Armor Wars

[Peregrine]

Re: Armor Wars

 

That was pretty much the reason why there were only a handful of Sovereign-armor (our campaign's Iron Man) clones running about. Sure' date=' Mr. Fielding wanted to sell them to the military, and PRIMUS, and other such clients. The problem was, he could only get the costs down to about half a [i']billion[/i] dollars apiece, which really cuts down on the number of suits that can be purchased.

 

That works within the timeframe of a typical RPG campaign. However, technology gets less expensive over time (until it is replaced by newer technology), so for a setting with a long history of supertech, the cost per unit of a given technology will decrease substantially decade over decade (Pegasus Treatment, anyone?) unless that technology is ignored and becomes stagnant; such only happens if a newer, superior and/or cheaper technology supplants it (floppy disks vs. CD-ROM, forex).

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor Wars

 

It's about getting bang for your buck and achieving goals. When you need lots of people to hold ground' date=' you need lots of people. No one person is going to be able to handle it all. If you need to roll over some slightly-armed goatherders in Nowherestan, you could send an army of supermen or you could send conventional forces much cheaper and still get the job done. Plus, it doesn't quite look as bad. Why aren't nuclear weapons used more often? They'd do the job fantastically well, but they're a PR nightmare, largely because they're just unfair and too effective.[/quote']

 

Heh. You almost made me snort coffee out my nose. Really? You really think nukes aren't used more because they're "unfair"? "Fairness" has nothing, nothing and nothing to do with war. It's not fair for an operator in Ohio to put a Hellfire missile into some guys' living room in Pakistan while he's dandling his grand daughter on his knee, but we do that too. Nukes aren't used more because they make great big firestorms and leave radioactive ground, killing civilians by the millions or hundreds of thousands. There are few situations where you actually want that outcome - but trust me, if we found ourselves in that situation, then the nukes would fly. That is, after all, why we spend hundreds of billions building and deploying them.

 

 

Drone pilots are heavily monitored at all times' date=' with loads of failsafes in place. Regular pilots have a lot more autonomy, but they have to stop for fuel sometime if they go running off and they can run out of ammunition pretty quickly. The nuclear sub may have one captain, but it has many more people there and loads of failsafes, especially regarding any decisions to use the weapons. It's not the same argument as talking about giving a guy an unlimited supersuit that can take him anywhere and just hoping things go well. Of course, that makes for some good villain backgrounds, too.[/quote']

 

Except that we know drone pilots aren't heavily monitored at all times - the CIA is using civilian drone pilots. Likewise, a sub captain, or the pilot of a plane carrying nuclear-tipped warheads is carrying a vast amount of firepower. Saying "The military would never trust one person with a vast amount of firepower" fails the real world test, because actually, they do. They cope with it by pre-screening, good training and failsafes in the system - exactly as they would do with troopers in battlesuits.

 

 

I would say that they might, depending on the setting. In some settings, the military and society as a whole might be vehemently anti-super. In others, it might just be the military or even just some elements in the military. In others still, it might be a shiny happy place where people just take the fact that gods live and battle among them like its no big thing. It's all about the setting. In Kingdom Come, that meant humans became scared enough to order a nuclear strike against the supers. That's oldtech, nothing they needed Iron Man suits or Reed Richards's tech for.

 

On the other hand, groups like SHIELD and Checkmate keep tabs on superhuman abilities and weaknesses and craft tech to handle them. They might be content to sit in the background, waiting for something to happen, or they might want to strike first before things get out of hand. Look at how the Sentinels were used in the X-Men titles. Tanks are still around, as are fighters and pretty much every other conventional unit, because conventional warfare is still relevant. However, the superhuman element is also accounted for. It all goes back to the setting

 

Sure, the comics in fact don't let supertech out of the box, because it's part of the setting. It's a genre trope. Readers accept it, because it's a genre trope. But it's not realistic, as you just pointed out yourself. I should point out that I have no problem with it. I know it's unrealistic, I know it makes no sense .... but I don't care. I'm reading a comic book where people can mutate to shoot energy beams out of their eyes, for pete's sake, where verifiable Gods walk the streets and yet people still go to church like nothing had changed ... none of that makes the slightest sense, but that's OK: I can willingly suspend my disbelief.

 

Not taking any positions here, really, just throwing out thoughts. Several different settings and how they might handle each of the circumstances.

 

Think about this: the US has nuclear weapons, the means to eradicate any of its opponents, but has only used those means twice (or once, depending on how you look at it). Since then, it has not used them and no other country has used them, despite a multitude of wars and countries of all sorts gaining access to nuclear weapon tech. If your reasoning held true, the US would use them constantly, as would every other nuclear power. Technically, most countries could achieve similar, if not more potent, effects by using conventional weapons, but they don't do so. It looks bad to wipe cities off the face of the earth. It isn't good PR domestically or abroad and that's enough to say "no". So do you send a human nuke to do the same work?

 

Ummmmm .... that doesn't represent anything like the position I have taken. The position I have taken is that if supertech and ritzy batttlesuits existed and costumed crimefighters proved their effectiveness, by - let's say - going successfully one on one with tank, eliminating a pack of insurgents with minimal collateral damage and then successfully evading some F15's, then the military would be interested* ... and if interested, would spend a whole lot of money to build and deploy that tech. Kind of like the US did with nukes, now that I think of it. Actually, exactly like the US - and everybody else who had the technology - did with nukes. Indeed, exactly like the Iranians are trying to do today, even at great cost to their society and economy. Again, you're setting up an argument that simply supports the point I am making: if the technology demonstrates clear military potential people will want it it - want it badly enough to risk their economy to get it.

