Battle Dress

[ShawnDriscoll]

If I was the ref, I'd have one of my NPCs activate a return home command/signal after you've had the suit for awhile. The NPC put some specific code in a part that your suit has so it would return to him/her, with you inside it still perhaps. The highly classified and experimental suit you've assembled would use any means necessary to return to its world of manufacture. It'd be interesting to see how your buddies get you out of that suit or not.

 

[Darzoni]

If I was the ref, I'd have one of my NPCs active a return home command/signal after you've had the suit for awhile. The NPC put some specific code in a part that your suit has so it would return to him/her, with you inside it still perhaps. The highly classified and experimental suit you've assembled would use any means necessary to return to its world of manufacture. It'd be interesting to see how your buddies get you out of that suit or not.

That, in my opinion, is a pretty neat way to go. I sincerely doubt the other players would be able to crack the suit without killing the character inside, but that makes my inner dungeon master cackle with glee. I think it would all depend on how fast somebody could hack the computer; a remote chance given the party composition.

 

[Baeron Gredlocke]

I kind of agree with the "high cost, low value" sentiment in regards to mongoose's version of battle dress.

A protection value of 18, while formidable, seems far too low for the traditional notion of battle dress.

I did a sample roll representing firing and entire clip from a gauss rifle using the figures from the core book. That's an 80-round magazine, so 20 bursts of 4 rounds each.

Half of the bursts rolled penetrating damage, and not inconsiderable amounts. It totals to about 36 points. I'll stipulate this may not reflect actual in-use behavior.

TNE's standard gauss rifle even has a penetration rating, and TL12 battle dress is still basically impervious to it and other small arms as listed in the TNE core book. It's a fraction of the price too, with the TL14 suit clocking in at 214kcr

To me, this reinforces the idea that battle dress is more of a *vehicle* than a measure of personal protection and infantry enhancement. This is a notion that GT got across quite well. Of course, PC's should be able to put up a fight against battle dress through creativity and quick thinking, but I don't think it's reasonable that your average player should be able to point a fairly standard infantry rifle at the thing and punch through it roughly half the time.

I just got the vehicle handbook today, and it looks like the battle dress generation rules make for suits closer to what would be expected (except for the pricing), since it appears to list numbers close to the core book as the "ultra light chassis".

In TNE, battle dress was always described (by the GM) as something fairly large and bulky, akin to a large gorilla. You wouldn't tromp around ship corridors with it, and drop troops were accommodated with purpose-built facilities. I don't recall battle dress-equipped boarding parties being addressed, but it's been a while. I've seen artwork supporting the idea of battle dress being something light and mobile (like iron man) and something big and hulking (like a big diving suit). I'm sure there's room for both ideas, and in fact those are both supported in supplement 5-6.

 

[locarno24]

I'd agree that 'man-sized' battle dress isn't as scary as a lot of people want it to be.
Part of that, though, is (to me) the fault of the Central Supply Catalogue, which slapped armour-piercing traits onto lots of weapons without buffing armour to compensate.

Regardless, I've found battle dress scary as hell for the players on the few times I've let it slip at them.

An aimed burst from a gauss rifle wielded by a competent marksman - Gun Combat (Slug Rifles)/2 with a gunsight will, on average, punch through normal battle dress. It's an oft-quoted statistic and used by people who argue battledress isn't worth it.

However, the key advantage of battle dress is in an unfair fight. The Dexterity boost is as important, in many ways, as the armour - combined with the tactics computer, a wearer is going to be at +2 initiative compared to a 'normal' opponent, is more likely to hit with weapons fire and will do extra damaged thanks to increased effect - or (more importantly) can dodge without penalty, reducing the effect people usually take for granted to get through armour. Even MCr10 of TL15 augmentation isn't as good as putting on a battle dress suit.