Armor Wars

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Regarding the use of conventional tanks in a world where powered armor exists' date=' there are a few reasons why older technology would be used. One reason would be cost. A conventional tank would cost considerably less then a high tech suit, and thus more could be bought. Armor might be needed on many fronts, and dependingon a limited number of hi-tech powered armored individuals might lead to strategic problems. Another reason would be politics. Not only would there be a debate on the wisdom of relying on powered armor, but the costs would become an issue as well.[/quote']

 

Yeah, that makes sense until you realize that

1) your tanks are going to be smoking hulks once they hit by a superior number of the battlesuit boys

2) They will get hit by superior numbers of suits, because the fact that the battlesuits can fly at 10x (conservatively) the speed of tanks, means they can choose their engagements and concentrate their forces - plus their movement means a single unit of suits can control roughly 100 times the area of a similar number of tanks.

 

Of course, you can counter this by keeping your tanks in large numbers, but that simply means that you have conceded an ever larger amount of the battlezone to your enemies: essentially, it means you have conceded the conflict. The "significantly cheaper and less effective but significantly more"" approach has not been successful in the last century or so: it simply creates a target-rich environment for your enemies, and a correspondingly higher bodycount for your side.

 

I think the problem with this discussion is that people who have not studied military history have this image of the two sides lining up and shooting at each other. It doesn't work like that (even in the 17´th century it didn't really work like that). Mobility is key. The goal of modern militaries is to hit your enemy hard in his soft parts. Avoid fighting, wherever possible, his hardest targets until they have been starved of ammo, fuel and food- with any luck, all you will have to do is accept their surrender. If there are positions you must take, isolate them, weaken them and then concentrate your forces so that even if he has a much larger army, you have local superiority. If he has 3 divisions spread out over a 60 mile front and you have one division hitting on a 5 mile front, you outnumber him: at least temporarily. If you have significantly superior mobility, you can do that repeatedly, and all he can do is suck it up.

 

Look at Iraq. The US soldier is better trained, better led and better armed than his opponent. Despite those advantages, when going into the assault, in places like Falluja, he also concentrates his numbers so he has as big a numerical advantage as possible. That's possible because the US controls the battlespace: US forces are mobile. Their opponents, not so much. It doesn't matter if the enemy has a whole mass of soldiers somewhere else - battles are won one at a time.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor Wars

 

What if tanks actually got even cheaper to make' date=' because of robot assembly, materials becoming lighter and easier to mass produce, etc.? Suppose you could make a 16 DEF vehicle with a crew of 2 (driver and commander/gunner), a main gun, anti-personnel weapon and general-purpose missile system(anti-air, anti-tank, etc.), with a top speed of 150kph(about 90 mph)? It might be slightly less tough and formidable, firepower-wise, than a real-world tank, but it's faster, easier to build, and costs less. And it still basically functions like a tank--main gun goes boom, anti-personnel weapon knocks down enemy infantry, GPMS takes down attacking flying targets, etc. But maybe it weighs only 25 tons, and with reduced armor the average superhero team can actually trash one with some work. But it only costs a million bucks to make, while putting equivalent capability in a one-man armor suit costs 100x as much.[/quote']

 

That just make the whole problem even worse. Remember the status quo is the goal of the comic book writers: Armies of grav tanks, backed up by armoured troopers in dropships is not where they want to go. It is, of course, a logical extension of the spread of tech, as we have been discussing, but it's not a solution to the problem of "Why doesn't the military deploy effective, proven technology developed by superheroes"

 

cheers, Mark

[Greywind]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Because the heroes are tops in their field and their tech is proprietary and usually not for sale.

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Because the heroes are tops in their field and their tech is proprietary and usually not for sale.

 

But what happens when they do sell it? Which in the comics has already happened on a pretty regular basis. Or when it's stolen, or seized by the government? (Which seems to happen even more often). Or duplicated by some new guy or by a government program - which also happens pretty regularly.

 

The "it's not available" argument fails the "read a comic" test since in the comics it is available (and from multiple sources, usually). The question being asked is " Since it is clearly and obviously already available, and it clearly and obviously works, why isn't it used?"

 

cheers, Mark

[Doctor Agenda]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Say power armor is in the price range of fighter jets and wearers able to handle them are as common as people who would make good fighter pilots...probably some overlap there so they'd be drawing from the same pool of candidates. Anyway, power armor units a cut or two below 'herotech' are available and in use by the sorts of militaries that can afford to deploy fighter jets. Can you maintain a rough status quo at this point? The military would have a much more effective weapon to fight supers with, but maybe it wouldn't change in-game history that much. Would there be a spectacular difference in how things have gone for us in the Middle East if we had power armor troops there? They're great for fighting conventional forces, maybe not the best thing for dealing with insurgents. Might even lead to a rise in terrorism if no one dares attack a nation with power armor troops openly. Great against tanks and artillery on the battlefield, but maybe lots of conventional ground troops with portable SAMS or antitank weapons could take out a guy in a $20 million power suit, especially while he's flipping over a tank.

 

Anyway, regardless of how this works out militarily, it need not have a big impact on a typical day in Hero City.

 

In my current game, you can't build a super suit without black box components that are secretly alien tech irreproducible with current technology and/or super-made components, such as materials that can only be made with Transform, so I'm not stuck with the mass-produced HAMMER suit issue.

[Mathew]

Re: Armor Wars

 

I was working on a lower point cost write-up for Iron Man and pondering on the point that he seems to own so many armors, and changes them... particularly the "mission specific" armors. You know, the Stealth armor, the hulkbuster armor, deep sea armor, space armor.

 

Now rather than writing up a dozen different suits, I considered what if I wrote the basic suit, with no extras, then gave him a Multipower where each slot was the bonuses to one particular armor. This Multipower could only be changed in his lab. So while the special effect is that he goes home and switches from his stealth armor to his hulkbuster armor, in game mechanics, he went to the lab, switched his multipower slot from invisiblity to armor and STR, then went out on a mission.

[Nuclear Fridge]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Heck, I'm planning a "Cylon Virus" scenario for the DanCo Turtle troops manning the Norwegian Icehouse super-prison in my campaign. Why attack the front gate when you have a backdoor code to shut the whole place down?

Dan Abnett was way ahead of me on this with "Force Works", BTW.

[brionl]

Re: Armor Wars

 

I was working on a lower point cost write-up for Iron Man and pondering on the point that he seems to own so many armors, and changes them... particularly the "mission specific" armors. You know, the Stealth armor, the hulkbuster armor, deep sea armor, space armor.

 

Now rather than writing up a dozen different suits, I considered what if I wrote the basic suit, with no extras, then gave him a Multipower where each slot was the bonuses to one particular armor. This Multipower could only be changed in his lab. So while the special effect is that he goes home and switches from his stealth armor to his hulkbuster armor, in game mechanics, he went to the lab, switched his multipower slot from invisiblity to armor and STR, then went out on a mission.

 

I've been trying to decide between Multiform and VPP Gadget Pool for that sort of thing. I guess since I have Hero Designer I could just run up the build both ways, but that's like, effort and stuff.