Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[piecewise]

((Okay, so. In the Heph OOC thread, starting from around here, we started tossing around some actual numbers and constructive estimates instead of usability concerns, and have bumped into a specific number we need a few questions answered about. The actual posts provide the details, but the actual number is what's important if you don't want to read all that.

Question: How large/heavy/expensive will a generator providing 200 kilowatts of power be? I recall there being different tech levels of generator, and some sort of new research being performed for better generators. On different ends of the scale - how heavy would a "cheap" generator of that power be (i.e. around 5 tokens' cost?), and how expensive would a "compact" generator of that power be (size of a medium backpack, no more than 50kg weight), if it is at all possible? For reference, 200 kilowatts is roughly the amount of power consumed by a small office building, 2 kilowatts is what you could get from a typical wall outlet. We've no idea how it translates to TPUs, even.

And if it's no trouble, just in case - the same for a 100 kilowatt generator?))

This is when the TPU measurement really shows the meaning of its name eh?

Anyway. Lets see. 200 kilowatt in cheap is gonna be basically unusable. Thing would be the size of a washing machine. And I feel like things up from there would become unreasonable in terms of cost, probably nearly doubling the MKIII's base cost.

What I would suggest instead is using those new batteries we just developed. They would require occasional changing,  which is a maintenance cost, but they would provide that power you need without being massively heavy or stupidly expensive. Depending on how long you want them to function on a single battery, you could get the size down to something basically completely negligible. Or increase the operational time by scaling it up some.

Hephaestus thing:

1.You said the sci team will work on making a non-invasice Man-Machine Interface.  When will they be done?

Beetlesuit/battlesuit 2.0 design (minor improvements):

2.Try making some type of eyelid for the suit's cameras, so that it can easily protect from stuff like paint, and clean it off.

3.Add handles to the back of the battlesuit- enough for two people to ride on the back and fire over the top of the BS.  Make sure a few claymores are positioned to blow the handles off, and kill anyone who grabbed on without permission.

4.Add deployable wheels to the feet, sorta like heelys or something. 

5.Add a camera to the crotch, and any other blindspots.

6.Remove the backup capacitors in the suit, and replace them with bluraditite batteries of similar cost.  Hopefully, that should afford higher capacity and lower volume.

7.Remove most of the claymores, except for the ones positioned near the riding handles.

8.Change the location of the external button that opens the cockpit up, at least enough to confuse any sods who try and open the suit.

9.Ask scientists/other players for suggested names for this thing.


((Hey, Emp, are your conversations with Leo recorded?  Would Charles allow other Heph personnel to listen to the recordings, if they felt like it?))

1 Three weeks

2.How about a clear plastic dome over the camera which can be extended and retracted?

3. Alright, handles, claymores. Got it.

4.Hmm. This could be problematic. You're gonna have to have motors and shit built into the legs, room for wheel, etc. It's gonna make the legs bigger and possibly more clumsy.

5. Oh my.

6. Capacitors are used to store energy, generally building it up and then releasing it. Bluraditite can't be used like that. Basically, the crystals gain their charge when created and as the charge is pulled out of them, they break down. You can't put more charge into one thats already been created.

7. Alright.

8. Fair. Where you wanna stick it? It's part of a maintenance panel.

[Devastator]

"Hmm.

I remember there being two such missions.  One where a mining colony dug up something bad, and had to be evacuated.  What the UWM wanted was to get the people out of the place before they died horribly.  If they stayed, they would have died horribly, and they only saved so many people because they were willing to be harsh... and their secret, evil plan was to put people on escape transports before their lungs were eaten by sharkmist.  We were given clear, accurate goals, and they were justified.

The other one, Steve lied about the mission goals, murdered a city, if not an entire planet, all so we could assassinate someone for some reason.  After that, we were welcomed into the revolution with a share of responsability for the genocide that was just carried out.  Forgive me for not thinking that Steve gave us an accurate view of the situation.

There was also the dam mission.  What was at stake in that one, again?  And where was it?  Oh yes, on a planet in more or less permanent rebellion.  For some reason, the UWM don't feel compelled to crush all opposition.


Anyway, you're being awfully vague with this UWM stuff.  UWM this, UWM that, UWM here, UWM there.  I never saw a one in my life.  Where were all the UWM people, anyway?

Who gives out the weapons on the Parcelesus' sword?  Who wakes up the prisoners?  Who does the research?  Who crews the ship?  Who fires the guns?

In the end I wasn't on a UWM ship.  I was on Steve's ship, under his command.  You say those atrocities were permitted?  Absolutely.  They were permitted by Steve.

That the UWM shares some responsability by failing to put him out of commision?  Sure, I'll agree to that.  The UWM are assholes."


"Anyway, this is enjoyable, but do you have anything specific to ask me, or of me?

I'd be glad to stop philosophising about stuff and try to figure out what's actually going on.  Speaking of which, you, quite understandably, never told me if you understand anything fundamental about space magic, or if you still have your brainchips in."

[Empiricist]

Charles records his conversation:
"Funny how the mining colony was completely filled with that mist and had been in contact with it for quite a while before they stepped in. Almost as if they were planning on using it as a testbed. The UWM's tasking for that assassination mission was precisely to crush rebellion, Steve's objective was to assassinate the king, that did not require us to perform any acts of violence against the populace. If we had known what Steve's true motive was at the time, we wouldn't have even tried to stop the rebellion, we would have opened the main guards and ushered them forth.

And it WAS a UWM ship. Do you really think that if Steve just commandeered a ship, armed prisoners and researched alien technology, they would just let that happen? In fact, if you do, then that in itself would still be a serious issue.

All I wanted to do was find some common ground and perhaps some reason to parole you. It seems this has been in vain. As for the space magic, it isn't something I work with."
Charles leaves the room and sends the recording to his commanding officers for review along with a request for access to the Xan clone for the purposes of making an amorphous fleshsuit.

[Radio Controlled]

4.Hmm. This could be problematic. You're gonna have to have motors and shit built into the legs, room for wheel, etc. It's gonna make the legs bigger and possibly more clumsy.

When Tavik was designing his 5m tall robot, he also wanted it to have wheels on the legs (retractable roller blade-like things), and that didn't give any problems. Sure, his suit was probably a bit lighter, meaning smaller wheels and motors, but still. Why would it be such a problem now, if it wasn't at all before?

