bookrat |
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This thread is for listing some cool reasons why a piece or armor wouldn't lose its environmental protection when you get hit with a bullet.
The book gives force fields as one example.
Some examples my friends and I have come up with so far:
• When the suit detects damage, it backfills the hole with foam at the damaged spot, keeping it's user protected.
• Bio-organic suit with an intelligent fungus. It grows mycelium fibers to fill in damaged sections, which helps maintain the environmental protection.
• Technomancer technology; when the armor gets hit with enough force (the AC), it shatters, forms into a mist, and reforms the armor, keeping the environmental protection active.
What other ideas can we come up with for why armor keeps its environmental protection after you get hit with a bullet or something else that realistically should tear through the suit?
CrusaderEm |
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It would have to be in a way that still allows for damage, otherwise sundering armor wouldn't work. I personally like the idea of making outer space combat really intense by having environmental protection fail in space if you get shot. Makes space as spooky as it should be.
However I realize that doesn't answer the question, so how about environmental protection is a thin layer inside most armors that is repaired with nanobots? They don't repair the armor itself though, because any use of them should be saved for critical emergencies.
OzInc |
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Reason #3 -- It is very cold in space, liquids like blood freeze instantly effectively sealing the puncture.
Reason #2 -- The environment suits are seal healing (note there are a number of materials that already meet this requirement)
... and finally ...
Reason #1 -- It's a game! to borrow from MST3000 "Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax""
Play well, and have fun
Wrath |
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- environment protection is a force field not physical
- it works like scab formation and bleeding. The damage causes a liquid to fill into the area and self harden.
- the suit is ionic and self magnetises so any damage just "zips" back up
- it has repair bots crawling all over it. These are like little spiders that spin microfibre webbing over damaged areas.
Smite Makes Right |
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Reason #3 -- It is very cold in space, liquids like blood freeze instantly effectively sealing the puncture.
Space is not cold. Cold requires matter for you to be in contact with and transfer your heat to. In a vacuum, you are actually at risk of overheating as you can absorb heat from a "nearby" star and have no way to transfer it away. (So, as part of protecting you from a vacuum, armor has to either reduce the amount of energy absorbed or have an internal cooling system.)
Back on topic, out of character, an attack that hits does not represent actually connecting with an attack.
A more interesting answer would be the complex but miniaturized systems that go into the basic functions of armor (like environmental protection) are under sufficient enough pressure as to instant seal around punctures until nanites can more permanently repair the damage. This sometimes results in side effects like a foul smell to the recycled air.
bookrat |
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Space is not cold. Cold requires matter for you to be in contact with and transfer your heat to. In a vacuum, you are actually at risk of overheating as you can absorb heat from a "nearby" star and have no way to transfer it away.
That's half right.
Only conduction requires you to be in contact with another object. You can still radiate heat away. Otherwise, there wouldn't be anything to transfer heat to you.
Additionally, there's no atmosphere to retain heat, so the only heat transfer to you is from radiation of any nearby stars - so long as you're in the direct path. If you have something blocking it, such as the dark side of a planet or moon (or space station), you'll be hotter than your surroundings and you'll radiate heat outwards. Likewise if you're too far away.
If you're in the direct path of a nearby star, and close enough for it to matter, then you're absolutely right.
Back on topic, out of character, an attack that hits does not represent actually connecting with an attack.
If they do HP damage, it does. Only SP damage isn't an actual hit.
From Page 22: "Hit Points (HP) measure how robust and healthy you are—a reduction in Hit Points represents physical wounds, illness, or another serious physical impairment. Stamina Points (SP), by contrast, measure your readiness and energy, and they replenish more quickly and easily."
OzInc |
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OzInc wrote:Reason #3 -- It is very cold in space, liquids like blood freeze instantly effectively sealing the puncture.Space is not cold. Cold requires matter for you to be in contact with and transfer your heat to. In a vacuum, you are actually at risk of overheating as you can absorb heat from a "nearby" star and have no way to transfer it away. ...
I am sure that every Space agency is going to be happy to learn that space is not cold, so we no longer have to worry about the fact that the average temperature of space (the cosmic microwave background temperature of 2.7 Kelvin (-270.45 Celsius)) is not longer a concern or that objects no longer radiate energy into the near vacuum of space. Entropy is clearly no longer an issue as well.
In point of fact, while the starward face of objects gain heat as you suggest, the fact still remains that objects do radiate heat into the near vacuum of space and at 2.7 Kelvin, -454.75 Fahrenheit it would be hard to call that anything but cold.
