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Approved Submission [Yamatai] - Ke-M2-A3100 - Kinetic Energy Absorbing Armor

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Ok, so can we determine what needs to be addressed so this can be approved.

The rationale for making the charges directional was to direct the force away from the PA. In the same manner that this device fires in one direction.

M18A1 Claymore Antipersonnel Mine

By its very description this armor does not work against lasers, scalar or other purely energy based attacks. A laser would burn through it and strike the PA, before the module would even detonate, and it would in fact most likely detonate a fraction of a second after the laser passed through.
 
Wouldn't the explosive go off faster than a laser could drill/vaporize through it and not the other way around?
 
Cinematically, it looks better if something explodes after it has been struck by an attack.
 
Energy Weapons Travel at light speed. The detonation process can not hope to compete with that.
 
Energy weapons do not travel at light speed through physical objects. When a laser (or other energy weapon) hits a target, the target will start to absorb heat from it until it is destroyed and this process does not happen at the speed that the energy weapon moves at. The speed at which the energy weapon can move through the armor is going to be limited by how effectively it can drill through the armor which is going to be limited by how much energy the armor absorbs from the weapon which is always going to result in some speed less than the speed of light.

Besides, any energy weapon that hits this hard enough to damage it is going to hit it hard enough to set it off from the point where it hits. At whatever speed the energy weapon moves through the armor, the armor is going to act like it is exploding (regardless of what it is made of) as the energy weapon drills/burns its way through by super heating and pushing aside the mass. Eventually this explosion is going to reach the back plating of the armor and be focused back towards the energy weapon's point of impact.

So at some level I would think the armor would 'go off' and have some effect on an energy weapon.
 
That kind of make sense. If this was only based on the speed of light representing the damage of a beam weapon... heh, exposure to sunlight would kill the average human being.
 
Except in terms of the game mechanics we use. We have laser weapons that fire a short powerful burst of energy that causes damage when it hits. From the game mechanics side, either the attack penetrates or it does not we do not have rules for "burning" through in a single shot instance.

So yes, a laser blast going into the device will pierce it, and as it passes through the explosive probably detonate it. But since most of the guns do not fire a continuous beam, the ensuing fireball will not affect the laser blast that has already penetrated.

And even if you were to have a laser weapon that fired say a three second continuous beam. The smoke and debris from the explosion isn't really going to affect it. Because the laser will vaporize any of it that passes into the beam.

The KEAA when it comes to energy weapons is just a spectacular fireball. The only way in the above example that it might help the armor is that the recoil from the explosion may knock the PA out of the path of the beam. But as I said, most of the weapons I've seen do not fire continuous energy beams.
 
All beam weapons are continuous beams.

They all must have a moment when they start firing, and stop firing, all energy gets transferred within this time frame. This applies even if the weapon is on for just a brief instant. Game mechanics also does not cover this in the sense that DR is only a very loose abstraction and does not contain any hard reasoning for why damage is taken.

When the energy weapon hits, it is going to turn what it hits into a rapidly expanding ball of plasma (most likely) and having a directed blast pushing that plasma away from the armor rather than letting it pull apart more layers of armor under it seems like it would be effective.
 
So wait...

Exploding kinetic-shifting armor... Scalar pulses...

I get that CFS should protect it but CFS, like any energy of any kind can simply be relocated using a superior projection system. ie, what happens when your armor's CFS fields affect one another or a starship passes too closely?

Or even, your enemy could develop a weapon specifically for this task, as a tactical warhead. I can see the point of them but the exploding function is a poor decision under the SARP.

Ideally, you want something that'll absorb it as potential energy, making the epidermis harden - next, it needs the response energy to push the round away and to expel or distribute the potential energy before it can harm the occupants...

Like a special liquid or gel that takes the impact force, transmuting that force through piezoelectrical behavior, leaving the object unharmed.

Sort of like putting an egg in a bowl of gloop and shooting the gloop with a 50 caliber rifle and the bullet bouncing.. Yet you can just reach in and grab the egg yourself if you're very slow and careful - but if you tug too sharply, it's like quicksand and you're trapped - it'd also be good for stopping Powered Armor boarding parties and even making smaller armor stick to bigger ones like flies to paper so you can really abuse them...