Secondly, remember that project for creating a library of exoskeleton designs? Well, one of the things I asked for were:

C) Heavy exoskeleton, like the one used in a battlesuit
D) Same as C, but with more dexterity instead of raw strength (for projects like Sean's or Tavik's fast assault mech)

With this, I meant a skeleton like the one which a battlesuit is built around, the one that it always needs to be able to move, and not an exoskeleton that goes 'around the suit' itself. So 'exo' is from the point of view of the pilot, not the entire suit itself. I thought it'd be clear what was meant (an exoskeleton to go around the suit itself would be kinda silly), but apparently there is some confusion.

For example, syv doesn't think that what I asked for is actually in that library, so could you confirm what it has? I have the entire post in the quote, if that helps:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

New research project: (exo)skeletons.

The idea is to use a similar design tactic as layed out before for the armor, but instead use it for designing new exosuits and robot bodies. This means working in three phases again:
1) using VR sim to select the most promising designs
2) using real-life automated testing to determine what options work best (and to detect problems that VR couldn't simulate)
EDIT: tell ARESTEVE that he should include the data from the snowglobe mission if possible.
3) final selection of the top-scoring entries for the various categories

Main categories:
A) an exoskeleton for unaltered humans or peeps in standard robobodies (to replace the current standard exoskeleton, the one with the twisting limbs at odd angles). Might also be used as a basis for a suit that will replace the Mk.III
B) Same as before, but as a full robobody (instead of a normal robobody wearing the previous, it gets a new, but better body instead without wearing an external suit. Mostly a cosmetic thing).
C) Heavy exoskeleton, like the one used in a battlesuit
D) Same as C, but with more dexterity instead of raw strength (for projects like Sean's or Tavik's fast assault mech)

If needed, use of alien tech or spess magic (e.g. exosuit made of synthflesh) and such is allowed, as long as it's mass-producable. If new tech comes available (e.g. new artifact we recover, or advancement in generator tech) then let ARESTEVE update the designs to incorporate/take into account these new options.
Be sure to save both the final selections, as well as the raw data (if storage medium is needed, built it as appropriate).

The main aim of this is to have a library of exoskeletons designs in-game (no need to spell them all out pw, you can skip the technobabble if you want for now) so that, when needed, a designer can look in the research data and use what comes closest to his or her needs. Personally, I think I'll use it to design a suit somewhere in the future, we can discus what stats and token cost it will have in-game then, no need for you to decide that just yet.

Get estimated completion date for this project.

[Sean Mirrsen]

4.Hmm. This could be problematic. You're gonna have to have motors and shit built into the legs, room for wheel, etc. It's gonna make the legs bigger and possibly more clumsy.

When Tavik was designing his 5m tall robot, he also wanted it to have wheels on the legs (retractable roller blade-like things), and that didn't give any problems. Sure, his suit was probably a bit lighter, meaning smaller wheels and motors, but still. Why would it be such a problem now, if it wasn't at all before?

((I would assume same reason why Anton's electric fan jetpack worked before as a MACS module, heh. ))

[Radio Controlled]

4.Hmm. This could be problematic. You're gonna have to have motors and shit built into the legs, room for wheel, etc. It's gonna make the legs bigger and possibly more clumsy.

When Tavik was designing his 5m tall robot, he also wanted it to have wheels on the legs (retractable roller blade-like things), and that didn't give any problems. Sure, his suit was probably a bit lighter, meaning smaller wheels and motors, but still. Why would it be such a problem now, if it wasn't at all before?

((I would assume same reason why Anton's electric fan jetpack worked before as a MACS module, heh. ))

((Sure, if pw says "because before I didn't realize the problems with it, but now I do upon thinking about it again" that's perfectly good for me. Just wanna make sure there isn't some sort of misunderstanding at the basis of it.))

[Sean Mirrsen]

((Okay, so. In the Heph OOC thread, starting from around here, we started tossing around some actual numbers and constructive estimates instead of usability concerns, and have bumped into a specific number we need a few questions answered about. The actual posts provide the details, but the actual number is what's important if you don't want to read all that.

Question: How large/heavy/expensive will a generator providing 200 kilowatts of power be? I recall there being different tech levels of generator, and some sort of new research being performed for better generators. On different ends of the scale - how heavy would a "cheap" generator of that power be (i.e. around 5 tokens' cost?), and how expensive would a "compact" generator of that power be (size of a medium backpack, no more than 50kg weight), if it is at all possible? For reference, 200 kilowatts is roughly the amount of power consumed by a small office building, 2 kilowatts is what you could get from a typical wall outlet. We've no idea how it translates to TPUs, even.

And if it's no trouble, just in case - the same for a 100 kilowatt generator?))

This is when the TPU measurement really shows the meaning of its name eh?

Anyway. Lets see. 200 kilowatt in cheap is gonna be basically unusable. Thing would be the size of a washing machine. And I feel like things up from there would become unreasonable in terms of cost, probably nearly doubling the MKIII's base cost.

What I would suggest instead is using those new batteries we just developed. They would require occasional changing,  which is a maintenance cost, but they would provide that power you need without being massively heavy or stupidly expensive. Depending on how long you want them to function on a single battery, you could get the size down to something basically completely negligible. Or increase the operational time by scaling it up some.

((Kinda disappointing, but not unexpected. Half a washing machine at 100kW isn't terribly good either.))

Okay, so how compact/prolonged can we get with rechargeable or expendable batteries?
Assume a 100kW output, because we can scale it up/down from there. The entire thing must be at most 50kg in mass, and preferably not increase the cost of the suit by more than 3-5 token, but the latter is not a requirement.

Specific configurations:

• Consumable battery. A single-use conventional battery designed to be quickly swapped out if needed. Would there be any capacity increase over rechargeable batteries? Would it be in any way enough to bother with the option?
  
• Rechargeable battery. An integrated solution like a phone battery, designed to plug into an external generator for recharge. How small/cheap a generator would be able to recharge it to full over say 10 hours?
  
• Consumable Bluerad cell. A single-use blueraditite-based power cell, designed to be swapped out easily when needed. How expensive would the cell be?
  
