Cyborgs and Exoskeletons

quite possibly a cat wrote:Look normally when a bunch of people meet in the wilderness its something like camping or a retreat. And what kind of moron flies a god damn plane to their secret base?

If it had been an innocent bunch of orgy participants, there wouldn't have been any mayhem. But they had more information than just the planes congregating there.

As for "morons," if you put your secret base way out in the boonies where it is only accessible by air, then all of your "morons" fly a plane to the secret base. :rolleyes: In the Honorverse, it's the same as driving a car to a remote farm for a secret meeting; no big deal.

tlb wrote:If you would read Shadow of Saganami, then you would see marines moving around in combat armor and making a drop on the Kornatian weapons cache. Even On Basilisk Station goes into some detail on the powered armor.

quite possibly a cat wrote:Yeah, I have. You'll notice the lack of built in contra-grav. Not all powered armor has to be identical.

I still think they got absurdly luck with that by the way. The only place five cars were meeting in the woods just happened to be terrorists? Look normally when a bunch of people meet in the wilderness its something like camping or a retreat. And what kind of moron flies a god damn plane to their secret base?

Although to be fair, sometimes the bad guys are really stupid. See: History.

On the plus side, now that the baddies know the Manticorian M.O. they know how to spoof them into doing something moronic next time they start a terrorist campaign.

I apologize for being rude; I did not realize you were commenting on the proposal to use contra gravity pods in place of marines in battle armor and thought this was a comment on the armor itself - my bad.
To be fair to the Manticore forces: first they were using downward looking radar and thus saw that the cars did not just land - they disappeared from view and second they flew a spy drone over the site and saw there was an underground structure that was not known by the Kornatian authorities.

I imagine one could possibly use some kind of tractor to anchor one's self to the ground if necessary, thus minimising recoil.

The reasoning behind my thoughts is that to my knowledge, all armour is vulnerable where it articulates. More articulation is more weak spots. So, I think, surely there must be a more advanced means of locomotion than a couple of legs, one that doesn't require so many weak spots to function.

Or even if you have to use legs... don't make the pilot put her own legs inside those legs, so if one gets blown off, it's not so much of an issue.

Walks Alone wrote:I imagine one could possibly use some kind of tractor to anchor one's self to the ground if necessary, thus minimising recoil.

The reasoning behind my thoughts is that to my knowledge, all armour is vulnerable where it articulates. More articulation is more weak spots. So, I think, surely there must be a more advanced means of locomotion than a couple of legs, one that doesn't require so many weak spots to function.

Or even if you have to use legs... don't make the pilot put her own legs inside those legs, so if one gets blown off, it's not so much of an issue.

The Battle Armor is a force multiplier along with the protection it gives. Not invulnerable but dam tough and way better than in street cloths or a skin-suit (which lets you survive in space conditions if your compartmens are breached etc). Not clear how much recoil the weapons on battle armor have. Depending on what you need to thow (launch, fire) you can have some compensation buit in plus the suites are stabelized for movement and would appear to constantly compensate to keep you upright etc. You carry all sorts of electronics and communications you also can carry scaled up versions of the standard and squad sized infantry weapons.
Emily isn't going to be wearing an armored car. The other thing is that battle armor also is centered on working off biometric feedback from the wearer. You move something and the suit mimics it. Bring your arm up to a fireing position- even for a snap-shot at a fast movement and your finger "pulls the trigger", the suit does that with the arm of the suit and initiates the fire movement for the weapon.
Emily doesn't have all that motor control. It's just gone and present level of Honorverse medicine (and applied engineering) isn't to the point where you could "just" plug into someone's nervous system (at the brain level) and run some variation of a body suit.

Honor does have what could be considered cyborg implants (the eye, the internal part of an ear and the prosthetic arm- with the pulser pistol in it-) but the eye is linked to her optic nerve and gives her the display for that eye--putting that range of tactical display and magnification was interesting but it not like dealing with Emily's injury. Honor had to re-learn how to use the arm (and her father's extra gift of the pulser) just like a current amputee would have to learn to use a mechanical prosthetic....but Honor has both part of that original arm AND she has all the connections from there back up to the brain so it is more of a patch job instead of a full replacement of the body......no head transpants onto clone bodies in the Honorvers.

I guess this is kind of like my question about ship classifications...

For me, the question I would ask is "why would I use battle armour when I could just use either a drone or a tank?"

My answer to that would be that I'd only use it where I couldn't fit a tank, and where a drone's uplink might be jammed. Which basically means either inside ships or buildings.

