<various snippages below>

At 08:33 PM 7/19/97 -0400, Robyn, Duke of Amber wrote:

On Sat, 19 Jul 1997, Jeanne Hedge wrote:

What are the suits made of, does anyone have that reference?  If it gets
cold enough, does it get brittle?

Yup,the suits are protected as mentioned....
as well as
"powered by a self super-effiecent battery in the back unit, giving a
Hardsuit enough power for potentially 50 hours of continous use"
                                pg 72.                              

I would actually say far less than that if using the suit to optimum
use...fighting a computer-virus hyperboomer or a group of BUC's.
I would also think that total life support dependance would be a drain
(heating/cooling) as well. 

I agree that the more strain put on a suit, the quicker the battery would
run dry. I wonder if that 50 hours is at full-load or minimum-load?

Also the book says this:

"A hardsuit's ceramic and alloy armor is invulnerable to small arms fire,
is resistant to heat and pressure changes, and even absorbs momentum based
attacks" 
                           Pg 72 of the BGC gamebook.

Although massive electrical discharges. pulse-cannons and crushing blows
take their toll as well as blades and other penitration devices in the
hard/soft joint interfaces....
  for instance...Anri SLOOOWWWWWLLLYYY shoving a knife in.

Amazing how she ran across the room and found that seam so easily.  Of
course, *Priss* shoved that knife in pretty slowly herself.

Use would also weaken the suits....look at all the heat Nene's suit
"bleed's off" in Scoop Chase.....what if she couldn't do that? where would
all that operational heat go???

I'd suggest that without some sort of heatsink, the operator would cook
inside the suit.  Or perhaps there's a method for the heat to be recycled
and reused *by* the suit, and Nene's suit was so overloaded it generated
heat faster than could be recycled? Hence the heat bleed-off? (never seen
before, never seen again)

I also would think sudden temp changes would weaken the structure of the
suits. Sudden freezing could lead to power-downs of weapons as the suit
tried to generate enough energy just to keep joints moving and not
shatter. It could also leace the suit locked up and brittle with the user
"trapped" within the cold shell but protected (a little)  from the cold by
the softsuit. Of course you would still want to get out of there pretty
bloody fast as you wold eventually be effected by the cold... as well some
components might react poorly (explode) due to the change.

"Ceramic and alloy armor is resistant to heat and pressure changes."  The
key is *resistant*, not 'proof'.  IMO, that means that they'll stand up for
a while, but eventually give in. Flash freeze something, hit it, and it'll
shatter.

The REAL weak spot in this bit about the armor being resistant is that the
hardsuits are not entirely covered with armor.  Take another look...  the
backs of the knee joints and the inside of the elbow joints, and the necks
appear to be exposed softsuit or some similar material. And on some of the
suits, at least one hand is a glove, not a manipulator arm (in Crash, IIRC,
ALL suits are gloved).  I can see that these still apply sealing for the
suit (NBC, etc), but how are they for weapons fire, momentum based attacks,
heat/pressure changes, etc. Not as invulnerable as the armor, I'd bet.


I'm sure someone's getting fic ideas out of this discussion.  I know I am  :)


Jeanne Hedge
http://www.accsyst.com/jhedge/
NEW Address: jhedge@wwa.com

_____
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The same thing applies to boys, gentlemen and men.

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                                     "Katwalk", Karen Kijewski