 

This applies even more strongly to battlesuits - they are, in the world view you have just laid out, the perfect weapon - the firepower of a tank, the threat of a nuke, the deployability of a drone and a gigantic force multiplier exactly at a time when numbers are a crucial issue .... without the collateral damage, without the deployment difficulties, without the political fallout. Nothing I said suggests that having developed these weapons, the country would go on a killing spree. It didn't happen with nukes, I have no reason to think it'd happen with somewhat less destructive technology. However, nukes were developed, refined and deployed by the tens of thousands at vast cost to the economy - exactly like battlesuits would be, if they existed.

 

cheers, Mark

 

*In this context I use the word "interested" to designate "droolingly fall in love with, and spend anything to acquire"

[matrix3]

Re: Armor Wars

 

That was pretty much the reason why there were only a handful of Sovereign-armor (our campaign's Iron Man) clones running about. Sure' date=' Mr. Fielding wanted to sell them to the military, and PRIMUS, and other such clients. The problem was, he could only get the costs down to about half a [i']billion[/i] dollars apiece, which really cuts down on the number of suits that can be purchased.

 

Ah, but how effective was it? Half a billion is a pretty penny, but if it was armor that let a man fly like an F-22 and hit like an Abrams that might be quite a bargain. But then you'd get into maintenance and training costs, of course...

 

EDIT: Looks like I missed Markdoc's post, which was to someone else but covered much the same ground.

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor Wars

 

That was pretty much the reason why there were only a handful of Sovereign-armor (our campaign's Iron Man) clones running about. Sure' date=' Mr. Fielding wanted to sell them to the military, and PRIMUS, and other such clients. The problem was, he could only get the costs down to about half a [i']billion[/i] dollars apiece, which really cuts down on the number of suits that can be purchased.

 

This is a reasonable approach - although for comparison, one single recent weapons program - the F35 - budgetted 323 billion, which would get you well over 600 suits and change - enough for 4-5 full companies of battlesuits. The Iraq war cost enough to field several thousand suits, while the roughly 6 trillion estimated to have been spent on the US nuclear arsenal would get you enough suits to provide every active division with about 1300 suits - let's say 10 armoured companies per division ....

 

Just sayin'

 

In reality, countries have shown a willingness to spend stupefying amounts of money on arms, if they think they will be effective. However, putting a really high price on them, or requiring their construction to use very rare materials, or requiring a very high level of skill and physical competence to use them does keep the suspension of disbelief to a much, much lower level

 

cheers, Mark

[Shadow Hawk]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Throwing a few more cents in.

 

Military procurement programs have been taking forever the last few decades. Examples include the M-1 Abrams (project started in the sixties, the Army didn't get any until the 80's), F-22 (project started late eighties, no deliveries until 2000's), and my favorite the 'Aegis' ships: original concept was a upgrade of existing warships in mid 60's, then new class of nuclear cruisers, then finally placed on modified destroyer hull. Cost overuns. Mission creep. Power Armor would go through the same process.

 

Marvel Universe has a built in excuse: Iron Man appeared less than 15 years ago. Getting a mass produced power suit could take longer than that.

 

Somehow I feel that given the impetus, even the U.S. MCI would get off thier arse and build something... using Iron Man (Movie) as a base, you eliminate the fancy computer (do we really need a AI?), limit flight capabilities to jumps and parachute style landings (lots of computer processing for those flight controls), replace the arm repulsers (ray guns? Please) with a assualt rifle and grenade launcher, a shoulder mounted heavy weapon (light autocannon for AT, gattling gun for anti-infantry, perhaps a light mortar).

Perhaps we could have a 'scout' version that sacrifices firepower for mobility? And a Air Force version that has true flight? And a USMC 'amphibious' version?

Oh, in my version of CU, the FBI has a 'squad' of "Stalwart" armor that all of Homeland Security gets to use (8-12 suits, exact number classified). The Army and Marines each have a platoon (30-60) of special assault troops. The Air Force project has failed, and the Navy didn't bother.

[bobooton]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Heh. You almost made me snort coffee out my nose. Really? You really think nukes aren't used more because they're "unfair"? "Fairness" has nothing' date=' nothing and nothing to do with war. It's not fair for an operator in Ohio to put a Hellfire missile into some guys' living room in Pakistan while he's dandling his grand daughter on his knee, but we do that too. Nukes aren't used more because they make great big firestorms and leave radioactive ground, killing civilians by the millions or hundreds of thousands. There are few situations where you actually want that outcome - but trust me, if we found ourselves in that situation, then the nukes would fly. That is, after all, why we spend hundreds of billions building and deploying them.[/quote']

 

And why don't we eradicate enemy populations wholesale? Why don't we "want that outcome"? We can do the same with conventional tech right now and we still don't. It's bad publicity, that's pretty much it. It'd save (friendly) lives, money, and time, but it's a horrible thing to do and it won't settle well domestically or abroad.

 

Except that we know drone pilots aren't heavily monitored at all times - the CIA is using civilian drone pilots. Likewise, a sub captain, or the pilot of a plane carrying nuclear-tipped warheads is carrying a vast amount of firepower. Saying "The military would never trust one person with a vast amount of firepower" fails the real world test, because actually, they do. They cope with it by pre-screening, good training and failsafes in the system - exactly as they would do with troopers in battlesuits.

 

Drone pilots are in a room with many other people directing them and their actions. They aren't alone in a closet somewhere - someone is constantly staring over their shoulders and monitoring the missions. The sub captain thing doesn't fly at all, given that multiple people are involved with even prepping the weapons to be fired, let alone firing them, nuclear or otherwise. The plane is probably the closest thing to valid you've come up with, but it's still limited by fuel and ammunition. It may be able to do a lot in a short time, but it becomes a very expensive lawn ornament after that without resupply.