• Hybrid rechargeable/bluerad cell. I don't know how much the pure rechargeable will last, but - assuming about 30kg of mass is rechargeable battery, and 20kg is consumable bluerad cell, how long will the respective systems be able to provide power for? Intended for "extendable missions", where the user will spend the rechargeable most of the time, but switch to the more expensive bluerad cell if the mission has to be prolonged or extra power is needed. How expensive would the bluerad cell be? How small relative to the conventional battery can it be to still hold ~200% of the battery's maximum charge?
  

How long will each of these be able to sustain 100kW of power output?

[syvarris]

Cossault hartlesuit 2.0 design (New Battlesuit design)

1.Clear plastic domes over the cameras would work fine for eyelids, yes.

2.I don't care what the new location of the external cockpit latch is, as long as it's away.  Stick it in a different maintnance panel or something.

3.The leg wheels: Try and make an effort to avoid the suit being made more clumsy, but making it too large to really fit inside buildings is fine.  Mobility outside buildings is more important than mobility inside.

4.Failing the above, would it be possible to have some sort of assembly in the shins?  Basically, allowing the battlesuit to drive around while kneeling?

Old Battlesuit variant questions (I might need to design equivalent variants):

5.There's an 'extreme environment' battlesuit variant.  Does it just have armor that's more varied in it's protective measures, or does it have more interesting stuff like those anti-magic rods?

6.There's an 'Urban' battlesuit variant.  What difference exist between it and a standard Battlesuit?

Heavy Robobody (you may remember, I designed a miniaturized battlesuit with the cockpit and systems replaced by a braincase.  It only had three layers of armor, rather than five, and could just barely fir through doors.):

7.I want to take my old Heavy Robobody design, then swap the bottom two layers of armor for the new types; Hexbug and Hexsand, with a sharkplate backing.  Also, trade the protective joint sleeves for sharkplate.  This should allow it to move around inside much easier.

Random Bluerad questions:

8.You say that bluerad batteries are more cost efficient than generators, at least for short durations.  Say I have a generator that will produce x power for an arbitrary length of time, and a bluerad battery that will produce x power for y days.  At what point is it cheaper (in tokens) to have a generator than a battery?

9.Same as the above, but I want to know for volume.

[piecewise]

Charles records his conversation:
"Funny how the mining colony was completely filled with that mist and had been in contact with it for quite a while before they stepped in. Almost as if they were planning on using it as a testbed. The UWM's tasking for that assassination mission was precisely to crush rebellion, Steve's objective was to assassinate the king, that did not require us to perform any acts of violence against the populace. If we had known what Steve's true motive was at the time, we wouldn't have even tried to stop the rebellion, we would have opened the main guards and ushered them forth.

And it WAS a UWM ship. Do you really think that if Steve just commandeered a ship, armed prisoners and researched alien technology, they would just let that happen? In fact, if you do, then that in itself would still be a serious issue.

All I wanted to do was find some common ground and perhaps some reason to parole you. It seems this has been in vain. As for the space magic, it isn't something I work with."
Charles leaves the room and sends the recording to his commanding officers for review along with a request for access to the Xan clone for the purposes of making an amorphous fleshsuit.

Done and done

4.Hmm. This could be problematic. You're gonna have to have motors and shit built into the legs, room for wheel, etc. It's gonna make the legs bigger and possibly more clumsy.

When Tavik was designing his 5m tall robot, he also wanted it to have wheels on the legs (retractable roller blade-like things), and that didn't give any problems. Sure, his suit was probably a bit lighter, meaning smaller wheels and motors, but still. Why would it be such a problem now, if it wasn't at all before?

Secondly, remember that project for creating a library of exoskeleton designs? Well, one of the things I asked for were:

C) Heavy exoskeleton, like the one used in a battlesuit
D) Same as C, but with more dexterity instead of raw strength (for projects like Sean's or Tavik's fast assault mech)

With this, I meant a skeleton like the one which a battlesuit is built around, the one that it always needs to be able to move, and not an exoskeleton that goes 'around the suit' itself. So 'exo' is from the point of view of the pilot, not the entire suit itself. I thought it'd be clear what was meant (an exoskeleton to go around the suit itself would be kinda silly), but apparently there is some confusion.

For example, syv doesn't think that what I asked for is actually in that library, so could you confirm what it has? I have the entire post in the quote, if that helps:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

New research project: (exo)skeletons.

The idea is to use a similar design tactic as layed out before for the armor, but instead use it for designing new exosuits and robot bodies. This means working in three phases again:
1) using VR sim to select the most promising designs
2) using real-life automated testing to determine what options work best (and to detect problems that VR couldn't simulate)
EDIT: tell ARESTEVE that he should include the data from the snowglobe mission if possible.
3) final selection of the top-scoring entries for the various categories

Main categories:
A) an exoskeleton for unaltered humans or peeps in standard robobodies (to replace the current standard exoskeleton, the one with the twisting limbs at odd angles). Might also be used as a basis for a suit that will replace the Mk.III
B) Same as before, but as a full robobody (instead of a normal robobody wearing the previous, it gets a new, but better body instead without wearing an external suit. Mostly a cosmetic thing).
C) Heavy exoskeleton, like the one used in a battlesuit
D) Same as C, but with more dexterity instead of raw strength (for projects like Sean's or Tavik's fast assault mech)

If needed, use of alien tech or spess magic (e.g. exosuit made of synthflesh) and such is allowed, as long as it's mass-producable. If new tech comes available (e.g. new artifact we recover, or advancement in generator tech) then let ARESTEVE update the designs to incorporate/take into account these new options.
Be sure to save both the final selections, as well as the raw data (if storage medium is needed, built it as appropriate).

The main aim of this is to have a library of exoskeletons designs in-game (no need to spell them all out pw, you can skip the technobabble if you want for now) so that, when needed, a designer can look in the research data and use what comes closest to his or her needs. Personally, I think I'll use it to design a suit somewhere in the future, we can discus what stats and token cost it will have in-game then, no need for you to decide that just yet.

Get estimated completion date for this project.

If I remember right, the reason why I ok'd the wheels with Tavik is because they were there since the inception and things were balanced around them. He started from a suit found in anime, a suit which basically only got around using the wheels, so they were central to the design. And If I remember correctly they weren't really retractable, just mostly flush with the feet.

The wheels on this suit will work, I was just saying they're gonna make the feet bigger and that, since the suit is balanced and designed for walking, not rollerskating, it's gonna require some balance on the part of the pilot to use, at least at any real speed or during tight turns and the like.


