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[i2amroy]

All of the feedback you guys gave here is the exact reason I haven't actually wrote the description of the suit in the book yet.


Yes, I meant ice axes. I didn't know what they were called and saw that they were practically picks in CoD, and they were used for more mobility on the ice, so I called them ice picks. I did mean ice axes.


I'm changing the idea slightly, they would never be inserted into extremes (arctic, deep-sea, aerobatics) without a change in loadout (which will be loaded onto the insertion helicopter if there's such a mission on the roster). The base suit would still follow my original guidelines earlier. For partly rule-of-cool reasons, I still want them to take the ice axes (it's gunna take a lot of practice to stop calling them picks now XD). How effective would an ice axe be versus a knife?

For what it's worth I live in the US and we've always called them ice picks where I'm from, probably because the largest piece of ice the vast majority of Arizonians ever see is the ones floating in your drink (meanwhile the rest of us in the northeast side of the state are having our cars freeze into giant blocks every winter ).

[Amperzand]

All of the feedback you guys gave here is the exact reason I haven't actually wrote the description of the suit in the book yet.


Yes, I meant ice axes. I didn't know what they were called and saw that they were practically picks in CoD, and they were used for more mobility on the ice, so I called them ice picks. I did mean ice axes.


I'm changing the idea slightly, they would never be inserted into extremes (arctic, deep-sea, aerobatics) without a change in loadout (which will be loaded onto the insertion helicopter if there's such a mission on the roster). The base suit would still follow my original guidelines earlier. For partly rule-of-cool reasons, I still want them to take the ice axes (it's gunna take a lot of practice to stop calling them picks now XD). How effective would an ice axe be versus a knife?

For similar reasons, I also want to keep the faceplate, although less of a focus and removable so that it isn't a problem on desert missions or light diving or wingsuiting etc. It'd be more or less so that you have more of a chance of an open-casket funeral than to stop a .50 cal bullet. It'd primarily be there to stop shrapnel from frags and burns from HE getting on the face and to prevent that flying sheet metal from decapitating you. Also if it cracks from something in battle you can remove it for the visability.


MY SCHOOL BLOCKED TVTROPES ON ME! NOOOO! Now I can't check what tropes my suit falls under (not without going to my ipod). My school has utilised the greatest weapon of all time: The website blocker. Known to cause people to abandon cities to try and find a way around the filter, it is only a matter of time before they go insane from a lack of Google and TVTropes and Wikipedia.




RE rods from God: I hated how CoD Ghosts did the whole rods from god thing. It felt like a cheap way of killing billions of people. Thanks for clearing the thing up a bit!

Also, submachine guns. There's a reason they're used mainly by CQB units and SWAT teams, namely that they're almost as useless as pistols at any notable range. True machine pistols are even less useful as a universal weapon, because removing the long, foregripped barrel and stock changes them from highly-controllable room-sweeper machine guns to uncontrollable bullet-hoses useless beyond extremely close range and suppressive fire.

At this point, compact, rifle-caliber carbines are replacing SMGs in most notable military situations, for a variety of reasons, not least that a simple barrel switch converts them to a true rifle effective to several hundred meters.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Rods from God are an awful idea for a weapons system, anyway.

Might suck in the real world but they are fun for fiction

[Amperzand]

Indeed. Additionally, I see orbital kinetic weapons as being far more practical in a world where space travel has become ubiquitous. You can basically melt scrap metal into bars and use a basic coilgun or something to deorbit them in the general direction of people you dislike.

[GiglameshDespair]

Rods from God are an awful idea for a weapons system, anyway.

Might suck in the real world but they are fun for fiction

If they suck in the real world, chances are they'll suck in fiction. Just because it's the future doesn't explain the question of 'why didn't they use something so much more practical?' Space based kinetic weapons suffer from unique disadvantages that can't really be compensated for.

Indeed. Additionally, I see orbital kinetic weapons as being far more practical in a world where space travel has become ubiquitous. You can basically melt scrap metal into bars and use a basic coilgun or something to deorbit them in the general direction of people you dislike.

