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[wierd]

How would this:
Adhesive/magnetic grapple on left wrist, fired by pressing your wrist down. Padded metal clamps and suspension on feet. Metal clamp on bottom of right wrist, also with suspension (but less).

be for an explanation/description of a grapple suit attachment? Despite the physics of 1) effectiveness and 2) aerodynamics?



Beryllium and tungsten seem to be my go-to materials for armor - Tungsten for heavy armor and beryllium for light.

magnetic grapple isnt going to work well unless the metal you fire it against is both:

Ferromagnetic and Very thick.

There was a mythbusters episode with magnet based climbing gear inside an air duct. Even with neodymium magnets strong enough to crush your hands into goo, it couldnt get enough attraction with the thin metal to support a human's weight.

For a mechanical harpoon type-- You need to consider the elastic/mechanical properties of the wearer's arm. It does not matter how good the grapple is, if you are trying to latch onto a passing semi-truck. the energy that will be transmitted to the user's arm will be sufficient to rip it from their torso.  Better have an exoskeleton to absorb that energy!

[Tack]

Despite the physics

The mechanical exertion on the arm could be solved however by making it a bungee grapple?

[wierd]

Use of grapple in situations where rapid, forceful accelleration of the user is still strongly discouraged. Rapid accelleration is what causes lumbar spine injuries when your car gets rear-ended.

The suit would need to cousion the wearer very efficiently, and even then the accelleration itself will cause neural trauma.

Humans are soft squishy things. The "samus suit" is gonna need some handwavy physics manipulating technology to reduce the effect of rapid acceleration if you intend to grab onto large, fast moving targets, and not just to scale up buildings.

Designing the rope to snap when used by an idiot is a good safety feature.

[Amperzand]

Something that can stretch an incredibly long way while retaining tensile strength, but only rebounds when an electrical current is sent through it. The grapple on the end is up in the air, though.

For my own question, I've been thinking about a specific setting concept for a while now, and I can elaborate further if need be, but the part that's relevant here is that a certain kind of VIP is frequently near combat zones, and instead of just being given a basic soldier's gear, use heavily armored battlesuits, basically the intersection of a very small mech and a very large suit of power armor, largely intended to let somebody remain mobile with a good half-meter of composite in every direction.

Because it would be a waste of money and assets not to arm them, they serve as special-purpose heavy weapons carriers.

The thing I'm asking about is, what should they be armed with, assuming that "conventional" weapons remain standard, but they are carrying local power sources that might make energy weapons practical.

My thoughts were going towards four major areas.

First, simply a big, fast machine gun. Antipersonnel/superlight AA.

Second, something like a 20-30mm Garand rifle, semi-automatic, high-powered, but not really a serious cannon.

Third, an actual cannon, 75-100mm, probably single shot and similar to old breach-loading rifles in operation.

Fourth, a combination of an infantry SAW, smaller than the main MG above, intended as a PDW, with a heavy missile launcher. Either something like the 40k Cyclone launcher, or something like the real-world Davy Crockett.

[Amperzand]

Because I'm assuming that, say, plasma weapons are like large blowtorches, lasers are heavy and bulky, and railgun barrels wear out after less shots than their magazines could practically carry.

I'm also assuming very high powered "conventional" weapons, and very limited suit-to-suit combat, because they're stupidly expensive, rare, and intended largely for combat VIPs.

[wierd]

A very high density plasma (since plasma loses the electrons around the neuclei, repulsion forces will be much lower, so chambered, compressed plasma of similar density to say a lead bullet is theoretically possible) could be delivered as a high energy kinetic projectile. (such plasmas exist inside stars.)

it would evaporate in flight, but at semi-close ranges, it would be quite devistating. Energy costs would be absurd though. Bonus: the air itself could be compressed to produce the plasma for the projectiles, so as long as you have power and cooling, you can shoot.

[wierd]

Of course. That's what a tactical nuke does. It creates fission plasma explosions.

They designed small mortar-shell sized nukes in the 50s, including an infantry deployable delivery system. Looks a lot like a bazooka.

