[gurps] Starship Troopers

[DataPacRat]

On 16/12/2008, Rupert Boleyn <rboleyn at ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> 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.
>
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-- 
Thank you for your time,
-- 
DataPacRat         VA3BOS
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