario. Nevertheless, bathing in the vat is ill-advised and voids the non-existent warranty.

To prevent people from being cute and 'programming' an entire set of organs and limbs they then separate to get around the 'one vat can only grow 1 thing' rule, the size of what can be grown is limited to about the mass of a big arm or leg.

Lets go with 1 token each as is.


Alright; what more do we need to work out do you think? Seems fine to me, though we kinda made the current Xan as an alternative to it.

[NAV]

Actually the crossbow is a pretty good idea.

If all the muscles in your body could pull in a single direction you could lift 3.5 tons.
Portable ballistae anyone?

I'm using two robot bodies, which are stronger than humans. so more like 8-10 tons.
Portable ballistae!
The limiting factor will probably be on how much force the frame can stand, or the speed the muscles can contract, not how much force they can provide.

Only problem is it wouldn't be very good at penetrating heavy armour (like civil defender's longcoat, although I assume it won't have trouble with the MCPs), but I'm assuming that's not what you want it for. I'm assuming you're looking for something either made for utility or for delivering grenades or special gauss rounds converted to grenades, a cheaper version of the hand cannon.

I think you're underestimating it a bit. It's a weapon meant for an exoskeleton or battlesuit to wield. Think siege ballistae, not crossbow. Milnoplate would give it trouble, but it could get through a civic defenders longcoat, or at least crush their ribcage and knock them back.
Still mainly a utility weapon and not a battlesuit breaker.

Also planning on adding a winch to it, so it can fire kinamp-tipped harpoons and reel them back in. Or regular harpoons and grappling hooks.

If you need to penetrate something hard (but again, probably not as hard as most armour) or send something further away, you could use Sean's robomuscle overcharge function to create a sort of overcharge mode, similar to the gauss rifle one.

Great idea. Who doesn't love self destructive overdrive modes?

And sure, battlesuits are great. Grab a heavy laser one and we'll have one of each. Or a howitzer one, like the one the sods had, essentially a bit below the LESHO one but a bit above the gauss cannon and it doesn't need to lock up to fire, meaning you can keep fighting when losing a limb or in enclosed places.

Probably gonna get the mobility variant. Flying's just too damn useful.

Btw Radio, Paris, and Unholy thanks for the help designing this.

[Parisbre56]

Sure, flying is great. Especially flying tanks that can fly while carrying other tanks.
We should name all battlesuits after mythological figures. We could call yours Enkidu.

[Unholy_Pariah]

Actually the crossbow is a pretty good idea.

If all the muscles in your body could pull in a single direction you could lift 3.5 tons.
Portable ballistae anyone?

I'm using two robot bodies, which are stronger than humans. so more like 8-10 tons.
Portable ballistae!
The limiting factor will probably be on how much force the frame can stand, or the speed the muscles can contract, not how much force they can provide.

Speed of contraction would only affect the reload speed though?

The way i envision this is that you use the muscles to draw back the arms and bowstring and then the frame locks it in place thereby eliminating strain on the muscles, then when you pull the trigger it unhooks the cable and you fire the bolt at your target. so the only things limiting the design would be the tensile strength of the cable, and the stiffnes and durability of the arms and frame.

Im pretty sure that even a five ton draw strength would be able to at least knock a battlesuit off balance, milnoplate infantry on the other hand would be lifted and thrown regardless of whether their armor protects them or not.

[Radio Controlled]

Lets go with 1 token each as is.

And if we were to increase % used from 1,4,10, 20% to 2,8,20,40%, would two for a token be ok then?

Alright; what more do we need to work out do you think? Seems fine to me, though we kinda made the current Xan as an alternative to it.

I dunno, this things seems much more practical to me. Like, you can put them limbs in a closed box until you need them to protect them and keep them sterile, while the limbs and organs on Xan's body better not get into an environment with a lot of sand flying around, for example. Next to that, regular medics can still make use of this without any expensive suit, and unless Xan gets free limb refills for some reason (which would be weird, since medkits normally aren't refilled, nor are things like battlesuit gun ammo) even he'll be able to make use of it.