And yeah, lets say you have access to the exoskeleton thats under all the battle suit armor.

((Okay, so. In the Heph OOC thread, starting from around here, we started tossing around some actual numbers and constructive estimates instead of usability concerns, and have bumped into a specific number we need a few questions answered about. The actual posts provide the details, but the actual number is what's important if you don't want to read all that.

Question: How large/heavy/expensive will a generator providing 200 kilowatts of power be? I recall there being different tech levels of generator, and some sort of new research being performed for better generators. On different ends of the scale - how heavy would a "cheap" generator of that power be (i.e. around 5 tokens' cost?), and how expensive would a "compact" generator of that power be (size of a medium backpack, no more than 50kg weight), if it is at all possible? For reference, 200 kilowatts is roughly the amount of power consumed by a small office building, 2 kilowatts is what you could get from a typical wall outlet. We've no idea how it translates to TPUs, even.

And if it's no trouble, just in case - the same for a 100 kilowatt generator?))

This is when the TPU measurement really shows the meaning of its name eh?

Anyway. Lets see. 200 kilowatt in cheap is gonna be basically unusable. Thing would be the size of a washing machine. And I feel like things up from there would become unreasonable in terms of cost, probably nearly doubling the MKIII's base cost.

What I would suggest instead is using those new batteries we just developed. They would require occasional changing,  which is a maintenance cost, but they would provide that power you need without being massively heavy or stupidly expensive. Depending on how long you want them to function on a single battery, you could get the size down to something basically completely negligible. Or increase the operational time by scaling it up some.

((Kinda disappointing, but not unexpected. Half a washing machine at 100kW isn't terribly good either.))

Okay, so how compact/prolonged can we get with rechargeable or expendable batteries?
Assume a 100kW output, because we can scale it up/down from there. The entire thing must be at most 50kg in mass, and preferably not increase the cost of the suit by more than 3-5 token, but the latter is not a requirement.

Specific configurations:

• Consumable battery. A single-use conventional battery designed to be quickly swapped out if needed. Would there be any capacity increase over rechargeable batteries? Would it be in any way enough to bother with the option?
  
• Rechargeable battery. An integrated solution like a phone battery, designed to plug into an external generator for recharge. How small/cheap a generator would be able to recharge it to full over say 10 hours?
  
• Consumable Bluerad cell. A single-use blueraditite-based power cell, designed to be swapped out easily when needed. How expensive would the cell be?
  
• Hybrid rechargeable/bluerad cell. I don't know how much the pure rechargeable will last, but - assuming about 30kg of mass is rechargeable battery, and 20kg is consumable bluerad cell, how long will the respective systems be able to provide power for? Intended for "extendable missions", where the user will spend the rechargeable most of the time, but switch to the more expensive bluerad cell if the mission has to be prolonged or extra power is needed. How expensive would the bluerad cell be? How small relative to the conventional battery can it be to still hold ~200% of the battery's maximum charge?
  

How long will each of these be able to sustain 100kW of power output?

Handling this elsewhere.

Cossault hartlesuit 2.0 design (New Battlesuit design)

1.Clear plastic domes over the cameras would work fine for eyelids, yes.

2.I don't care what the new location of the external cockpit latch is, as long as it's away.  Stick it in a different maintnance panel or something.

3.The leg wheels: Try and make an effort to avoid the suit being made more clumsy, but making it too large to really fit inside buildings is fine.  Mobility outside buildings is more important than mobility inside.

4.Failing the above, would it be possible to have some sort of assembly in the shins?  Basically, allowing the battlesuit to drive around while kneeling?

Old Battlesuit variant questions (I might need to design equivalent variants):

5.There's an 'extreme environment' battlesuit variant.  Does it just have armor that's more varied in it's protective measures, or does it have more interesting stuff like those anti-magic rods?

6.There's an 'Urban' battlesuit variant.  What difference exist between it and a standard Battlesuit?

Heavy Robobody (you may remember, I designed a miniaturized battlesuit with the cockpit and systems replaced by a braincase.  It only had three layers of armor, rather than five, and could just barely fir through doors.):

7.I want to take my old Heavy Robobody design, then swap the bottom two layers of armor for the new types; Hexbug and Hexsand, with a sharkplate backing.  Also, trade the protective joint sleeves for sharkplate.  This should allow it to move around inside much easier.

Random Bluerad questions:

8.You say that bluerad batteries are more cost efficient than generators, at least for short durations.  Say I have a generator that will produce x power for an arbitrary length of time, and a bluerad battery that will produce x power for y days.  At what point is it cheaper (in tokens) to have a generator than a battery?

9.Same as the above, but I want to know for volume.

1. Ok
2.Ok.
3. It would only really be potentially clumsy while using the wheels at higher speeds or harder maneuvers.
5. It's basically just designed to deal better with the more mundane things. Radiation, electricity, heat, cold, crushing forces, long falls, acids, corrosion, etc etc. It won't protect from space magic. Well, it will from certain ones, but it's not using anything magical itself. Though it could use automanips in the setup to increase the protection.
6. Less armor, faster movement, designed for close range fighting with more built in protection systems like the claymores. Somewhat similar to your design.
7.Alright.
8-9. Oh god. Um thats a graph I don't want to make. It kinda depends on the situation honestly. In general, generators are better for smaller amounts of power consistently. Radite is better for large amounts of power for a limited time. The "Cross over" point depends a lot on the perspective use of the power. I mean, if you're using it to power a base or something, generator is probably always gonna be better in the long run.

The big thing is "are you going to use it long enough that the generator pays for itself monetarily as well as in the hassle of lugging it around"

[Xantalos]

((So, who would those superior officers be, what with Pyro being somewhat occupied with university I think?
I'm eager to get to army building.))

[Sean Mirrsen]

Anton Chernozorov

((After some rapid message exchange, the following has been hammered out for the MkIII-A flight suit.))

Spoiler: MkIII-A Planetary Flight Suit (click to show/hide)

Auxiliary Hardware
Cost: 8 token.

Description: The one and only good thing to be said about this suit: it flies. A lightweight, streamlined MCP suit encased in an aerodynamic powered exoskeleton serving as the frame for two large ducted fans suspended from the shoulders on swiveling pylons. Two small ducted fans are mounted on ankles to aid maneuvering. A thin layer of black hexsand armor covers the exterior of the fan ducts and other exposed mechanisms, along with the chestplate and helmet of the suit itself. The fans are powered by a rechargeable battery pack on the suit's back that provides a good deal of flight time, but even in best conditions the lifting power and speed of the suit are fairly limited.