Bookrat gave you far to much credit when he suggested you were half right, in point of fact, you were not correct, and knew only one detail but not how it relates to the subject.
I suggest before, you mistakenly correct you actually do a little more work learning. Reason #3, and #2 are actually based on NASA studies, so while tongue in cheek in my answers, they were soundly based on well defined science. Sorry to burst your bubble Smite, but this time "Smite
makes wrong."
Better luck next time
KestrelZ |
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Companies hire the handful of people that can actually cast a wish spell in order to ensure their products are crazy awesome at breaking the laws of physics. This also explains how a huge 3 km starship only weighs 8000 tons.
Franz Lunzer |
According to Kathleen Lewis, apparently an expert on spacesuits, this is what would happen in real life, “In the case of a small puncture, usually the flesh would swell in the immediate area and stopper the hole. This can be extremely painful, but the victim would recover."
That's what happened to Joe Kittinger at his record jump, IIRC
Scarvexx |
For the most part it's a weak force field, not only does it not offer any protection but it actively lets these things pass through the atmo layer with no loss to pressure. It's more important that you don't implode and explode at the same time.
The Space Suit has rules for damage affecting useability but they're almost as generous.
kaid |
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I would assume any combat armor that was designed for space would have some self sealing capability. Easiest way is just to have a layer of fluid sealent that is liquid until exposed to vacuum. That way anytime something is punctured it would fill the hole and harden to seal it. If you had nannites to repair that is even better still but just stopping up holes is not that hard of a mechanical challenge. Hell it would be good to have even in non combat space suits just for micrometeorite strikes.
Silentman73 |
I'd be inclined to hand wave it, but there have been a lot of really great examples provided for why it might work that way. In a setting where you can get relatively affordable (for adventurers, anyway) cybernetic implants, where sentient rat men are scurrying about, and where a previously-invasive interplanetary empire joined forces with a burgeoning galactic collective to stop the invasion of an interstellar hive, it isn't so far to jump to consider that maintenance of environmental homeostasis would be such a fundamental feature of anything meant to be worn outside of one's native planet that they don't think about it. Self-sealing, nanite infusion, techno-organic materials that "grow" to seal apertures, or even outright technomancy are all well within the realm of viability.
Kvetchus |
Oh, my take on the whole space is cold so the blood freezes idea... the blood would first boil before it froze, so along with the decompression spewing that boiling mist into space before it fully froze into a fine mist of crystals, I doubt it would have time to actually coat the hole unless the suit fully decompressed,or at least decompressed enough for the blood vapor to form back into a coating... Think how hard it is to make a snowball from pure powder snow. Just my take on that. Personally, I just go with an inter lining of self-sealing material, like some sort of polymer material that just seals holes.
I think a more important question is how can it provide unlimited breathing for those critters that need to breath? How long does it's O2 supply hold out?
There's no talk of air tanks... I assume it's some sort of chemical scrubber and rebreather device, but even those aren't 100% efficient.
So... thoughts on typical limits of breathable air in seal armor?
I sort of like the idea of something like 1 hour per item level personally. Maybe as a free armor upgrade you can purchase higher mark levels of scrubbers to allow longer EVA times, and perhaps even require them to be replaced every so often...
Shinigami02 |
I think a more important question is how can it provide unlimited breathing for those critters that need to breath? How long does it's O2 supply hold out?
There's no talk of air tanks... I assume it's some sort of chemical scrubber and rebreather device, but even those aren't 100% efficient.
I mean Starfinder's isn't 100% efficient either, it's just super good (possibly somewhat magical) filters that will last for 1 day per tier. Unless you're an android (or in space a Star Shaman) in which case you just don't need to care either way.
Mad Paladin |
I'm mundane, and I think this was suggested, but:
1) Just because it's a hit and does damage does not mean it penetrated. Impact still does damage.
2) Unless it's an improvised space suit, sections will automatically seal off. Also, limited self repair as seen in Mass Effect Andromeda's prologue (crack? easy. whole face plate gone? not so much).
Butch A. |
Maybe the hit point damage you take IS from the suit being punctured?
The laser may not burn you, but the heat melts part of the suit and it drips onto you. The projectile pokes a hole in the suit and part of the suit fragments go into your body. The frost ray makes part of the suit brittle and you lose body heat in that area to the void. The suit gets a hole from the disintegration ray and the little vesicles inside that contract to keep air pressure cut into your limb.