Could the power armor from Starship Troopers ever be a practical weapon?

Could the power armor from Starship Troopers ever be a practical weapon?

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needs more dakka

Why bring power armor to a nuke fight?

Because that power armor often has nukes as part of its loadout.

Some parts of it are plausible, like it's strength and resilience, other parts are sci-fi like the "flamer" weapon which sounds more like some kind of beam or energy weapon (implausible due to power supply and heat management issues) and the capability for limited flight is probably also implausible. You might un-ironically be able to use small rocket engines to fall from significant heights without being harmed or jump abnormally high but in reality rockets eat through fuel and oxidizer extremely fast and you'd get only a couple of hops unless you're carrying sets of tanks bigger than your own suit. You could probably carry a few backpack nukes with you, although it's more realistic that you'd plant them like conventional demotion explosives and then get the fuck out of there, we'll have to wait until 4th generation nuclear weapons to get nukes small enough to fit inside a shoulder mounted rocket launcher.

Dont forget that antimatter can be a replacement for a fision device in triggering the fusion device of a nuclear weapon. Meaning that without the large mass needed for the fission device to react, you can make nuclear devices as big or as small as you want.

That's what I meant when I said 4th generation nukes, antimatter catalyzed super small warheads is one of the characterizing traits of the next generation of nuclear weapons. The problem is that there are currently no particle accelerators optimized to manufacture antimatter, it could be done though, studies were carried out with antimatter propelled rockets in mind but it was guessed that specialized particle accelerators less than a tenth the size of the research ones could generate 100x or more as much antimatter specifically for use in propulsion, although you could use it for weapons too, depending on just how small you can get the magnetic bottle containing the antimatter.

If you go to a getto to kill nigers ye is a nice overkill of u go to kill a military unit and someone has a rocket launcher u pretty much ground beef

I need power armor for home defense

in the book, the cap troopers (the guys wearing the armor) carry miniature nuclear missiles. imagine a 1KT Davy Crockett with target-seeking abilities that you fire from the shoulder. IIRC the most missiles any trooper is depicted as carrying is four.

To be fair this will be true whether or not you're wearing a powered exoskeleton and if it's anything even remotely modern most vehicles are going to have a pretty bad time of it too. Forcing your enemy to at the minimum use rocket launchers and AM/AT rifles just to deal with a single infantryman narrows the enemy's range of usable weapons and they'll either have to accept that suddenly a good bit of their kit isn't effective at all anymore or they'll have to make a huge expenditure to try and flush their ranks with more powerful and more expensive weapons, which for any non-peer fighting force usually isn't even an option.

I've always been of the opinion that everything on the suit that we would ordinarily think of as being liquid fueled is actually, as you say, an energy weapon of some kind. The jump jets too, since Johnny never mentions them running out of fuel. Actually, the only things he ever talks about running out of are ammunition, air (delivered in the form of highly compressed air cartridges IIRC), and batteries. So I think it's safe to assume that A) pretty much everything on the suit is energy-based in some way, and B) they have some spooky good energy technology if they can make these things run, jump, and flame things off of one lousy battery.

Also, FWIW, Johnny describes the nukes as utilizing "tamper and implosion squeeze", which is pretty much what every boring third generation nuke uses these days. I bet that sounded really cool and technical in 1959 though. In any case, this is the same universe that contains planet-killing "nova bombs", so I think the idea that Johnny is actually chucking antimatter-triggered nukes is a plausible one...although (and this just occurred to me), you'd think he could get a lot more than 1KT (IIRC...or was it "sub-kiloton"?) out of them. Oh well.

Because starship trooper armor is retarded and serves no practical purpose.

The enemy cannot push a button if you crush his hand with a Standing Tank.

The suits could be powered by very small nuclear reactors, and future technology could allow you to store more propellant in less space by simply building tanks which can hold contents under stupendous pressures (think COPV tanks but instead of carbon fiber some graphene or nanofiber meme), batteries right now are operating at about half their real capacity due to a shorting issue which some companies are already solving by replacing a liquid electrolyte with a polymer one, and there are one or two more plausible jumps in battery efficiency although they'll never quite reach the energy density of chemical fuels. You could definitely get more than a 1KT blast with an antimatter catalyzed warhead because it's a fusion warhead by default, you could pull enormously powerful strategic level blasts out of a relatively small warhead, but the combat doctrine of the MI is not to genocide their enemies but simply shock and beat them into submission, so sub-KT bombs are more desirable. You also have to think about the fact that these tactical nukes are going off in proximity to your own dudes, if you were carrying a MT yield strategic bomb you'd be just as likely to blow up yourself and your own people.

Food, space, and all the other things soldiers need by default are expensive, exponentially so when you consider the fuel needed to bring that stuff to the destination has to carry itself as well. So, a battle suit that weighs as much as five guys and all their supplies for the journey plus the pilot making a sixth is a good deal if the combined suit/pilot is worth ten guys in a fight. The extra cost of all that suit is outweighed by the savings on fuel.

>but the combat doctrine of the MI is not to genocide their enemies but simply shock and beat them into submission,

I think that that's only true in raid depicted in the first chapter. Later on when they invade Klendathu and occupy Scheol they are clearly there to genocide some bugs.

Johnny actually says that the only reason they don't totally wipe them out is because it's physically impossible, what with the bugs living in tunnels and using POW's as a human shield. This, along with some other things he mentions, implies to me that if the bugs didn't live in tunnels or take prisoners the MI would have just glassed them all from orbit.

True, of course bugs operate in a different way and have to be dealt with differently, the fight with the Skinnies seems to closer to the average.

Well, the skinnies can be persuaded by terror attacks (they become allies sometime after the raid), but the bugs don't give a shit, so there's that.

This is more practical.

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where does the pilot put his arms in that thing? Is he T-Posing in the suit?

Worst legion

I'm pretty sure he's not wearing it like a suit, more like a bipedal armored car.

it's clearly intended to be the starship troopers armor, which is worn like a suit

the real answer here is that the artist goofed a little

It's still no replacement for a tank. The armour looks weak as shit, which means it expects the actual components to absorb fire. APDSFS will make short work of it.

It would have no comeback that you can't fit on a Stryker or BTR, it's just bigger and more of a target.

>it isn't already

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everything you just said can be applied to 99.9% of the things any typical military puts on the battlefield

tip: just because something CAN be killed doesn't mean that it's worthless, because everything can be killed...nothing is invincible. lol

mutts btfo'd

how can even compete against god damned africans?

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At least Russ's spine is still in the correct number of pieces.

Heh fuck no.

theyre a FTL capable tech level. the suits tech is big army issue stuff. in the book ther are some real OPERATOR types that get suits that made Johnnys look like a handtruck.

the sky marshalls bodyguards for example.

>Luna Wolves/sons of whooooore us.
ABSOLUTELY HERETICAL

How can anyone be more operator than the MI? Those fags go through like a year of bootcamp

they are all basically DOOMGUY

>in the book ther are some real OPERATOR types that get suits that made Johnnys look like a handtruck.
>the sky marshalls bodyguards for example.

What part of the book is this?

he talks about the generals bodyguards. heinlein had notes about it in a book of his collected writings. it was basically the framework for DOOMGUY. but he couldnt put it in the book because it would nerf the fuck out of the MI.

it wasnt like they were common. they were the elite of the elite, and you couldnt just brainwash or train someone into becoming one. it was pure inborn innate talent at mayhem.

>The artist goofed a little
Is that why the head is a good foot and a half in front of the arms?

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Fpbp not orky enough

Fucking brainlet neverserved post.

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