-It seems you are considering still changing things to your design. Would it be ok if we waited until you're sure your design is fully finalized? Restatting the same thing a few times because something changed isn't a lot of fun. Doubly so since the rolling system change might throw things around so much that (some points, most notably str requirements) it has to be rebalanced after that either way, so that as well seems like a good point in favor of waiting.
In principle, I would like to have a foot-thick, five miles long lightsaber you can power on and swing around like the world's biggest overcompensation aide. Until that is possible, I will always consider possible changes to my designs.
In this case though, I am fairly well set on the exact specifics of what the device does, I think its actual parameters are quite thoroughly defined.
Setting 0 is the HEP, and the HEP is the HEP - beam width 2m, range of some 100m before the beam frays apart, performance against the standard battlesuit is "heats it red hot and tosses it back, maybe cracks open a layer of armor", as described in the Wiki.
Setting 1 is HEP/2 - beam width 1m, range of some 400m, performance against battlesuit is "would probably strip most armor and hurl it back".
Setting 2 is HEP/4 - beam width .5m, range of some 1600m, performance against battlesuit is "would probably blow a big fat hole straight through it", as per the quote:
Anton Chernozorov
Is any more input needed from me on the matter of the electric jetpack suit? Besides saying that no, making into into a vehicle won't do?
On the High Energy Blast Cannon (snappier acronym needed stat), is there enough testing data to replicate it in VR? If so, I'd like to quickly pop into VR and fire a 1/2 compressed shot, and a 3/4 compressed shot at a regular UWM Battlesuit to see what it does. Aimed center mass in both cases. If the system knows how HEP blasts and hexsand interacts, try both settings against a wall of hexsand - how is it affected, if at all?
Boomstick.
Well, it can simulate Battlesuits, and your shots do some pretty damn good damage. I forget how they did against ship armor, but it's gonna be somewhat similar. Battlesuit plate is better, or at least more efficient at absorbing and deflecting energy, but it's not perfect.
So would you guys like to do it the way sean suggested? Ie every time I post we do a roll on all the "NPC" run projects. Good rolls bring things forward, medium ones keep pace, bad ones represent delays or setbacks. Science teams could be used to give bonuses to rolls. It might make things faster, and give you more feedback.
((I was rather figuring you'd extrapolate from the last test done with HEP versus a battlesuit, though it's not inconceivable you don't even remember that took place. Here's your quote on the matter (it was done as part of a battery of tests):
A. Fire the following at VR Sods/generic VR people:
1. Laser Rifle
2. Gauss Rifle
3. Crystalline Projector
4. Sibilus Rifle
5. Cutting Laser
6. High Energy Projector
7. Piezoelectric Shard Launcher (original, not Testament)
B. Then do the above again, but with battlesuits. (Don't aim specifically for joints, I don't know about that weakness IC.)
<snip>
b.
1.Not much
2.Not much
3.Burrows slightly, but better at restraining then dealing real damage. Unless you catch a joint, then it can wrench it right off.
4. One shot? Not much.
5.Suit is very resistant to lasers, so even the cutting laser doesn't do much more then heat a glowing line across the armor. Assuming a swipe, not a concentrated beam over a good period.
6. Heats it red hot and throws it 20 feet backwards. Might shatter a layer of armor if the armor is already damaged.
7. Has good penetration but not so much that it would be really dangerous unless you got very lucky.
Emboldening mine.
I'm guessing the force delivered will be similar, but since it's focused on a smaller area the effect will be much greater.
Earlier we assumed/calculated the 3/4 beam to be half a meter across (assuming the HEP itself makes one 2 meters across like the original pyramid), so it can actually target some specific area on the battlesuit. Suppose a 3/4 shot is aimed at the top of its torso - would it be enough to comically toss it cartwheeling backwards, in addition to the damage the shot itself inflicts? ))
One half would probably strip most the armor and hurl it back, 3/4ths would probably blow a big fat hole straight through it.
Settings 3 and 4 (HEP/8 and HEP/16), assuming they are there, are best extrapolated at this point, unless we are going to straight-up murder some prototypes to find out.
-How many modes of fire do you want? I'd personally suggest to go with 2 or 3 max, so that each has a clear use and to keep things easy (for us and for potential users).
Ideally I think we should go with 3. It's just the best for keeping track of. Not too many, not too few.
Specifically, I want to have Setting 0, Setting 2, and Setting 3 or 4. This way you can have a mode that
always works, regardless of ammo, and still kills things dead; a mode that the weapon is
built for, that kills things very dead but uses ammo; and a "holy fuck I'm dead" mode that destroys the weapon, but kills things
EXTREMELY dead.
You may note that I'm a fan of explosive overclocking.
-Any sort of pw quote on the dimensions and weight/encumbrance of this thing will help us come up with justifiable str/dex/whatever requirements.
I didn't get any specific size for the original prototype. This is the description I got.
This prototype is rather crude, to say the least. It's clearly not designed with usability as a weapon in mind; it has no grips or trigger or any other way to easily hold it, instead it's not much more then a large metal box with a button on the top and a large aperture on one side. There's a knob near the button as well, something like you'd expect to find on valve, and judging from the feel of it, it's physically adjusting parts within the box using purely mechanical means.
When I gave it to a science team to reduce the excessive heating, I was asked for any specific size/cost limits, this was what I specified:
The sci team asks if you have any restrictions on size or cost they should worry about.
Size - Ideally usable by a regular human with an exoskeleton - i.e. something at most the size of a cutting laser plus backpack attachment if needed.
Of course there can and should be larger versions, up to and including large enough to deal damage to battleships. But something usable by heavy infantry is desirable, as a heavy breaching and anti-armor weapon.
Cost - As Anton would say it: "I don't care so much about cost-efficiency here. I'd prefer if it didn't use them manipulators unless it absolutely needs to, because the more of it we know how to repair, the less we're screwed if something breaks in the field. Beyond that, I'd much rather have a weapon that works well and is easy to use, than a weapon that's cheap to buy or make."
So basically take it easy on the space-magic, but feel free to use the fancy new materials we got or advanced production techniques a-la Stevebots if it's going to make a better weapon.
And these were the two last weekly progress reports from the team:
They've found a way to drastically reduce energy wastage and as such heat generation. Unfortunately doing this requires keeping the reflection array cold. Very cold. Less then 10 Kelvin cold. They're trying to find a way to keep it cold like that without massive cooling systems.
Also, it's week 3 of the science team working on the variable HEP/ "Zarya" Piercing Energy Weapon. Progress report?
Well...we got a few versions. One of them uses heavy cooling systems. The other uses Plates which slot in and out, so you can slot in cool plates. That one needs you to eject and put in the plates. That limitation in size isn't helping them.
That's as specific as it got. So it's likely pushing the limit of what a man in a Mk3 or similar exoskeleton can carry, weight-wise. Size-wise I think it's on par with a Raduga plus a backpack a-la the PSL's ammo pack. That's for the infantry version. I should also probably point out I wanted to stat up the Battlesuit version all this time, (not any more powerful, just meant for bigger hands and with the "backpack" integrated) but whichever works as long as there's progress.