Rejected Submission Pack Power Armor

And since we already covered how this is a personal-grade shield...

I'd still be uncomfortable with it since it's still going to be unpowered armour with a pack full of bonus features rather than powered armour, but aside from semantics, the only functional difference is that it won't be able to wield PA-scale weapons or fight like a PA with any efficiency, it'll be more of a super-heavy infantry thing. As long as the goal isn't to get the benefits of powered armour without the drawbacks, I don't have a serious problem with this; disagreeing with the nomenclature is not a serious problem.

The force screen should probably be a bubble, not a conformal screen, though, since it's meant to be a crude design that works around and not with the user's physiology. That'll make it slightly less useful, since a bubble shield is a bigger target (and will absorb some shots that miss as a result) and something could explode inside it more easily than with a conformal screen, but it's more plausible than a cheap and easy alternative that's still remarkably sophisticated. I'd rather see conformal force screens produced by cutting edge manufacturers, not put into mass production for the armies of a frontier planet whose R&D department can fit into a breakfast nook.

If that's the case @Wes, would you like me to update the DR article? I can state that ADR class shields are unusable on personnel that don't have ADR class armor, but beyond that, are there any specifics you'd like to add to justify this IC like extreme discomfort or incapacitation, or should we leave it at that? Also, is 20 SP on the PDR scale acceptable? Personal armor in the current DR system has always been capped at 5 PDR of SP. Past that, it'd be ADR.

And yes, I do agree Navian. Personally, I don't think it's very well named. It's honestly a personal shield pack at this point. Even if its only meant to be a predecessor for better things, its name, well, you get the idea. If Zack wants this name though, it's his choice.

Wes said:

Only armor suits and vehicles get ADR damage capacity.

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I know this is sort of a tangent, but does this mean someone couldn't design, say, a standalone power armor breastplate?

Do all power armors need to be a full suit with a helmet on SARP?

Hm. I think it should be possible to take the armor off a Power Armor to be honest. But for the shields, I'm guessing there's gotta be full body plate protection.

The idea behind powered armour is that because it's self-supporting and augments the wearer's strength, it can be a heavier (not just in terms of armour, but also life support, electronics, flight packs, weapons and all other systems) without encumbering the wearer. This is true even if gravity manipulation compensates for the armour's weight, since mass and recoil can still be cumbersome or even dangerous without increased strength (though if inertia control is also available, that might be able to compensate.)

A 'powered armour breastplate' with no suit would just be a very, very, very heavy breastplate, not practical for combat in space or on the ground. While it's not physically impossible for someone to wear 300 pounds of unpowered armour, it's almost always a very bad idea, and so rarely a good idea that no one is likely to bother creating it, or using it more than once if they do.

If high-powered shields are dangerous to someone not wearing an environment suit, not only too massive to use without strength augmentation, that'd be another reason to avoid powered armour without the suit.

Navian, I think what Raz suggested was a Power armor with only chest protection. The systems that provide physical augmentation would still be in place and active. Just unprotected. If he is referring to only an ADR grade chestplate however, that's physically doable. Look at the Mindy or Daisy, which has maybe an inch/12.7mm or so. It'll be heavy, but even cutting the thickness in half, that's still a lot of protection. Maybe 3-4 SP in the ADR range. It's just that the current DR rules won't allow it I believe.

That however, is wandering off topic.

Oh, yeah. A powered exoskeleton is powered armour without the armour. If one was combined with a shield pack, it really could let someone get most of the benefits of powered armour... the ability to casually wield ADR weapons (or suplex a bus) is probably more important to the role of powered armour than the armour itself, and it's a lot easier to design an exoskeleton than to design powered armour; about as easy as it is to design a full body unpowered suit of combat armour, on the whole. Though, custom-tailored armour seems more widely available in this setting than custom exoskeletons.

Anyway, if that was used as the basis for this, that'd just leave the open question of what keeps ADR shields from being used by someone who isn't wearing armour, if portability isn't the concern.

OOC, it'd be the DR system. IC however, it's death in the case of distortion fields. With magnetic and graviton based shields however, we've yet to see, but I'm guessing it is intense discomfort or incapacitation. Hence, the PDR only designation of this.

Navian said:

A 'powered armour breastplate' with no suit would just be a very, very, very heavy breastplate, not practical for combat in space or on the ground.

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Disagreedo. Especially for ID-SOLs and Neko, who have augmented strength, some of our space-aged metals combined with a small, lightweight aether reactor could easily make some sort of powered cuirass completely possible. Even considering a normal human's strength and the fact that people wore entire suits of heavy steel armor, I think it'd be possible to wear. This is far-future SARP, after all, not Fallout.

Anyway, the question was whether something like that would be allowed/able to be approved.

Answering your question Raz, I would have to say no, based off the current DR rules. The best opportunity you'd get for such technology submissions however, would likely be following the DR revisions that Fred is currently working on. However, those are still a WIP.

I was asking @Wes

ID-SOLs and ID-SOL gear are somewhere between 'personal scale' and 'armour scale', and we don't have a system that can bridge the gap. Yeah, they should be able to wear heavier armour than PDR 5, but a one foot tall character shouldn't be able to wear PDR 5 as easily as a baseline human does, either.

We don't really have rules to give unusual races a full range of DR options yet, and shifting ID-SOLs to the armour-scale would either be disingenuous, or in the case that it's accurate, really nail it home that they're tough to work with as player characters. The new rules might help granulate things a bit better.

*cough* Off-topic *cough*

The topic is the submission of a product designed to bridge the gap between the personal and armour scales. Its PDR 5 stat was chosen precisely because it was as far as the rules could be pushed. This piece of gear is designed to be used by a wide range of races. What's the part that's off-limits?

Well, I failed miserably in trying to inject humor into this.

That aside, this article in particular must be PDR based off of my understanding of the DR rules. Though I do agree that the DR rules are silly, this is not the thread for discussing the changing of DR rules; that's another thread. Instead, this thread is dedicated to this submission, if it'll make it through in its current state, and to discuss any possible and/or necessary changes to get it to pass. Currently, we're waiting on Wes to see if the the shield's 20 SP is too much, or if it must be 5 SP.

The shield SP is 5, the device itself has a DR/HP value of 20.

Sorry, my fault - the pack itself can only have an SP of 5 on the PDR scale since it's being worn as equipment for personnel.

Since when is that a rule? 20sp means it can be damaged by anything. It is marginally bullet resistant but any serious weapon (A DR scale) nearly one shots it.

Quite frankly, I've yet to see any PDR rated gear have anything anywhere over 5 points. Not even the Golem, and that's supposed to be one of the very toughest pieces around for PDR stuff. Unless @Wes says otherwise, it will have to have 5 SP.