 

Sure, the comics in fact don't let supertech out of the box, because it's part of the setting. It's a genre trope. Readers accept it, because it's a genre trope. But it's not realistic, as you just pointed out yourself. I should point out that I have no problem with it. I know it's unrealistic, I know it makes no sense .... but I don't care. I'm reading a comic book where people can mutate to shoot energy beams out of their eyes, for pete's sake, where verifiable Gods walk the streets and yet people still go to church like nothing had changed ... none of that makes the slightest sense, but that's OK: I can willingly suspend my disbelief.

 

I'm not sure what realistic would mean. Would governments realistically have the tech first and have the resources to both design it and mass produce it? Realistically, few people or even corporations (if any) would have the willpower and resources to invest in powered armor development. That means government funding and the whole point is moot, because only the government gets the goodies. In comics, however, individual people have the funding, the ability, and the desire to do this on their own. Once that premise is established, then all the other stuff comes with it (the other stuff being whatever the author throws into the fictional setting). Comic book governments have their super-soldier programs and whatever else, too, but they never seem to get the mass produced goverment oo-rah types they want, while the superscientists go on about personal responsibility and the need to keep their tech from falling into the wrong hands. So the programs exist, they just don't have that commitment from the people capable of doing the work the government wants done.

 

How would people *really* react to seeing superhumans among them? Worship? Terror? Meh? I say none of that matters until it happens and nobody can know until it happens. I can set up a fictional setting that establishes exactly what happens easily enough, though. That leaves me with real world apples and fictional setting oranges, and nowhere else to go.

 

Ummmmm .... that doesn't represent anything like the position I have taken. The position I have taken is that if supertech and ritzy batttlesuits existed and costumed crimefighters proved their effectiveness, by - let's say - going successfully one on one with tank, eliminating a pack of insurgents with minimal collateral damage and then successfully evading some F15's, then the military would be interested* ... and if interested, would spend a whole lot of money to build and deploy that tech. Kind of like the US did with nukes, now that I think of it. Actually, exactly like the US - and everybody else who had the technology - did with nukes. Indeed, exactly like the Iranians are trying to do today, even at great cost to their society and economy. Again, you're setting up an argument that simply supports the point I am making: if the technology demonstrates clear military potential people will want it it - want it badly enough to risk their economy to get it.

 

This assumes access to it, which is problematic, and effectively unlimited resources to both design and manufacture the item. The Iron Man movies offer an example there: very few people (2) can make the mini arc reactors, let alone the suit tech (1). Government says "gimme" and Stark says "no". It's the creation of one guy working alone, so there aren't hundreds of people who were involved in the process that you can take in and put to work duplicating the effort. Stark does the same in the comics repeatedly, though one story arc kind of gets away from that by establishing a black market for old Iron Man parts. It always goes to fear of the tech in the wrong hands and the assumption that the government (composed of many hands) is guaranteed to have a bad one in there somewhere. Still, Stark does share quite a bit of tech with militaries, enhancing their conventional warfare capabilities significantly. Nobody gets the Iron Man suit, but you can have this pretty missile instead.

 

How many scientists in the world are capable of designing - not even constructing, just designing on paper - a nuclear weapon? I'll throw out a completely uneducated guess at a thousand and that's a decent pool to choose from. How many people are capable of learning how to design a nuclear weapon? Several thousand more? Again, this is a nice pool to choose from. How many people are capable of designing Iron Man tech? One. How many people are capable of designing Iron Man tech? One. Even assuming that everything else is "realistic" and the government is willing to throw untold trillions to get even a single suit made, they still need that one guy or it doesn't happen.

 

This applies even more strongly to battlesuits - they are, in the world view you have just laid out, the perfect weapon - the firepower of a tank, the threat of a nuke, the deployability of a drone and a gigantic force multiplier exactly at a time when numbers are a crucial issue .... without the collateral damage, without the deployment difficulties, without the political fallout. Nothing I said suggests that having developed these weapons, the country would go on a killing spree. It didn't happen with nukes, I have no reason to think it'd happen with somewhat less destructive technology. However, nukes were developed, refined and deployed by the tens of thousands at vast cost to the economy - exactly like battlesuits would be, if they existed.

 

Again, it goes to access to the resources and knowledge required to complete the task. Given the level of science that general shows up in comic book governments, they can and do produce battlesuits and equivalent tech. They just don't make a lot of them and they're still b-team equipment compared to the stars of the setting. There is no mass production, either due to cost, lack of resources, or something else. Nuclear weapons have been developed in quantity by countries that could afford to development both the warheads and the delivery capability, as well as the resources necessary to actually put the thing together and decades of dedicated research by some of the most amazing minds in history. Even when someone manages to establish a seat at the table, they still can't get what they need to duplicate US or Soviet quantities or delivery systems and they'll likely never be able to.

 

For that matter, why isn't every single infantryman fully trained to the highest possible levels (e.g. SEAL, Ranger, etc.)? If I buy your argument, and you have access to the best methods for something that has effectively no cost, then the best should be the default. Right? Compared to building a better plane or missile, the training is chump change. If we also accept that resources are effectively unlimited for everybody everywhere, then why isn't every single pilot flying state-of-the-art stealth fighter-bombers? Why isn't every unit in the Navy using only the newest tech? Something is limiting the expenditures and production. Part of that is ability - not everybody has what it takes to perform at the highest levels. Part of that is resources. Part of that is mission-oriented. Part of that is production capability. That's a lot of limitations. Most comic book supertech adds the further limitation of a single source of knowledge, which none of those other items has to contend with.

[Rapier]

Re: Armor Wars

 

How many scientists in the world are capable of designing - not even constructing' date=' just designing on paper - a nuclear weapon? [/quote']

 

Tens, if not hundreds of thousands. Any halfway decent electrical or mechanical engineer, physicist and a fair number of the mathematicians and chemists.