Function: Flight in atmosphere only, rapid movement in water or similar substances. Four to five hours of operation on single full charge, depending on usage. Recharges from any generator. Minor strength/agility boost from exoskeleton. Medical functions, irises, and heat dissipation similar to Mk2 suit.

Stats: +1/2 STR and END. Can fly at up to about 200 kph in a straight line. Besides a regular human pilot (and no extra gear), can lift about one average human's weight while maintaining some measure of flight. The more weight, the worse it flies. Armor enough to protect from single laser rifle pulses or glancing gauss slugs (where it covers).

Options/Abilities:

• Hover: Like the regular MkIII, can maintain a fixed height above the ground when moving.
• Overboost: Maximize engine power, doubling the lift capacity (i.e. two average humans) and adding +1 to mobility (like the MkIII). Can cause damage to suit. Doubles power usage.
• MASC: Boost the exoskeleton with extra electric power to full +1 STR and END bonus. Can cause damage to suit and pilot. Uses power like flight.
  
• (Add-On) Bluerad Cell: Instead of rechargeable batteries, a single-use blueraditite cell can installed. Allows several days of continuous operation. Cost: 4 token.

Misc. Notes: The ducted fans are designed to pivot around to keep some lift regardless of where the pilot is facing. This allows to, for instance, fold them back when entering regular human-sized doorways. This also means that should one of the fans be destroyed, the pilot has a sliver of a chance to more-or-less land instead of just crashing.
When underwater, the big fans are actually more of an obstacle than help - they fold back instead, and the little ankle fans push the suit forward like a torpedo.

Assuming I got all of that right, a prototype of this is going to be built for the next shipment to the Sword.

[piecewise]

Anton Chernozorov

((After some rapid message exchange, the following has been hammered out for the MkIII-A flight suit.))

Spoiler: MkIII-A Planetary Flight Suit (click to show/hide)

Auxiliary Hardware
Cost: 8 token.

Description: The one and only good thing to be said about this suit: it flies. A lightweight, streamlined MCP suit encased in an aerodynamic powered exoskeleton serving as the frame for two large ducted fans suspended from the shoulders on swiveling pylons. Two small ducted fans are mounted on ankles to aid maneuvering. A thin layer of black hexsand armor covers the exterior of the fan ducts and other exposed mechanisms, along with the chestplate and helmet of the suit itself. The fans are powered by a rechargeable battery pack on the suit's back that provides a good deal of flight time, but even in best conditions the lifting power and speed of the suit are fairly limited.

Function: Flight in atmosphere only, rapid movement in water or similar substances. Four to five hours of operation on single full charge, depending on usage. Recharges from any generator. Minor strength/agility boost from exoskeleton. Medical functions, irises, and heat dissipation similar to Mk2 suit.

Stats: +1/2 STR and END. Can fly at up to about 200 kph in a straight line. Besides a regular human pilot (and no extra gear), can lift about one average human's weight while maintaining some measure of flight. The more weight, the worse it flies. Armor enough to protect from single laser rifle pulses or glancing gauss slugs (where it covers).

Options/Abilities:

• Hover: Like the regular MkIII, can maintain a fixed height above the ground when moving.
• Overboost: Maximize engine power, doubling the lift capacity (i.e. two average humans) and adding +1 to mobility (like the MkIII). Can cause damage to suit. Doubles power usage.
• MASC: Boost the exoskeleton with extra electric power to full +1 STR and END bonus. Can cause damage to suit and pilot. Uses power like flight.
  
• (Add-On) Bluerad Cell: Instead of rechargeable batteries, a single-use blueraditite cell can installed. Allows several days of continuous operation. Cost: 4 token.

Misc. Notes: The ducted fans are designed to pivot around to keep some lift regardless of where the pilot is facing. This allows to, for instance, fold them back when entering regular human-sized doorways. This also means that should one of the fans be destroyed, the pilot has a sliver of a chance to more-or-less land instead of just crashing.
When underwater, the big fans are actually more of an obstacle than help - they fold back instead, and the little ankle fans push the suit forward like a torpedo.

Assuming I got all of that right, a prototype of this is going to be built for the next shipment to the Sword.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