Anyways, I do think this is mostly wrapped up. Maybe say the limb degrades over the span of a few days/weeks, to prevent people chopping their arms of to get replaced with these (for the free limited self repair, you see)? Unless you don't think that'll be a problem.

Muscle is not being used as a bowstring.

Sure, but what part of the robobody will you use as a string then? unless you wanna get that somewhere else?

Also, I get the idea this design puts a lot of stress on the fulcrum part. Might I suggest an alternative design?

I can get whatever is needed to power and control the muscles from the robot body. It doesn't require nutrients, only the brain in the robot body needs nutrients.

Do robomuscles even work like normal ones do? Might be that they use motors and such more, I dunno. If it's indeed like muscles, are you sure it doesn't need any nutrients, and only electricity?
Also, I think it might be hard to actually separate all those parts and rearrange them and then try to re-purpose the controlling parts, but if you catch pw in a good mood he might be lenient, heh.

[NAV]

Muscle is not being used as a bowstring.

Sure, but what part of the robobody will you use as a string then? unless you wanna get that somewhere else?

Its a piece of string. I doubt the armoury would even charge for it.

Also, I get the idea this design puts a lot of stress on the fulcrum part. Might I suggest an alternative design?

Sure, you can suggest a different design. I don't think it will be a problem, just gotta make a heavily reinforced fulcrum. Maybe move them a bit farther apart to reduce stress.

I can get whatever is needed to power and control the muscles from the robot body. It doesn't require nutrients, only the brain in the robot body needs nutrients.

Do robomuscles even work like normal ones do? Might be that they use motors and such more, I dunno. If it's indeed like muscles, are you sure it doesn't need any nutrients, and only electricity?

Yes they do. It has been mentioned several times that they work basically like human muscles. There are the usual Piecewise inconsistencies of course. Even if it uses actuators, I will make an actuator powered crossbow.
And it doesn't matter whether it needs nutrients or only electricity. I can feed my crossbow robot food if I have too.

Also, I think it might be hard to actually separate all those parts and rearrange them and then try to re-purpose the controlling parts, but if you catch pw in a good mood he might be lenient, heh.

So? Its far from impossible. Whats the point of handiwork if we can't make things from other things?

[Radio Controlled]

Its a piece of string. I doubt the armoury would even charge for it.

If you really wanna fire things at high velocities (high enough to be worthy for a battlesuit), I do think you'll need a very decent string material to prevent it from snapping, which might not be free.

Yes they do. It has been mentioned several times that they work basically like human muscles. There are the usual Piecewise inconsistencies of course. Even if it uses actuators, I will make an actuator powered crossbow.
And it doesn't matter whether it needs nutrients or only electricity. I can feed my crossbow robot food if I have too.

Kay then, I'll take your word for it (it's what I thought, but wasn't 100% sure).
And now I kinda wanna see you feed your weapon ("sorry, cannot fight now, out to lunch"). Silly and impractical, but darn if it wouldn't be funny.

So? Its far from impossible. Whats the point of handiwork if we can't make things from other things?

Sure sure, just pointing it out. Can't hurt to try! Not mile those robobodies were gonna do much good sitting in an inventory.

Anyways, what I think might work a bit better:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Advantages are that you can make the entire 'T' frame out of a solid block, should be much stronger, and it works more like an actual crossbow, in that the muscles pull the string directly (they replace the pulley/lever system), and can then (like a normal crossbow) have the string rest on a 'nut' (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow) which keeps the string tout without having to keep the muscles tensed.

As designated below the two main drawings, you can add some extra features, such as making the muscles bend around so they can pull the string up to maximum without the crossbow having to be very long by using a pulley, or make the thing very long and make the muscle broader instead of longer (aka higher muscle cross section, for more pulling strength) and let it pull the string up in increments to get higher projectile speeds (black bars are where you let the string rest between pulls and reattach the pulling muscles).