 

Heck, you can get the general concepts and design theory off the Discovery and History Channels (and Wikipedia).

 

The only real obstacle to DIY-nuclear-weapons is the fuel.

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor Wars

 

And why don't we eradicate enemy populations wholesale? Why don't we "want that outcome"? We can do the same with conventional tech right now and we still don't. It's bad publicity' date=' that's pretty much it. It'd save (friendly) lives, money, and time, but it's a horrible thing to do and it won't settle well domestically or abroad.[/quote']

 

Because it's a losing strategy - you turn your allies into enemies, you serve notice on everyone that you need to be put down like a rabid dog - and besides, what's there to win? A radiaoctive wasteland? Even the Nazi high command weren't dumb enough to go for a wholesale "kill everybody" policy. Not only does it define "unwinnable war" but it's pointless anyway. Countries don't go to war just to kill people: they want to win something - and "a wasteland" doesn't count as something.

 

Drone pilots are in a room with many other people directing them and their actions. They aren't alone in a closet somewhere - someone is constantly staring over their shoulders and monitoring the missions. The sub captain thing doesn't fly at all' date=' given that multiple people are involved with even prepping the weapons to be fired, let alone firing them, nuclear or otherwise. The plane is probably the closest thing to valid you've come up with, but it's still limited by fuel and ammunition. It may be able to do a lot in a short time, but it becomes a very expensive lawn ornament after that without resupply.[/quote']

 

You're assuming lack of supply (an incorrect assumption) since Avgas and suitable weapons can be acquired many places (Iran for example has been buying parts and ammo for its aging US planes on the black market for years). You're also (probably incorrectly) assuming battlesuits run forever on nothing. So the same issues are likely to arise and plane/suit analogy looks a pretty good one. In the other cases, a sub captain has a great deal of autonomy: there are crew procedures in place to moderate that, but the risk of a rogue command is not zero - which is why the US has built procedures to try and contain a sub if it ever does go rogue. As for the drone, I'm guessing you don't know anything about them and are envisaging some big room with lots of screen and bluish mood lighting, like in a spy movie. In fact, drone operators can operate out of trailers typically holding one or two operators, or out of the back of a humvee - and in fact CIA operative have been doing that for years now, ever since the war in Kossovo, where they operated drones covertly, from unmarked vans in Rumania and Albania. One guy. One his own. Wielding the sort of technology you claim the military would never let one guy wield on his own. In fact, if you have been checking the news recently the CIA is being criticized precisely because they are letting unsupervised, non-military operators make strike decisions. In other words, being criticized for doing for years exactly what you seem to think people would never do.

 

That's the core of my argument. that if battlesuits were viable technology, they would be deployed exactly like every other kinds of viable technology has always been.

 

Drones are another good example of how technology is deployed by militaries in real life, when there is an identifiable need:the predator program started in 1994, testing ran through 1996, but the first Predators were already employed in combat roles in the Balkans in 1995. Technology with a proven use, or to fit a pressing need is usually developed very swiftly: the usual bureaucratic obstacles hall away very rapidly. Here's a good discussion of the technology and its evolution.

 

The counter examples given are really good examples of how technology can take ages to get introduced when there's no pressing the need - the Abrams, at a time when the US was fighting no major wars where heavy armour was required, the Aegis program at a time when there was no credible threat to the US navy, and so on. A good example today is the DDG program: a vastly expensive "future war" program that has become a political football, precisely because there is no military need.

 

I'm not sure what realistic would mean. Would governments realistically have the tech first and have the resources to both design it and mass produce it? Realistically, few people or even corporations (if any) would have the willpower and resources to invest in powered armor development

 

That means government funding and the whole point is moot, because only the government gets the goodies. In comics, however, individual people have the funding, the ability, and the desire to do this on their own. Once that premise is established, then all the other stuff comes with it (the other stuff being whatever the author throws into the fictional setting). Comic book governments have their super-soldier programs and whatever else, too, but they never seem to get the mass produced goverment oo-rah types they want, while the superscientists go on about personal responsibility and the need to keep their tech from falling into the wrong hands. So the programs exist, they just don't have that commitment from the people capable of doing the work the government wants done.

.

 

"Tony Stark did it! In a cave! Out of spare parts!"

Seriously, if a single guy can build a suit in his basement - even if he's a real schmot guy - then the world's major governments have the resources to do the same. And the build a suit/copy a suit trope is rife in comics. So we know it's not impossibly hard.

 

How would people *really* react to seeing superhumans among them? Worship? Terror? Meh? I say none of that matters until it happens and nobody can know until it happens. I can set up a fictional setting that establishes exactly what happens easily enough' date=' though. That leaves me with real world apples and fictional setting oranges, and nowhere else to go.[/quote']

 

True, but irrelevant. The battlesuit question doesn't have anything to do with worship. It's "If supertech can be produced and shown to be reliable, why isn't it broadly used" The other questions, while also important to the comicbook universe have little to do with this. Though given how much angst one loner with car full of fertiliser can cause a whole country, it's safe to say that teh reaction to superbeings would not be "meh" in any society that resembles those existing on earth.

