POWERARMOUR DESIGN SYSTEM

From: Steve Pugh [mafb90@pop.dial.pipex.com] – modified by Brendan Robertson

This is my attempt to create a system for designing different suits of power armour for use in Stargrunt II. It can be used to design just about anything from a very lightweight suit of Scout PA right through to the Heavy Combat PA as per the standard rules. It can also create EVA suits, Aliens style Power Lifters & 40k powerarmour.

The criteria by which any suit of PA is judged is its size.

There are three sizes of PA:
Light PA is little more bulky than a suit of unpowered armour (The D8 stuff in SGII) a man wearing light PA takes up 1 capacity point in a vehicle.
Medium PA, more bulky and hence takes up 1.5 capacity points in a vehicle.
Heavy PA, the bulkiest suits, these take up 2 capacity points in a vehicle.

As a suit of PA is designed various elements contribute various points to a running total, when finished this total tells you the size of the suit. The exact limits are left up to you. I would say that Light PA takes up 4, 5 or 6 points. Medium twice whatever Light takes (ie 8, 10 or 12) and Heavy three times whatever Light takes (ie 12, 15 or 18).

By choosing the number you can limit the effectiveness of PA in whatever setting you are using. I would suggest that for the 'official' background, 5 is picked.

The first three sets of factors should be self-explanatory.

The Life Support factors are as follows:
Filtration: a gas mask/air filter as effective as the tech level of your army allows.
Air Supply: Self-contained, allows operations underwater or in atmospheres which are lacking oxygen or poisonous.
Vacuum Sealing: Allows operations in a vacuum, in high radiation, in corrosive atmospheres, under great pressures, etc.
Medical: If the suit has this, then use the PA casualty table, if not, they use the ordinary troops table.

A Cargo load is any load that would cause a normal troop to move at half speed: a wounded comrade, a portion of a Heavy weapon, weapon reloads etc. The ability to carry these loads without slowing down or losing the ability to fire, etc requires additional servo-motors, storage space, and other adaptations to the suit.
Weapon Mount: needed to fit man-portable weapons (SAW, MLP, Flamer, PIG, GMS/P).
Heavy Weapon Mount: needed to fit semi-portable weapons (RFAC-1, HEL-1, GMS/L etc)

Examples from SGII rulebook. These should all turn out to be Heavy PA.

NSL: As NAC except 48 hours life support. So 13.5/15.5 points.

Well, I wanted to use 5 points per level for the 'official' setting, so that means that Heavy PA is 11 to 15 points. The NAC suit is perfect. The NSL suit is too good; either it can't have MLPs or the MLP troops must sacrifice air supply or close assault capability. The ESU suit is meant to be a poor relation, but it does have the ability to carry really heavy weapons...

There is no reason why the ESU suit can't be Heavy PA despite the fact that it takes less than 10 points. Blame it on bad design, or say that the ESU suit has lots of cargo carrying capacity and is used to keep non-PA troops equipped with ammo, missile reloads, etc.

Some more examples:
Warhammer 40,000 (Base 4pts)

In a 'low tech' setting like Warhammer 40,000 where technology is bulky, using 4 points per level of the suit is reasonable. Hence Terminator armour is Heavy PA, as we all knew it should be.

Aliens (base 4pts)

-- "Grab reality by the balls and squeeze." -- Tempus Thales
Stephen Richard Pugh http://ds.dial.pipex.com/town/estate/ax16

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