Power Armor/Battle Dress

[Tyrant]

Hi,
I'm still in the process of trying to figure out the Traveller universe since I have no prior experience with it.

I was wondering, is Power Armor and Battle Dress the same thing?
Are they common enough so that a group of mercs can get their hands on them?
How much customization is there for said armors? By that I mean, are they all a standard template armor, or can individual users add things like arms rockets, personal shields, shoulder mounted blasters and so on, depending on preference? Or do those things not exist?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, I'm just trying to get a handle on the kind of universe this is.

Thanks.

 

[Gruffty the Hiver]

Yah, essentially. Battle Dress is just another term for an armoured, powered, space suit. You need Battle Dress skill or Vacc Suit skill (as a minimum) to operate it, and you can't fire one of the man-portable plasma/fusion weapons unless you're wearing it.

 

[Golan2072]

"Battle Dress" is the Traveller term for powered armor. It is a milspec item and very expensive to boot so most groups won't get their hands on it easily, though everything is possible if the referee (GM) agrees (especially if you're playing a squad of Imperial Marines). It offers very good protection (best personal armor around), enhances strength and increases personal endurance. The only Battledress-specific weapons are high energy ones, PGMP-13 (Plasma Gun, Man portable, TL-13) and FGMP-14 (Fusion Gun, Man Portable, TL-14), which are simply too heavy for an unagmented person to carry.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Under the MGT customization rules, you should be able to develop specialized Battledress for different groups (including built in weapons or HUD or what ever).

"standard" BD probably includes a lot of that stuff, but is not specifically detailed in CT. I would HOPE that Mercenary will give some of that detail for various polities. It would be cool to know how Imperial BD differs from Zhodani BD at the same TL (other than the PsiShield of course).

 

[tneva82]

Yah, essentially. Battle Dress is just another term for an armoured, powered, space suit. You need Battle Dress skill or Vacc Suit skill (as a minimum) to operate it, and you can't fire one of the man-portable plasma/fusion weapons unless you're wearing it.

Are you sure about vacc suit? I don't see reference for it to satisfy requirements. Only battle dress(whatabout jack of all trades?).

Seems vacc suit would be bit too easy to allow access to it. You can get vacc suit skill very easily. Battle dress, no.

 

[rust]

According to the playtest document, Vacc Suit skill does only allow the
use of vacc suits and environmental suits, not battle dress.

 

[atpollard]

So a spacer who operates in a dangerous environment (High Gravity, Dense Atmosphere, Sulfuric Acid Rain) and needs an augmented hard suit, get's Battledress Skill?

 

[rust]

Unfortunately, no. He gets Vacc Suit, which also allows him to use envi-
ronmental suits - but not battle dress.

 

[atpollard]

But are environmental suits power augmented?

There are lots of civilian occupations that would benefit from a hard powered work suit. Orbital Construction comes immediately to mind as does Cargo Handling. Do you remember the 'loader' from one of the 'Alien' movies (I think that it was 'Aliens' but I am not sure).

 

[rust]

According to the playtest document, a Hostile Environment Suit is:

Hostile Environment Vacc Suit: Hostile environment suits are designed for
conditions where a normal vacc suit would be insufficient, such as deep
underwater, worlds with toxic atmosphere, extremes of radiation or tem-
perature. HEV suits provide life support for six hours.

So, for me it seems that it is not a powered suit. However, I will change
this for my own setting. It is a water world, where suits for work deep
underwater of course have to be powered to make any sense.

And I agree, there are many other occupations where a civilian power
augmented suit would be a most logical equipment.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

I think it's more that the Vacsuit skill doesn't cover operation of BD because of the military grade systems on board rather than the powered augmentation side of it. IIRC the BD skill allows use of Vacsuits normally, which supports that idea somewhat.

 

[rust]

Yes, I think so, and I will handle it this way in my setting.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

furthermore, I'd see HEV suits as being similar to the Hardsuit you see in many SF books - a space suit with a tougher outer shell to protect from whatever hostile environment it's being used in. It'd likely have power augmentation, but only enough to allow the wearer to operate normally in said environment (such as high atmospheric/water pressure), or maybe a stength boost to allow for use of heavy equipment (such as in a mining environment)

 

[rust]

The HEV suits of my setting (where they are called "Tanksuits") are some-
what like "human-shaped one-man submersibles". They have their own
water jet propulsion system, life support for up to twelve hours, and can
be outfitted with different equipment modules (construction, mining, etc.).

I think there will be a kind of "generic" HEV suit plus a high number of ve-
ry specialized HEV suits for different tasks in different environments, many
of them power augmented in one way or the other. However, none of the
models will have the military-type armor, sensor equipment, etc. of a bat-
tle dress.

 

[Gruffty the Hiver]

Are you sure about vacc suit? I don't see reference for it to satisfy requirements.

According to the playtest document, Vacc Suit skill does only allow the
use of vacc suits and environmental suits, not battle dress.

I think it's more that the Vacsuit skill doesn't cover operation of BD because of the military grade systems on board rather than the powered augmentation side of it. IIRC the BD skill allows use of Vacsuits normally, which supports that idea somewhat.

Ooops! I was talking about the CT rules for Vacc Suit and BD skill. My apologies for the confusion. But yes, in Mongoose Traveller you need BD skill to operate BD and Vacc Suit skill doesn't allow you to.

Not that we Hivers ever have a need for BD.........

 

[rust]

Beware those Hivers - whenever they spread misleading information,
there is some sinister plot brewing ... :lol:

 

[10harold66]

Has anyone ever seen "Sunshine" ? It came out last year -- I completely missed any buzz for it -- but it's the closest thing to 2001 I've seen. Basic premise is that the sun is dying due to a Q-Ball and we've sent a ship with a nuke compiled from all the fissile material on Earth -- the ship has a giant solar shield out in front made out of gold.

The Vacc suits (or Hostile Environment Suits, in this case) used by the characters in the movie appear to be made out of gold to combat the violent solar radiation they face during EVAs -- they look retro but inside they have digital readouts, comm links, and one character sips water from a straw/Camelback.

Great movie, though... it actually is the reason why I'm here on these boards and getting back into Traveller again.

I'm sure this has also been discussed years before, but would the armor the Stormtroopers (or Hoth Stormtroopers) wear in Star Wars be considered Battle Dress? I always wondered about that once I put Star Wars and Traveller side-by-side. I figured a "blaster" used by the lead characters (i.e. a non military-spec weapon relatively common to Star Wars folks) would have a hard time penetrating Battle Dress, but the movies always depicted the Stormtroopers as easy prey to these weapons. I don't want to get into a huge Star Wars discussion, but I thought there might be an already-established understanding by the general Sci-Fi/Traveller gaming population.

 

[rust]

I see the Stormtrooper armor of Star Wars as a kind of Combat Armor,
not Battle Dress, because (as far as I remember) it is not powered.

 

[tneva82]

I'm sure this has also been discussed years before, but would the armor the Stormtroopers (or Hoth Stormtroopers) wear in Star Wars be considered Battle Dress?

Dunno. Combat armour seems more appropriate than battle dress somehow. They sure didn't look that tough in movies ;-)

 

[Emperor Herdan]

I agree, The Stormtroopers are in a Combat Armour get-up. The book Starship Troopers would be Battledress (from the discription given) the movie (bleah... didn't like it so much) was Combat Armour. (and I can't remember the final closing credits... I seem to remember an enlistment advert that might of had BD in it... but I could be wrong... as I frequently am)



Take care

E. Herdan