Could maybe even put the projectile and string and such inside the frame (by having a partially hollow frame) so you can stack multiple on top of each other and be able to shoot multiple times in quick succession, or even simultaneously).



Of course, a simple motor to just draw in the string would be better and easier, but meh.

[Devastator]

Here's what Leo writes down for the portable sensor package:

Smoke isn't much of a problem.  Have a number of infared LEDs into a few small lamps, and use an infared camera to build up an image.  Have them be deployable, so you can take the little lamps and cameras out of the box and put them where you want coverage.

To further coverage, use a blacklight emitter.  This will probably have to be flourescent, as it's cheaper to make blacklights like that.  Include a UV camera as well.

That should take care of smoke and darkness.  I'm afraid there's no real way to see in darkness without a lamp of some kind, depending on it's range.

Radar is a bit more tricky, as with the longer-wavelength light, you need larger pickups to handle them.  Most of the box would have to be the emitter for the radar system, with a pair of long, telescopic rods and amplifiers to act as the pickups.  These would be networked together to provide directional coverage.  It would be directional, but it should be more than sufficient.  Accuracy would be limited somewhat by putting them on people, instead of a fixed stand, but it would be better than nothing..  and a collapsable stand should be included, so you can set it up properly.  It would also help if you are using it to penetrate walls.

So, in short, make a box around a radar emitter and a collapsable stand for the recievers.  Let the recievers be a pair of telescopic rods with amplifiers.  It could be attached to a frame or carried by a person, but with limited accuracy due to the somewhat irregular movement of a person.  It should be, at reasonable power levels, capable of detecting objects on the other side of narrow walls.

This box should include two IR lamps, as well as at least one IR camera.  It should also include two UV lamps, and a UV camera.

Pickups from the cameras can be handled as normal, but the radar needs a fair amount of processing power behind it to make useful returns, so it'll need a small computer and something to display it's readout on.  The radar will also be directional.

Audio isn't really useful.  Bullets and lasers travel faster than sound, after all, and pointing a directional microphone requires you to know what direction it's coming from so you can point it in the right way.  Things would be different underwater, but making a sonar box similar to the radar box isn't too hard, if that should become necessary.

As for power consumption, the whole thing should be able to run for about an hour on two or three of the laser rifle batteries.

So here's what the bolded description would be.

-The sensor package, at it's most basic, is a box a bit smaller than a breadbox.
-it contains at least two removable battery-powered IR lamps, which recharge when you put them back in their slots, from the replaceable battery in the package itself.
-likewise, it contains two similar UV lamps.
-It also contains similar removable networkable cameras, one for each of IR and UV.  The cameras, in addition to being wireless, contain empty ports for network cables.
-the largest components of the box are the ones necessary for the portable radar set.  The basic part of the box will contain the radar emitter set, the signal processing computers, and the reloadable batteries.  It's likely any moving parts required will be behind a thin, hard, fibreglass barrier designed to look like the rest of the box, while being transparant to radar waves.  This is to reduce people messing with sensitive parts that should not be messed with.
-The radar pickups will be a pair of telescoping metal rods, along with a telescoping framework that can hold the box and the recievers, in a stationary position apart from the person.  The rods themselves could also be attached to a person or even just carried, although doing so will restrict the range.
-The UV and IR cameras, can be displayed on suits like the regular existing camera viewing abilities, in false color.
-The radar is somewhat more complicated, and I'll leave the desired type of display open to others to choose.
-The batteries will be wholly conventional, and sufficient to allow for a few hours of operation.  This should be doable with a small number of laser rifle batteries.
-The range on the radar will be around five or so kilometers, albeit it will be directional, and restricted to a cone of around 90-120 degrees.  It will also be capable of some penetration of thin walls.