< >
10:43 Piecewise Anyways, sean, is there some way we could work out this flight pack of yours in a way that doesn't involve me becoming depressed at these posts.
10:43 SeanMirrsen Probably, yes.
10:44 Piecewise Really, I just want to give it some form of limitations
10:44 Piecewise limited battery or the like
10:44 SeanMirrsen It's limited by the atmosphere of the planet it's shipped to.
10:45 SeanMirrsen But okay. Really, just how long, or how far, do you think it should be realistically able to go?
10:46 Piecewise hmm. Well, the idea is to prevent it from being op because it allows people to fly through the whole mission
10:46 Piecewise lemme think
10:46 SeanMirrsen Flying like an aircraft, horizontally, it theoretically goes 200 kilometers in an hour. Think how far you think it should be able to fly on a battery backpack.
10:46 SeanMirrsen Then you get how many hours it can generally stay in the air from that.
10:47 SeanMirrsen Multiply by however much the bluerad cells are more effective than batteries.
10:47 Piecewise 125 miles eh?
10:47 Piecewise Hm
10:48 SeanMirrsen If I can't have a generator, I'd like to at least have both a rechargeable option that on-mission people could maintain the charge of, and a single-use but very long-lived bluerad-based option for a more Mk3-like behavior.
10:48 Piecewise What was your goal with this system, by the way? Why did you want to make this as an alternative to the rockets? What did you expect to have over them?
10:49 SeanMirrsen Basically, in the year-long mission on the planetoid, we had limited resources. The biggest asset in that regard was the pedal-powered electric vehicle - it could go as far as we needed it to.
10:50 SeanMirrsen So any other long mission on a non-airless body, as well as any planet-bound NPC armies, would benefit from a similar method of transportation that does not require an expendable resource to maintain.
10:51 SeanMirrsen The suit form-factor is just the coolest one, riffing off both the Mk3 we have in ER and the ducted fan jetpacks we sort of have IRL.
10:52 SeanMirrsen Anton will totally get to making aerodynes later. He's just had the fanpack idea for the longest, and actually did a fair bit of work on it already.
10:52 Piecewise So basically a jetpack suit with a renewable or infinite fuel source?
10:52 SeanMirrsen Pretty much.
10:53 Piecewise Ok, thats doable. We just have to take the negative you're removing in the form of fuel and move it elsewhere. It's already slower, which is helping...
10:53 Piecewise Weight might be one we could do.
10:54 Piecewise Ie, the suit has a max weight it can carry and still manage to lift off
10:54 SeanMirrsen Far less lift capacity, yes.
10:54 Piecewise If we make it so that this means that only light people with light loads can use it, then that would be fine
10:55 Piecewise Humans with laser rifles in these things are fine
10:55 Piecewise I just want to avoid synthflesh giants with fission instigators flitting around like humming birds
10:55 SeanMirrsen I believe the TWR me and Devastator agreed was close(r) to plausible was 1.5 - i.e. it can only lift half its own weight (pilot included) on nominal power, which amounts to just over the weight of an average unarmored person - and even then it'd only hover.
10:56 SeanMirrsen Having batteries would mean you could burn longevity for more lifting power if you absolutely needed something lifted, like a rescue op, or if you needed to dodge or something.
10:58 SeanMirrsen You'd still max out at maybe a TWR of 2, because even that is patently ridiculous for a ducted fan. The Sikorsky Skycrane has a TWR of 2.
10:58 SeanMirrsen (i.e. it can lift the same mass of cargo as it weighs itself)
10:59 Hapah How big's the fan? Can you squeeze through a door?
10:59 Hapah Can/should we just handwave it?
11:00 SeanMirrsen They'd be on the same kind of mounts the MkIII rockets are. I think the idea is to have them swing back like overly round angel wings, so your cross-section is more door-shaped instead of T-shaped.
11:00 Piecewise Ok, Here's what I'm thinking. We keep your design for the most part. We'll say that it can lift and fly about at that 200 kph speed with a normal human and very limited cargo. Thing runs on a rechargeable battery with the amount of time it can run limited by how much you use it. It would have 4-5 hours worth of flight.
11:01 Piecewise Doing lots of maneuvering would suck it up faster.
11:01 SeanMirrsen That seems perfectly reasonable. I'm assuming a bluerad cell would last longer?
11:01 SeanMirrsen (Nevermind it costing as much as the suit itself)
11:01 *** Parisbre56 joined #einsteinianroulette
11:02 Piecewise Option to attach batteries to overcharge the system, increase the lift and speed for a limited time and with the chance of causing mechanical damage.
11:02 Piecewise for when you absolutely need something lifted right now
11:02 Piecewise Hey paris
11:02 SeanMirrsen Toss in the EMM-replacement that overcharges the synthetic muscles, and I'm sold. ^_^
11:03 Parisbre56 hey
11:03 SeanMirrsen Chance of mechanical damage and drains power like flying does.
11:04 SeanMirrsen (Heh, chance of mechanical damage. Chance of your limbs imploding on you would probably be more accurate. )
11:04 Piecewise Do you mean to overcharge the exoskeleton or the user's robotic muscles?
11:05 SeanMirrsen The exoskeleton.
11:05 Piecewise Alright, we can do that, though failed dex rolls are gonna be nasty
11:06 Piecewise Remember that scene in ironman with the failed attempts to copy the suit?
11:06 SeanMirrsen Actually, one idea in the OOC thread was to make the exokeleton one of the stripped-down versions that give fractional bonuses, instead of the full thing in the MkIII. So that it could be a cheaper alternative flying suit.
11:06 SeanMirrsen And yeah, that was about what I was thinking.
11:08 SeanMirrsen Okay, and on that note, on cost. So, just taking the same base exoskeleton and minimal armor the Mk3 has, and straight-up replacing the rockets for batteries and the ducted fans - what change of cost would that incur?
11:09 Piecewise I assume you'd want it to be cheaper?
11:10 Piecewise Than a MKIII
11:11 SeanMirrsen Ideally yes, though there likely won't be enough of a cost difference to make the suit any less situational. If a weaker exoskeleton is used though, maybe it could get away with costing some 9 token?
11:13 Piecewise If we go from a +1 to a +1/2 we can get it for 8.
11:13 Piecewise maybe 7
11:15 AoshimaMichio oh hey, how's the new rolling system?
11:15 SeanMirrsen That'd be pretty cool.
11:16 Swordsmith04 New rolling system starts with the next set of missions.
11:16 Piecewise The new rolling system is alright. Really I just need to work out how things will be limited. More on that when the missions end though
11:16 AoshimaMichio how will current skill levels transform into it?
11:16 AoshimaMichio and bonuses
11:17 Piecewise And Sean, if thats good for you, then do a quick outline of what was spoken of here and post it in the thread. Thats pretty much fine for me from a gameplay point, I just wanna run it by others.
11:17 SeanMirrsen Okay, so assuming, optimistically, 7 for a standard version. The prototype is going to be armored in the fancy new materials - specifically hexsand, just a thin enough layer to absorb a stray laser pulse or reduce damage from a gauss slug. Not full amor, just a chestplate, helmet, and the outer surface of the fan ducts.
11:18 Piecewise Well, if you have a +1 then you stay at that level
11:18 Piecewise it's just that you don't get Numerical bonuses to the rolls
11:18 Piecewise the +1 doesn't stop you from getting 1's
11:18 Piecewise It just makes your 1's less bad
11:19 Piecewise Someone with 0 in con might murder his teammate with a roll of 1
11:19 SeanMirrsen With that armor, would that be 7 or 8?
11:20 Piecewise Lets bump it to 8 to take care of that. We'll assume it covers the ducts as well as any of the other major failure points
11:21 Piecewise Someone with a +1 will only injure them.
11:22 SeanMirrsen Okay. Posting in the thread then. Thanks PW. And this is definitely a faster way of deciding on design specifics, you/we should do it more often.
11:23 AoshimaMichio Since 1/3 and 2/3 will disappear that means essentially three missions worth of dedicated skill raising before seeing any effects
11:23 AoshimaMichio It's... a little harsh
11:23 Piecewise I was thinking about changing the progression of levels
11:23 Piecewise less points to reach +1
11:24 SeanMirrsen Oi, and final bit that I need to pester you for, PW. Never got an answer - a bluerad cell for the suit, how much longer working and how expensive?
11:24 SeanMirrsen Need to include that in the writeup.
11:25 HB How much blueraditititite did you guys get anyway?
11:25 SeanMirrsen We apparently can make more now, but it takes lots of energy, and is presumably slow.
11:25 SeanMirrsen And with how efficient it is at storing energy, batteries made from it would be expensive.
11:26 Piecewise Depends on the amount of power in the cell. And the size of it. For a battery of equal size to the conventional one, you'll probably get several days of flight, even at overcharged energy levels. Shoot for 4 or so tokens

Transcript of the conversation, for reference.