[Amperzand]

Nuclear weapons basically rely upon it, actually. Which is why I mentioned the Davy Crockett.

I suppose I should specify that they'll mostly be fighting "conventional" armored targets and infantry. Tanks, aircraft, footsoldiers, &c are still the norm here, with an occasional salting of orbital shenanigans.

Grenades are entirely valid.

I was assuming the Cyclone is basically a large, fast rack of medium missiles, the warheads are also up for debate, but I'm assuming chemical explosive as the standard.

This is intended as a hard sci-fi setting, not a shiny mech anime.

Spoiler: Also, here's the aforementioned infantry nuke launcher, the Davy Crockett (click to show/hide)

[Amperzand]

A railgun projectile need only be conductive. A coilgun projectile must be magnetic.

The difference between the weapons is that a railgun just uses massive amounts of electricity to brute force whatever closes the circuit between two rails up to high velocity, whereas a coilgun uses a series of precisely timed electromagnetic coils to accelerate a ferromagnetic object. Railguns are cheap, powerful, and wear out quickly, coilguns are expensive, of debatable power, and don't wear out of their own accord, though they're probably more fragile.

[Egan_BW]

Give 'em a big laser cannon on the shoulder and a two-handed electrified sword.

[Amperzand]

Kinda against the spirit of the whole thing. This isn't a world where that would work.

[Egan_BW]

Kinda against the spirit of the whole thing. This isn't a world where that would work.

Maybe not practical, but it could exist if you had the power source.

[wierd]

You would need a coilgun to fire a chambered high density plasma "slug".

You need insane magnetic fields to compress the plasma that tightly, and that means coilgun accelleration. The energy costs would be absurd.  This is a weapon best installed on a big battleship in the ocean, not on a tank.

(gives you cheap water cooling, the water is hydrogen dense, providing cheap plasma feedstock, and water based deployment lets you move the epically monsterous power plant required in and out of the theater of combat. This is not something an infantryman would be carrying around.)

Plasma is what you get when matter has all of its electrons ripped off of it. This state is very unstable. Normally, your typical atomic type matter has lots and lots of empty space between atomic neuclei, caused by VSER, Valence Shell Electron Repulsion.  The electrons have spin interactions that prevent them from being in the same orbitals, (pauli exclusion) and they have charges that repel. Together, they create a big buffer around neuclei that keep them seperated by a big distance.  In a plasma, they get ripped off by high energy forces. Devoid of them, the neuclei can get very close together before the degeneracy pressure holds them apart. That's why "lead-dense" plasma is a potential thing.  However, the plasma does not like being plasma. it wants to reach charge stability, and to pick up electrons and become super heated gas. it really really wants to do that.

Inside stars, the relentless gravity of the star prevents it. That's why very dense plasmas exist inside them. This theoretical weapon system would have to force the plasma to stay that dense using some absurdly powerful magnetic bottles. Once the plasma projectile is formed in the bottle, it cannot be exposed to atmosphere, or it will start ripping electrons off the gas surrounding it in its voracious hunger to reach charge stability. That's why a railgun wouldnt work. You need an evacuated coil gun, much more like a mass accellerator used by CERN. Once the plasma has been accellerated sufficiently, it is directed down the discharge lane, and out the bore of the gun with yet more coils.

The projectile will start to decay the very instant it hits air. It will have kinetic momentum, being quite dense, and will travel as a directed fireball toward the target.

It would mangle just about anything in front of it.

[Egan_BW]

Good old hard sci-fi "It would take tremendous amounts of energy, but it would kill things dead."

[Amperzand]

The only way such a thing would be very long range without moving fast enough to benefit from time dilation would be to give it a self-sustaining magnetic bottle, which is apparently possible, but also quite unstable.

Such weapons would be very effective, but massively short range and power hungry.

I do like the idea of plasma weapons in a setting as traditional plasma cutters, though. Have the magnetic bottle extend maybe a meter past the muzzle, and it could act as a viable CQC anti-armor weapon. Bunker clearing or shipboard combat.