[gurps] Starship Troopers

[Rupert Boleyn]

All Hail Discordia wrote:
> Clinton N. Fell wrote:
>> I like the armor, but it makes me wonder about the bugs.  DR 200 
>> means that those bugs would have to have a 3e strength of at least 50 
>> with a rather generous armor divisor of 5 on specialized swinging 
>> marine opener appendages.  Those are going to be some nasty bugs.
>>
>> Clint
>
> For a bug to lift all that natural armor it would need to be 99% 
> muscle anyway. Exoskeleton is heavy which is why no bug like that can 
> naturally exist on Earth. They would have to have come from a world 
> with a much lower gravity. 

Actually it's because insects don't have 'proper' lungs and thus can't 
be larger than a certain size and still have a sufficient CO2 exhaust 
rate. Exoskeletons are actually stronger for their weight than 
endoskeletons in the same way that a pipe is stronger than a rod of the 
same weight. The downside of an exoskeleton is that it's difficult to 
grow because the exoskeleton gets in the way and making it easy to 
expand it tends to require making it weaker.