If I could design something like a tank to get inside a building, I'd probably use one of those instead... hence my armoured pod idea.

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As to the topic of Emily... I would imagine that a civilian exoskeleton wouldn't need to be armoured at all, and so would be much lighter and much more elegant than the more "form follows function" military equipment.

Obviously, Emily doesn't have the motor control to operate one in the usual manner, but in a similar way to how we can move virtual characters around in computer games with nothing but a single thumbstick on a game controller, I imagine that such an exoskeleton would have pre-programmed actions, such as walking... which can be derived from motion capture of her from the HDs she previously appeared in, so she wouldn't just be able to walk, she'd even have the same gait she had before the accident.

In fact, it might even be possible to scale it down far enough that it could be worn under loose clothing, that is if you even wanted to hide it rather than just flaunt it as a fashion accessory... I'm imaging something in a smooth and flowing white metal, sort of like this: -

https://cdn.designfaves.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/p17tg3clnhgh11jt71jrd1tk7r3u7.jpg

To be honest, when I think of this tech, it reminds me of the virgin image I had of the MAlign. It is how I first pictured them. I associate this type of tech and thinking with something the MAlign would have a leg up on. If the MA stands for the betterment of mankind, then it wouldn't just stop with gene modification. Mechanical implants and assists would not be below them. Considering some of their more outlandish creations paired with exoskeletons promises to conspire together for an imposing figure.

Let's face it, if RFC allows this tech, then everyone will see just how monstrous the Malign really are. Because then they wouldn't have to waste all of the good meaty brains they are culling. They can just interface simply the brain of a culled line, culled for a physical instead of a mental deformity.

Matter of fact, they'd begin growing brains just for that purpose, to slot down into a machine just like a computer card.

cthia wrote:To be honest, when I think of this tech, it reminds me of the virgin image I had of the MAlign. It is how I first pictured them. I associate this type of tech and thinking with something the MAlign would have a leg up on. If the MA stands for the betterment of mankind, then it wouldn't just stop with gene modification. Mechanical implants and assists would not be below them. Considering some of their more outlandish creations paired with exoskeletons promises to conspire together for an imposing figure.

Let's face it, if RFC allows this tech, then everyone will see just how monstrous the Malign really are. Because then they wouldn't have to waste all of the good meaty brains they are culling. They can just interface simply the brain of a culled line, culled for a physical instead of a mental deformity.

Matter of fact, they'd begin growing brains just for that purpose, to slot down into a machine just like a computer card.

Know what that would give the Malign? A serious force multiplier. Thousands upon thousands of expendable bodies, err brains.

A serious sea of salivating kamikazes coming with the Lennys. Advantage: Malign

cthia wrote:To be honest, when I think of this tech, it reminds me of the virgin image I had of the MAlign. It is how I first pictured them. I associate this type of tech and thinking with something the MAlign would have a leg up on. If the MA stands for the betterment of mankind, then it wouldn't just stop with gene modification. Mechanical implants and assists would not be below them. Considering some of their more outlandish creations paired with exoskeletons promises to conspire together for an imposing figure.

Let's face it, if RFC allows this tech, then everyone will see just how monstrous the Malign really are. Because then they wouldn't have to waste all of the good meaty brains they are culling. They can just interface simply the brain of a culled line, culled for a physical instead of a mental deformity.

Matter of fact, they'd begin growing brains just for that purpose, to slot down into a machine just like a computer card.

The Malign are really just Neo-Neo-Luddites honestly. They're like 80% as bad as Beowulf.

Also IIRC, when Mesa was first mentioned, it was mentioned with another Star Nation that was heavy on the cybernetics. I think it was also mentioned that the style for cybernetics in most of Honorverse was discreet changes. Also I seem to remember a cybernetically enhanced guard the Malign had.

Do we know they cull for physical problems? I would assume they offer the full range of medical tech to people. OTOH, that seems not to generally include full cyber body in Honorverse. Although that might be cultural. See fat rich people when nannies can overcome overeating.

<About that exoskeleton> Says Clean Killer.

Oh, here's a crazy idea... warrior cats? Presumably they have better reflexes than humans, and so far we've never seen one use either weapons, vehicles or armour?

Imagine if Genghis had been carrying a sidearm when Rat Poison happened? Could he have prevented it?

Edit: Technical language, replaced "firearm" with "sidearm", since neither tasers not pulsers are technically firearms.