 

This assumes access to it' date=' which is problematic, and effectively unlimited resources to both design and manufacture the item. The Iron Man movies offer an example there: very few people (2) can make the mini arc reactors, let alone the suit tech (1). Government says "gimme" and Stark says "no". It's the creation of one guy working alone, so there aren't hundreds of people who were involved in the process that you can take in and put to work duplicating the effort. Stark does the same in the comics repeatedly, though one story arc kind of gets away from that by establishing a black market for old Iron Man parts. It always goes to fear of the tech in the wrong hands and the assumption that the government (composed of many hands) is guaranteed to have a bad one in there somewhere. Still, Stark does share quite a bit of tech with militaries, enhancing their conventional warfare capabilities significantly. Nobody gets the Iron Man suit, but you can have this pretty missile instead.[/quote']

 

But it's not just Stark. It's Stark and Richards and T'Challa and ... the list goes on: the world isn't short of supergeniuses. Battlesuits of enormous capacity turn up every few story arcs or so. And it's not just guys like Stark or Doctor Doom - thugs in battlesuits are a staple of the genre. So heroes and villians can whip up a suit in their high tech basements and middle-sized criminal syndicates can buy the expertise to build and equip battlesuit squads, but the US military which has even greater resources ..... can't. Gee, I guess that makes sense. Oh wait, no it doesn't. Actually it doesn't make even the faintest bit of sense.

 

How many scientists in the world are capable of designing - not even constructing' date=' just designing on paper - a nuclear weapon? I'll throw out a completely uneducated guess at a thousand and that's a decent pool to choose from. How many people are capable of learning how to design a nuclear weapon? Several thousand more? Again, this is a nice pool to choose from. How many people are capable of designing Iron Man tech? One. How many people are capable of designing Iron Man tech? One. Even assuming that everything else is "realistic" and the government is willing to throw untold trillions to get even a single suit made, they still need that one guy or it doesn't happen.[/quote']

 

You're right, that's an uneducated guess: Rapier's already pointed it out but the answer is many thousands and potentially much higher. The problem is simply setting up a nuclear power cycle but many countries have already done that - and gee, guess what - pretty much all of them now have nuclear weapons too. It goes back to what I said: if they can, they will. How do I know this? Because always in the past, if they could, they did. The only reason that nuclear weapons are not more widespread is because the countries that have them are doing everything they can to choke off access to the fuel. The technology is not the limiting factor.

 

Again' date=' it goes to access to the resources and knowledge required to complete the task. Given the level of science that general shows up in comic book governments, they can and do produce battlesuits and equivalent tech. They just don't make a lot of them and they're still b-team equipment compared to the stars of the setting. There is no mass production, either due to cost, lack of resources, or something else. Nuclear weapons have been developed in quantity by countries that could afford to development both the warheads and the delivery capability, as well as the resources necessary to actually put the thing together and decades of dedicated research by some of the most amazing minds in history. Even when someone manages to establish a seat at the table, they still can't get what they need to duplicate US or Soviet quantities or delivery systems and they'll likely never be able to.[/quote']

 

True ... but again, irrelevant. Nobody, except you is arguing that Lithuania must have battlesuits or nobody can. The argument is why - in comics - don't they go mainstream, even for the countries like Russia, China and the US who could afford them? Even the B versions we see in comics - even the suits deployed by criminal syndicates - could tear the conventional military forces we see depicted into tiny shreds (and frequently do). And as pointed out, even if they are really, really, hard to produce and really really expensive - which they can't be or they would not be so common in the hands of lower- level villains - the wealthier countries are still likely to deploy them by the hundreds or the thousands. But they don't even though the technology is proven and the need is clear and pressing.

 

This makes no sense.

 

Well, actually, it makes no sense from a logical standpoint - it makes great deal of sense from the comic standpoint, since letting the military - with its vast advantage in numbers - access even B grade supertech essentially renders much of the superheroing redundant and also starts to change the world out of all recognition.

 

For that matter' date=' why isn't every single infantryman fully trained to the highest possible levels (e.g. SEAL, Ranger, etc.)? If I buy your argument, and you have access to the best methods for something that has effectively no cost, then the best should be the default. Right? Compared to building a better plane or missile, the training is chump change. If we also accept that resources are effectively unlimited for everybody everywhere, then why isn't every single pilot flying state-of-the-art stealth fighter-bombers? Why isn't every unit in the Navy using only the newest tech? Something is limiting the expenditures and production. Part of that is ability - not everybody has what it takes to perform at the highest levels. Part of that is resources. Part of that is mission-oriented. Part of that is production capability. That's a lot of limitations. Most comic book supertech adds the further limitation of a single source of knowledge, which none of those other items has to contend with.[/quote']

 

Again, a pointless comment. Nobody except you is making the argument that "cost is no object" and "every soldier must be armoured". However, when militaries have demonstrated the willingness to spend trillions of dollars on useful weapons systems and even B-list battlesuits outclass anything in their current armouries, you have yet to explain why they wouldn't deploy them. I think most posters are assuming that suits would be expensive - as costly as a 4th generation fighter, or even much, much more. But those things are being produced in the hundreds and in a decade or two, will be by the thousand. Why doesn't that happen with 'suits?

 

So far we haven't had a good reason. And this debate's been going on for decades. So far nobody - in comics or on teh interwebz has come up with plausible reason, which is why we all politely agree to just ignore it when we read comics.

 

cheers, Mark

[wick]

Re: Armor Wars

 

I think alot of it has to do with Worf Syndrome. Worf, the half Klingon from Star Trek: the next Generation, would on a regular basis get his butt kicked by aliens. He was constantly being used to show the viewer that an alien race was physically strong. Basically he is the standard by which Alien physical or martial prowess was measured. Wow, that alien b-slapped Worf, I guess he must be a bad-azz.

 

Same thing with the military in Comics. Most people have a fair comprehension of the power of a Main battle tank and can readily see that The Hulk can tear one apart like so much tin foil and bounce the shells from it's main gun. Interestingly enough, you always see the military using their current state of the Art weapon systems against the hero/vllian ( for example, Comanche helicopters rather than Apache's or Cobras or in the case of Fighter jets it is the F-22.) This is a further test showing that even the Armies most advanced gear is no match.