[Xantalos]

Anton Chernozorov

((After some rapid message exchange, the following has been hammered out for the MkIII-A flight suit.))

Spoiler: MkIII-A Planetary Flight Suit (click to show/hide)

Auxiliary Hardware
Cost: 8 token.

Description: The one and only good thing to be said about this suit: it flies. A lightweight, streamlined MCP suit encased in an aerodynamic powered exoskeleton serving as the frame for two large ducted fans suspended from the shoulders on swiveling pylons. Two small ducted fans are mounted on ankles to aid maneuvering. A thin layer of black hexsand armor covers the exterior of the fan ducts and other exposed mechanisms, along with the chestplate and helmet of the suit itself. The fans are powered by a rechargeable battery pack on the suit's back that provides a good deal of flight time, but even in best conditions the lifting power and speed of the suit are fairly limited.

Function: Flight in atmosphere only, rapid movement in water or similar substances. Four to five hours of operation on single full charge, depending on usage. Recharges from any generator. Minor strength/agility boost from exoskeleton. Medical functions, irises, and heat dissipation similar to Mk2 suit.

Stats: +1/2 STR and END. Can fly at up to about 200 kph in a straight line. Besides a regular human pilot (and no extra gear), can lift about one average human's weight while maintaining some measure of flight. The more weight, the worse it flies. Armor enough to protect from single laser rifle pulses or glancing gauss slugs (where it covers).

Options/Abilities:

• Hover: Like the regular MkIII, can maintain a fixed height above the ground when moving.
• Overboost: Maximize engine power, doubling the lift capacity (i.e. two average humans) and adding +1 to mobility (like the MkIII). Can cause damage to suit. Doubles power usage.
• MASC: Boost the exoskeleton with extra electric power to full +1 STR and END bonus. Can cause damage to suit and pilot. Uses power like flight.
  
• (Add-On) Bluerad Cell: Instead of rechargeable batteries, a single-use blueraditite cell can installed. Allows several days of continuous operation. Cost: 4 token.

Misc. Notes: The ducted fans are designed to pivot around to keep some lift regardless of where the pilot is facing. This allows to, for instance, fold them back when entering regular human-sized doorways. This also means that should one of the fans be destroyed, the pilot has a sliver of a chance to more-or-less land instead of just crashing.
When underwater, the big fans are actually more of an obstacle than help - they fold back instead, and the little ankle fans push the suit forward like a torpedo.

Assuming I got all of that right, a prototype of this is going to be built for the next shipment to the Sword.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

