[gurps] Heinlein Battlesuits

[hal at buffnet.net]

> Onno wrote:
>> How about the Starship Trooper battlesuit, including entry module(the
>> suit from the book where the guy is firing off nukes at targets 'just
>> over the horizon' while at the apex of his multi-kilometer 'hops'  all
>> being launched from a cannon on a passing star-ship that actually
>> shoots the entry vehicles at the planet)
>
> Tricky. Heinlein glibly claimed that MI were the answer
> to all tasks short of carpet-bombing, and as the writer
> of a novel he didn't have to put that to the test. There
> have been long and heated debates on this list ...
>
> I could write a suit (and a drop capsule and starship)
> with the right look-and-feel, but I couldn't make them
> superior to tanks on ALL terrain. Notably, open steppe
> country like that final (IIRC) action in the book should
> be tank country unless you twist the rules BattleTech-
> style to favor suits.
>
> On the other hand, I don't think we talked much about
> the effects of the starship/suit combination. Heinlein
> did not show us much precision bombing, but perhaps
> heavy armor is taken out by the space force.
>
> I don't think I've done a heavy TL10 suit since Vehicles
> Expansion 2 with the armor volume rules came out, so
> that would be a starting point. From there do the drop
> capsule as a vehicle or perhaps as an Exo-Husk.

I've never really been happy with all of the rules found in GURPS VEHICLES
and/or ROBOTS when it comes to detailing the Battlesuits for STARSHIP
TROOPERS.  Part of the issue stems from the fact that the rules for
Battlesuits in GURPS implies that anyone wearing the suits is getting
inside of a 7' high metalic suit.  If you were to use the formulas for
volumes of cylanders or spheres in an effort to figure out just what the
dimensions of the suit would be, it would very quickly become apparent
that SJGames went a wee bit overboard in determining just how big those
things have to be.