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Actually, just thinking about this, we can demolish the various arguments one by one, using just the Iron Man series as an example.

 

1. Only one man can make battlesuits. Nope. Obadiah Stane, Doom, Justin Hammer, De Witt, Edwin Cord, Joey Cosmatos and various unnamed government scientists (the Firepower Armour, IM strikeforce, etc) have built suits that have either temporarily defeated Iron Man or at least gone toe to toe with him for a prolonged dustup. Others have cannibalized old suits, and rebuilt/retooled them (Ironmonger II, Ironmonger III, Firepower II, etc, etc) And I have even left out the various clones, alternate universe pop-overs and aliens on earth who have made their own 'suits, and the supergeniuses who could if they wanted, but don't. There's probably others I have forgotten.

 

2. They're too expensive. Nope. We even have a figure! Obadiah Stone commented that it had taken him half a billion to build the prototype Ironmonger suit. But that was his whole development and prototype program, which suggests a suit costs at most, slightly more than a modern fighter aircraft. He had already planned mass production and sales indicating that the cost must have been achievable. Tony himself produced the Evader armour and sold it for those who needed protection ... but couldn't afford high quality bodyguards! It was no Ironman suit, but it flew, was proof against small arms fire, amplified the user's strength and speed, was sealed for upper atmosphere and underwater operations, had a combat and flight control capable AI - and fit into a briefcase. Yeah baby! Hell, forget the army, I'd buy one myself.

 

3. They can't be mass produced. Nope again. Obadiah Stane was in fact in the process of setting up mass production lines when Iron Man shut him down and had already started taking orders. In addition the Guardsman armour, and the Mandroid Armour, the Ultimate Rocketman armour, the Evader armour, etc have all been mass-produced. Stark even invented, sold and mass-produced for the army - a light cheap exoskeletal suit (the Stark Battle suit). That one turned up in the armies of small foreign governments too, so it certainly wasn't too expensive. Indeed, the whole Iron Wars series was built around the concept that near Iron Man level armour could be mass-produced.

 

4. They're not worth the cost. Yagoddabekiddinme. We're talking about suits that can fly, protect the user from small arms fire (or in some cases, tank fire) increase the wearer's reaction speed, feed them useful intel, and in some cases, teleport, reach LEO or carry serious tank-busting artillery. We get to see their effectiveness time and time again. Even the cheapest Stark designed suit - the Stark Battle suit - was shown tearing up military units ... in the hands of a relatively untrained civilian. In fact, we routinely see 'suits piloted by people with no combat experience trashing regular military and SWAT teams on their first outing. In terms of deterrent value they're nearly up there with Nukes. Think about it. Genericstan is protecting terrorists. The US starts to make threatening noises, and the reply is "Try anything and we'll launch battlesuit-armed elite soldiers into major US cities. OK, we only have 12 of them, but they are all prepared to die for their generic fatherland and the damage done to take them down will be enormous".

 

Does that cover it?

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor Wars

 

I think alot of it has to do with Worf Syndrome. Worf, the half Klingon from Star Trek: the next Generation, would on a regular basis get his butt kicked by aliens. He was constantly being used to show the viewer that an alien race was physically strong. Basically he is the standard by which Alien physical or martial prowess was measured. Wow, that alien b-slapped Worf, I guess he must be a bad-azz.

 

Same thing with the military in Comics. Most people have a fair comprehension of the power of a Main battle tank and can readily see that The Hulk can tear one apart like so much tin foil and bounce the shells from it's main gun. Interestingly enough, you always see the military using their current state of the Art weapon systems against the hero/vllian ( for example, Comanche helicopters rather than Apache's or Cobras or in the case of Fighter jets it is the F-22.) This is a further test showing that even the Armies most advanced gear is no match.

 

Exactly! This is the whole point. If the army was using supertech against the villain, what would the heroes be doing? Kicking back watching it on CNN, probably, which doesn't make for a compelling storyline. We know the Hulk is uncontrollable by regular military. We also know that Stark's Hulkbuster armour can go toe to toe with the Hulk .... ergo IIRC the army actually had Hulkbuster armour at one point, though not many of them.

 

Yet oddly enough, these incredibly powerful units, unstoppable by any conventional weapons, are not used in combat, so the military sends conventionally armed soldiers out to fail and die instead. As I've commented, it makes not one atom of sense - except as a genre convention designed to showcase heroes.

 

That does remind me though - I forgot another Marvel battlesuit maker - La Roquette, who made his own Hulk-combat capable suit. Dunno whatever happened to him.

 

cheers, Mark

[megaplayboy]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Even unpowered, lightweight body armor capable of reliably stopping, say, a .50 caliber BMG round, would be a dramatic improvement over existing tech, and would have a dramatic impact on a battlefield, even if deployed in relatively small numbers--a battalion of such "bulletproof" soldiers could plow through much larger formations of infantry, and even vehicle-mounted weapons would be markedly less effective than usual. Now, if that armor also happens to triple their running speed and quintuple their upper body strength while increasing the heft and accuracy of the small arms and handheld light anti-tank and artillery weapons they carry, maybe one battalion can rip through a whole conventionally-armed and equipped enemy division with surprising speed and savagery.

And that would be a battlesuit substantially inferior to those worn by typical comic-book heroes. Granted, it wouldn't be on par with a tank or fighter-bomber, but it would be a tremendous "force-multiplier", and would be incredibly useful for "surgical" strikes on hardened enemy positions (or, say, in Tora Bora or Waziristan).

 

I think the easiest way to limit the military in this regard, aside from making things relatively rare or uncommon, is to cap DEX, SPD and CV for such systems--if you cap armored troopers at DEX 15, CV 5 or 6, and SPD 3 or 4, then there are still a lot of supervillains they just can't fight effectively, whereas the quicker, more accurate heroes can.