Not particularly, no.
Rods from god "work" because they're made from tungsten, which has the density and high melting point to survive reentry in a form that still has use. Otherwise you'll lose a huge amount of material burning up in the atmosphere.

[Fniff]

Rods from God are an awful idea for a weapons system, anyway.

Might suck in the real world but they are fun for fiction

If they suck in the real world, chances are they'll suck in fiction.

Depends on your definition of suck. The idea of throwing a giant rod of tungsten at a planet and having it cause massive destruction is a fun idea no matter how unrealistic it may be.

[Parsely]

All of the feedback you guys gave here is the exact reason I haven't actually wrote the description of the suit in the book yet.


Yes, I meant ice axes. I didn't know what they were called and saw that they were practically picks in CoD, and they were used for more mobility on the ice, so I called them ice picks. I did mean ice axes.


I'm changing the idea slightly, they would never be inserted into extremes (arctic, deep-sea, aerobatics) without a change in loadout (which will be loaded onto the insertion helicopter if there's such a mission on the roster). The base suit would still follow my original guidelines earlier. For partly rule-of-cool reasons, I still want them to take the ice axes (it's gunna take a lot of practice to stop calling them picks now XD). How effective would an ice axe be versus a knife?

For what it's worth I live in the US and we've always called them ice picks where I'm from, probably because the largest piece of ice the vast majority of Arizonians ever see is the ones floating in your drink (meanwhile the rest of us in the northeast side of the state are having our cars freeze into giant blocks every winter ).

Yep. Arizonan here as well. I've seen snow once in this state and I've lived here my whole life.

[GiglameshDespair]

Rods from God are an awful idea for a weapons system, anyway.

Might suck in the real world but they are fun for fiction

If they suck in the real world, chances are they'll suck in fiction.

Depends on your definition of suck. The idea of throwing a giant rod of tungsten at a planet and having it cause massive destruction is a fun idea no matter how unrealistic it may be.

Because they don't even do that.

Project Thor, for example, would have utilised a 6.1 m × 0.3 m tungsten cylinder impacting at Mach 10.
It has approx 11.5 tons of TNT worth of kinetic energy - but before you think that sounds impressive, the rod itself is over nine tons. That's rubbish for what you're paying, and you're paying a lot. You'd get a lot more energy with nine tons of dynamite.

Bunker busters able to penetrate 6+ metres of reinforced concrete already exist.

It's a cool idea, but it just doesn't match up.

[Amperzand]

That said, how about orbital beam weapons?

[Tuxfanturnip]

Not that it would be really useful, tactically, but how practical would it be to put a warhead in a RfG? If you're nuking a planet from orbit and want maximum fallout/nuke mass ratio, would the penetration be useful? And one advantage of orbital kinetic weapons is the sheer speed. They come in hotter than an ICBM and most missile defense systems wouldn't be able to do much.

[Amperzand]

I wouldn't think a nuke would survive impact very well, the issue with coming in that fast is that the sudden stop at the end is really good at tearing things apart.

[Bumber]

That said, how about orbital beam weapons?

I would think their efficiency would be reduced by the distance involved, the Earth's magnetic field, and clouds/dust in the atmosphere.

Oh, and the difficulty getting rid of heat in space.

[Amperzand]

Certainly, but any beam weapon useful at orbital distance can manage ~400 miles. That said, atmospheric attenuation is a major issue, but there are apparently several ways to keep a beam coherent through it.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On the FTL space ships/weapons. Would it even be a thing to have dog fights at near light speed or wouldn't ships have to slow down to initiate combat since I can't think of any possible way to have a weapons system to not only track but fire projectiles at a target going that fast at such great distances even if the projectile is near or equal to (laser) light speed? (....kinda went from question to ranty nonsense at the end...)

[Egan_BW]

Can't hit what you can't see, and you probably can't see much at FTL speed. It would also be almost impossible to actually hit someone going FTL unless you stick FTL drives to your missiles or something.