10:43   Piecewise   Anyways, sean, is there some way we could work out this flight pack of yours in a way that doesn't involve me becoming depressed at these posts.
10:43   SeanMirrsen   Probably, yes.
10:44   Piecewise   Really, I just want to give it some form of limitations
10:44   Piecewise   limited battery or the like
10:44   SeanMirrsen   It's limited by the atmosphere of the planet it's shipped to.
10:45   SeanMirrsen   But okay. Really, just how long, or how far, do you think it should be realistically able to go?
10:46   Piecewise   hmm. Well, the idea is to prevent it from being op because it allows people to fly through the whole mission
10:46   Piecewise   lemme think
10:46   SeanMirrsen   Flying like an aircraft, horizontally, it theoretically goes 200 kilometers in an hour. Think how far you think it should be able to fly on a battery backpack.
10:46   SeanMirrsen   Then you get how many hours it can generally stay in the air from that.
10:47   SeanMirrsen   Multiply by however much the bluerad cells are more effective than batteries.
10:47   Piecewise   125 miles eh?
10:47   Piecewise   Hm
10:48   SeanMirrsen   If I can't have a generator, I'd like to at least have both a rechargeable option that on-mission people could maintain the charge of, and a single-use but very long-lived bluerad-based option for a more Mk3-like behavior.
10:48   Piecewise   What was your goal with this system, by the way? Why did you want to make this as an alternative to the rockets? What did you expect to have over them?
10:49   SeanMirrsen   Basically, in the year-long mission on the planetoid, we had limited resources. The biggest asset in that regard was the pedal-powered electric vehicle - it could go as far as we needed it to.
10:50   SeanMirrsen   So any other long mission on a non-airless body, as well as any planet-bound NPC armies, would benefit from a similar method of transportation that does not require an expendable resource to maintain.
10:51   SeanMirrsen   The suit form-factor is just the coolest one, riffing off both the Mk3 we have in ER and the ducted fan jetpacks we sort of have IRL.
10:52   SeanMirrsen   Anton will totally get to making aerodynes later. He's just had the fanpack idea for the longest, and actually did a fair bit of work on it already.
10:52   Piecewise   So basically a jetpack suit with a renewable or infinite fuel source?
10:52   SeanMirrsen   Pretty much.
10:53   Piecewise   Ok, thats doable. We just have to take the negative you're removing in the form of fuel and move it elsewhere. It's already slower, which is helping...
10:53   Piecewise   Weight might be one we could do.
10:54   Piecewise   Ie, the suit has a max weight it can carry and still manage to lift off
10:54   SeanMirrsen   Far less lift capacity, yes.
10:54   Piecewise   If we make it so that this means that only light people with light loads can use it, then that would be fine
10:55   Piecewise   Humans with laser rifles in these things are fine
10:55   Piecewise   I just want to avoid synthflesh giants with fission instigators flitting around like humming birds
10:55   SeanMirrsen   I believe the TWR me and Devastator agreed was close(r) to plausible was 1.5 - i.e. it can only lift half its own weight (pilot included) on nominal power, which amounts to just over the weight of an average unarmored person - and even then it'd only hover.
10:56   SeanMirrsen   Having batteries would mean you could burn longevity for more lifting power if you absolutely needed something lifted, like a rescue op, or if you needed to dodge or something.
10:58   SeanMirrsen   You'd still max out at maybe a TWR of 2, because even that is patently ridiculous for a ducted fan. The Sikorsky Skycrane has a TWR of 2.
10:58   SeanMirrsen   (i.e. it can lift the same mass of cargo as it weighs itself)
10:59   Hapah   How big's the fan? Can you squeeze through a door?
10:59   Hapah   Can/should we just handwave it?
11:00   SeanMirrsen   They'd be on the same kind of mounts the MkIII rockets are. I think the idea is to have them swing back like overly round angel wings, so your cross-section is more door-shaped instead of T-shaped.
11:00   Piecewise   Ok, Here's what I'm thinking. We keep your design for the most part. We'll say that it can lift and fly about at that 200 kph speed with a normal human and very limited cargo. Thing runs on a rechargeable battery with the amount of time it can run limited by how much you use it. It would have 4-5 hours worth of flight.
11:01   Piecewise   Doing lots of maneuvering would suck it up faster.
11:01   SeanMirrsen   That seems perfectly reasonable. I'm assuming a bluerad cell would last longer?
11:01   SeanMirrsen   (Nevermind it costing as much as the suit itself)
11:01      *** Parisbre56 joined #einsteinianroulette
11:02   Piecewise   Option to attach batteries to overcharge the system, increase the lift and speed for a limited time and with the chance of causing mechanical damage.
11:02   Piecewise   for when you absolutely need something lifted right now
11:02   Piecewise   Hey paris
11:02   SeanMirrsen   Toss in the EMM-replacement that overcharges the synthetic muscles, and I'm sold. ^_^
11:03   Parisbre56   hey
11:03   SeanMirrsen   Chance of mechanical damage and drains power like flying does.
11:04   SeanMirrsen   (Heh, chance of mechanical damage. Chance of your limbs imploding on you would probably be more accurate. )
11:04   Piecewise   Do you mean to overcharge the exoskeleton or the user's robotic muscles?
11:05   SeanMirrsen   The exoskeleton.
11:05   Piecewise   Alright, we can do that, though failed dex rolls are gonna be nasty
11:06   Piecewise   Remember that scene in ironman with the failed attempts to copy the suit?
11:06   SeanMirrsen   Actually, one idea in the OOC thread was to make the exokeleton one of the stripped-down versions that give fractional bonuses, instead of the full thing in the MkIII. So that it could be a cheaper alternative flying suit.
11:06   SeanMirrsen   And yeah, that was about what I was thinking.
11:08   SeanMirrsen   Okay, and on that note, on cost. So, just taking the same base exoskeleton and minimal armor the Mk3 has, and straight-up replacing the rockets for batteries and the ducted fans - what change of cost would that incur?
11:09   Piecewise   I assume you'd want it to be cheaper?
11:10   Piecewise   Than a MKIII
11:11   SeanMirrsen   Ideally yes, though there likely won't be enough of a cost difference to make the suit any less situational. If a weaker exoskeleton is used though, maybe it could get away with costing some 9 token?
11:13   Piecewise   If we go from a +1 to a +1/2 we can get it for 8.
11:13   Piecewise   maybe 7
11:15   AoshimaMichio   oh hey, how's the new rolling system?
11:15   SeanMirrsen   That'd be pretty cool.
11:16   Swordsmith04   New rolling system starts with the next set of missions.
11:16   Piecewise   The new rolling system is alright. Really I just need to work out how things will be limited. More on that when the missions end though
11:16   AoshimaMichio   how will current skill levels transform into it?
11:16   AoshimaMichio   and bonuses
11:17   Piecewise   And Sean, if thats good for you, then do a quick outline of what was spoken of here and post it in the thread. Thats pretty much fine for me from a gameplay point, I just wanna run it by others.
11:17   SeanMirrsen   Okay, so assuming, optimistically, 7 for a standard version. The prototype is going to be armored in the fancy new materials - specifically hexsand, just a thin enough layer to absorb a stray laser pulse or reduce damage from a gauss slug. Not full amor, just a chestplate, helmet, and the outer surface of the fan ducts.
11:18   Piecewise   Well, if you have a +1 then you stay at that level
11:18   Piecewise   it's just that you don't get Numerical bonuses to the rolls
11:18   Piecewise   the +1 doesn't stop you from getting 1's
11:18   Piecewise   It just makes your 1's less bad
11:19   Piecewise   Someone with 0 in con might murder his teammate with a roll of 1
11:19   SeanMirrsen   With that armor, would that be 7 or 8?
11:20   Piecewise   Lets bump it to 8 to take care of that. We'll assume it covers the ducts as well as any of the other major failure points
11:21   Piecewise   Someone with a +1 will only injure them.
11:22   SeanMirrsen   Okay. Posting in the thread then. Thanks PW. And this is definitely a faster way of deciding on design specifics, you/we should do it more often.
11:23   AoshimaMichio   Since 1/3 and 2/3 will disappear that means essentially three missions worth of dedicated skill raising before seeing any effects
11:23   AoshimaMichio   It's... a little harsh
11:23   Piecewise   I was thinking about changing the progression of levels
11:23   Piecewise   less points to reach +1
11:24   SeanMirrsen   Oi, and final bit that I need to pester you for, PW. Never got an answer - a bluerad cell for the suit, how much longer working and how expensive?
11:24   SeanMirrsen   Need to include that in the writeup.
11:25   HB   How much blueraditititite did you guys get anyway?
11:25   SeanMirrsen   We apparently can make more now, but it takes lots of energy, and is presumably slow.
11:25   SeanMirrsen   And with how efficient it is at storing energy, batteries made from it would be expensive.
11:26   Piecewise   Depends on the amount of power in the cell. And the size of it. For a battery of equal size to the conventional one, you'll probably get several days of flight, even at overcharged energy levels. Shoot for 4 or so tokens

Transcript of the conversation, for reference.

Just posting this without the code tag so I can figure out what exactly it says.

[Execute/Dumbo.exe]

Question, would it be possible to have some sort of air tank stapled onto the suit? Just for underwater missions.

[Parisbre56]

Question, would it be possible to have some sort of air tank stapled onto the suit? Just for underwater missions.

It is based on a spacesuit that is capable of recycling the air inside it for days, so I assume an air tank is not needed, unless Sean removed the air recycling system for some reason. Also, OOC thread.