[Vulcan]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Ah, but how effective was it? Half a billion is a pretty penny, but if it was armor that let a man fly like an F-22 and hit like an Abrams that might be quite a bargain. But then you'd get into maintenance and training costs, of course...

 

EDIT: Looks like I missed Markdoc's post, which was to someone else but covered much the same ground.

 

As far as our game went, Sovereign always outclassed the production models... but that was due in part to Mr. Fielding being pre-natally enhanced by his mother's mage bodyguard, and the prototype (PC) version of the armor was boosted by his innate magic.

 

Don't ask me, it wasn't my character...

[Vulcan]

Re: Armor Wars

 

This is a reasonable approach - although for comparison' date=' one single recent weapons program - the F35 - budgetted 323 billion, which would get you well over 600 suits and change - enough for 4-5 full companies of battlesuits. The Iraq war cost enough to field several thousand suits, while the roughly 6 trillion estimated to have been spent on the US nuclear arsenal would get you enough suits to provide every active division with about 1300 suits - let's say 10 armoured companies per division ....

 

Just sayin'

 

In reality, countries have shown a willingness to spend stupefying amounts of money on arms, if they think they will be effective. However, putting a really high price on them, or requiring their construction to use very rare materials, or requiring a very high level of skill and physical competence to use them does keep the suspension of disbelief to a much, much lower level

 

cheers, Mark

 

Oh, yeah, they would have loved to do it... but the people who were in charge of the F-35 wouldn't give up that easily. On the flip side, the Iraq war didn't happen in our game; the GM had local metahuman terrorists aplenty for the government to deal with. So I suspect that at least part of that money was spent on Sovereign clones.

 

But since the clones never quite lived up to the power of the original (and the original didn't pack as much firepower as an F-35, much less a M-1), they were really only used by PRIMUS and super-elite military squads, where decent heavy firepower (we're talking infantry heavy, not vehicle heavy) and protection (APC, not MBT) were matched with a need to get into tight spaces.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Armor Wars

 

As far as our game went, Sovereign always outclassed the production models... but that was due in part to Mr. Fielding being pre-natally enhanced by his mother's mage bodyguard, and the prototype (PC) version of the armor was boosted by his innate magic.

 

Don't ask me, it wasn't my character...

 

Whenever joking about "over-tweaked", overwrought origin stories, I just trot out "...and that's when I got the Star Brand." Other variants include:

"...and that's when Clark Kent found himself trapped in a cave in Norway, with nothing but an old stick to help him try to move the rock..."

"...being the child of a Saiyan and a Kryptonian/Eternal/Asgardian/Kherubim/Viltrumite, little Billy Batson knew he was meant for great things, but it wasn't until he followed that old man into a cave that he discovered his true purpose..."

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: Armor Wars

 

It is possible to have masked adventureres in a game where the cops are on the same level as the crimefighters. Look at Watchmen, Rorscach, The Comedian, Silk Specter, etc. are all pretty much just baseline humans who followed plot hooks. Yes, some of the characters were more powerful than regular military/police (Veidt, Nite Owl, etc.), but it was still possible to have a setting where the police were just as badass as the heros.

 

Just scale the whole thing up to power armor. If both cops and super heros have power armor, then the role of super heros is to exist outside the law. To bust people who can't be proven with crimes etc. They are a force unto themselves because they act without red tape. You can have a universe where everyone has power armor (even civilians, think about in 100 years when you wake up in your armor, and wear it all day) and the heros still go adventuring.

 

At least that's my thoughts. I've never tried it in game or tried to sell it to players so it might not fly.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Armor Wars

 

It is possible to have masked adventureres in a game where the cops are on the same level as the crimefighters. Look at Watchmen, Rorscach, The Comedian, Silk Specter, etc. are all pretty much just baseline humans who followed plot hooks. Yes, some of the characters were more powerful than regular military/police (Veidt, Nite Owl, etc.), but it was still possible to have a setting where the police were just as badass as the heros.

 

Just scale the whole thing up to power armor. If both cops and super heros have power armor, then the role of super heros is to exist outside the law. To bust people who can't be proven with crimes etc. They are a force unto themselves because they act without red tape. You can have a universe where everyone has power armor (even civilians, think about in 100 years when you wake up in your armor, and wear it all day) and the heros still go adventuring.

 

At least that's my thoughts. I've never tried it in game or tried to sell it to players so it might not fly.

 

I'd think the best approach would be to depict it as the difference between, to use Lethal Weapon as an example, Riggs & Murtaugh and the rest of the cops on the force. They all have badges and guns and similar training, but the protagonists are just more capable/luckier/etc. than all the rest.

[Peregrine]

Re: Armor Wars

 

I'd think the best approach would be to depict it as the difference between' date=' to use Lethal Weapon as an example, Riggs & Murtaugh and the rest of the cops on the force. They all have badges and guns and similar training, but the protagonists are just more capable/luckier/etc. than all the rest.[/quote']

 

Which is pretty much the defining characteristic of heroic fiction in general...

[bobooton]

Re: Armor Wars

 

At one point in history, there were only a handful of people capable of designing atomic weapons. If you had those people, you could do it. If not, you couldn't. To this day, very few countries have the capability to deploy weapons of that sort and it's been nearly 70 years since one was last deployed. Sure, they can get a guy who can design one today, but they can't get the money, the supplier, and/or requisite resources to implement, let alone do so in quantity. Most comics are set in a period of time where only a handful of people can develop supertech and very few of them are willing to provide supertech weapons to governments. Those that do so tend to be villains and said supertech is usually destroyed in short order or removed from government control by those villains.