They wouldn't be able to grab on and hurt you because they'd be stuck against you then it's just a case of using...


Brb. Writing something up... Just answered a question that's been bothering me for a while.
 
Hardening the armor by stressing it more? Wouldn't that cause the armor to break apart faster?

Liquid gels also would make for terrible armor as they transmit shock better, making them less effective against HESH type rounds.
 
Uso said:
When the energy weapon hits, it is going to turn what it hits into a rapidly expanding ball of plasma (most likely) and having a directed blast pushing that plasma away from the armor rather than letting it pull apart more layers of armor under it seems like it would be effective.
Click to expand...

For the sake of argument, if a person shoots a normal PA with a Laser weapon, the beam is expected to burn into the armor causing the stated damage. If that burning results in a ball of plasma so be it, but that plasma isn't doing anymore damage, unless the Weapon specifically states that in its description.

And if it did result in a ball of plasma, the explosive in the KEAA is pretty much going to just be part of that plasma because the plasma will set off the explosive. And the plasma created by vaporizing the metal armor of a PA is most likely going to be several orders of magnitude hotter than the explosive of this charge.

So yes, once again the KEAA would go kaboom, but it wouldn't have any meaningful effect against the weapon. And it is not supposed to. The PA's already have a variety of defenses against Energy. The KEAA was intended to mitigate the above mentioned vulnerability all PA's have to kinetic attacks. All this tangent on the energy weapons is distracting from the purpose of this topic, which is does the KEAA have the ability to reduce damage by a kinetic weapon, and should it be approved. Let's get back on target.
 
Lasers do not work like that.

A laser can deal damage to a target through one of two ways, basically the heat ray and the blaster.

The heat ray is pretty self explanatory and what we are talking about now most resembles the blaster method. This method uses a high energy pulse of light to flash vaporize small bits of armor to drill through a target. The vaporized material does not just magically disappear, but turns into a rapidly expanding ball of plasma because of the immense energy that is being put into it at that moment. The expanding ball pushes aside normal solid matter like it was a liquid as the laser adds more energy to it until eventually the plasma becomes transparent enough to allow the laser to shine through it, repeating the process for the material under the material that had just been turned into a rapidly expanding ball of plasma.

This is how lasers kill things, so no it would not need to be in the description anymore than what a solid bullet would need a description of what it does when it hits someone.

The exploding armor would have the effect of not only disrupting the drilling being carried out by the laser but it would also help scatter the beam making it less effective by increase the area that the laser hits.
 
Kinetic Energy Absorbing Armor
Click to expand...

Try not to make the bulk of your post about a Laser's properties and how it works, Uso with a tiny one sentence pertaining the armor in question. Otherwise, you're out of the thread.
 
The kinetic energy transfer effects of a laser (the going boom part) is not well understood here apparently, so explaining how it works and why that relates to the submission is actually completely on topic.
 
No, your Usoxplination was not needed for something such as this you've entered the discussion of beam weapons on here, and not on the armor itself in another post as well. And got on topic of game mechanics, the DR system and general armor not the KEAA that should have been the main topic of discussion. And wasn't part of the topic.

I've told you time, and time again, this is a roleplay site, not real life. While some degree of plausibility is warranted, and expected, a vast majority of what you outline, say "Works" and so on, are never applied on here. Because they know, "It is a roleplay site" and are set in their ways, and are here to have fun, not a physics discussion on a fictional piece of equipment used on a skin tight Power Armor that flies through space at .375c.

@Nashoba: All that I ask is a blurb be applied in regards to Scalar's effect on this as a sort of warning for new players who may not know much about it. That's all. And maybe a warning in the event of energy weapons being used against it. "Extra caution is advised" or something. Otherwise, solid submission my good man. :)


This Submission is Approved for IC Usage.
 
Added a note explaining that energy attacks that hit the module will cause it to detonate, jarring the occupant of the armor.
 
Updated formatting and added OOC credit.

Note: Still needs removal of DRv2 stats.
 
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