 

Stark, Stane, Doom, Richards, Mary Sue T'Challa, and more have supertech capability in Marvel, but they're still a much smaller population than the number of people who can design nuclear weapons in today's world. If they aren't willing to work for the government and/or if resources necessary for the armor are limited (e.g. adamantium, vibranium, extremis, etc.), then there's nothing that the governments of the world can do about it.

[JmOz]

Re: Armor Wars

 

An interesting aside to this would be how does the existance of other powers deter the creation of...for instance if you have mutants popping up everywhere, and could recruit them into the military, would the powers to be really invest in armor?

 

Also remember that some armor suits are mass produced at least in the marvel U (Mandroids, Guardsman)

[Greywind]

Re: Armor Wars

 

I think alot of it has to do with Worf Syndrome. Worf' date=' the half Klingon from Star Trek: the next Generation,[/quote']Except that Worf was full Klingon.

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor Wars

 

It is possible to have masked adventureres in a game where the cops are on the same level as the crimefighters. Look at Watchmen, Rorscach, The Comedian, Silk Specter, etc. are all pretty much just baseline humans who followed plot hooks. Yes, some of the characters were more powerful than regular military/police (Veidt, Nite Owl, etc.), but it was still possible to have a setting where the police were just as badass as the heros.

 

Just scale the whole thing up to power armor. If both cops and super heros have power armor, then the role of super heros is to exist outside the law. To bust people who can't be proven with crimes etc. They are a force unto themselves because they act without red tape. You can have a universe where everyone has power armor (even civilians, think about in 100 years when you wake up in your armor, and wear it all day) and the heros still go adventuring.

 

At least that's my thoughts. I've never tried it in game or tried to sell it to players so it might not fly.

 

Actually the reason I was posting about this is that while I don't really mind the "supertech never affects the real world" trope in comics, I require a higher standard for my own games. So I agree with what you said 100% There is no reason - in a game - not to treat the issue seriously and it could lead to exactly that sort of outcome. Personally, I think that'd be great.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Stark' date=' Stane, Doom, Richards, Mary Sue T'Challa, and more have supertech capability in Marvel, but they're still a much smaller population than the number of people who can design nuclear weapons in today's world. If they aren't willing to work for the government and/or if resources necessary for the armor are limited (e.g. adamantium, vibranium, extremis, etc.), then there's nothing that the governments of the world can do about it.[/quote']

 

Objection! Your honour - assertion contradicted by facts already in evidence!

 

Stane, Stark and Hammer have already sold their technology to the government (and to private organizations, too). It has already been mass produced. It has already been deployed in small numbers and almost always successfully. In addition, as shown by the government Firepower projects, unnamed government scientists have already the capacity to design and build their own.

 

So this line of defence is irrelevant!

 

The major governments of the Marvel world don't deploy powered armour because they can't, they don't deploy it ....because. Something. Uuuummmmm ...Ooh! Look! A kitty!

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Armor Wars

 

An interesting aside to this would be how does the existance of other powers deter the creation of...for instance if you have mutants popping up everywhere' date=' and could recruit them into the military, would the powers to be really invest in armor?[/quote']

 

It's possible - even likely - that some mutants would join up, but given the fact that their powers are unique, they don't fit so neatly into a military structure. It does make sense to have government-sanctioned superteams to assist the military though and to a small extent this has happned (Freedom Force, for example)

 

Also remember that some armor suits are mass produced at least in the marvel U (Mandroids' date=' Guardsman)[/quote']

 

Yep, exactly. That's the whole point of the discussion. We know that the US government (and the Canadians, for that matter) can and has produced battlesuits - even battlesuits of vast capacity: the guardsman armour is just a notch down from the Iron Man suits of the day, and we know that in addition to being able to fly the Mandroid armour is as tough (or slightly tougher) and packs a bigger punch than a main battle tank. And what do they do with them? Use them peripherally: prison guards, for example. And these battlesuits are being deployed by smallish organisations with budgets far less than the US military. I swear, pretty much the only time Mandroid suits turn up is to try and arrest a hero falsely accused of something or other. Why don't they , oh I dunno, try and arrest the villains who are tearing up downtown? No, instead they send the cops, who get trashed.

 

I think we've already made the point: there is no logical reason: it's because introducing too many futuristic elements would change the setting, and too many battlesuits would sideline many of the heroes. It's just a genre trope.

 

cheers, Mark

[bobooton]

Re: Armor Wars

 

Objection! Your honour - assertion contradicted by facts already in evidence!

 

Stane, Stark and Hammer have already sold their technology to the government (and to private organizations, too). It has already been mass produced. It has already been deployed in small numbers and almost always successfully. In addition, as shown by the government Firepower projects, unnamed government scientists have already the capacity to design and build their own.

 

The stuff that has been mass produced has been b-grade at best. No government gets the best tech. The Mandroid and Guardsman armors both came out of Stark tech and are Turtle armor equivalents, if you will. Stane never mass produced the Iron Monger. He thought about it as a way of creating his own private army to take over the world, but there was only ever the one suit. The Iron Monger, Firepower, and just about every armored villain and hero in Marvel used Starktech to some degree. Firepower wasn't made by the government, but by someone who'd stolen Stark tech and gotten government funding for his project (and who later refused to let the government have Firepower and went rogue with it). A second suit randomly appeared about 50 issues later in government hands, but was disabled in that same issue. No other mention of such suits exists.

 

Again, there are only a handful of people out there with the capability. There aren't tens of thousands of people out there who can do it and those that can are independent enough that they don't need government funding or assistance to create their best tech. They may let the table scraps go, and governments are plenty hungry for those, but they don't get the best. When they do get something good, they don't get to keep it for long and they don't get it in bulk.