| From: | shadowrn@*********.com (Damion Milliken) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Thermal Dampening & Ruthenium Polymers |
| Date: | Thu Nov 22 05:15:01 2001 |
thermal dampening isn't going to be much more unlikely...
In other words, while I think that fully transparent armour is a little bit
preposterous (this isn't Star Trek's transparent aluminium ;-)), it's only a
little less silly than fully transparent thermal dampening. OTOH, it would
be conceivable to incorporate hard polymeric or glass composite laminates
into the armour, which are more or less transparent (like car windscreens).
They might not provide as effective armour as metallic plates and kevlar
lining, but they'd be better than nothing at all.
The problem that I could see with thermal dampening is that it needs to be
made from a substance that adsorbs (ie blocks and contains) infra-red
radiation. Apparently, optically transparent materials transmit near-IR
about as well as they do visible light, so there would be a problem here.
Some sort of clear water based or similar gel-like substance would possibly
be useful for a clear thermal dampening material - it'd have a high heat
capacity, which I would imagine would be useful for adsorbing more heat
before it became hot enough to show up on sensors, and if it was some sort
of polymer gel it could probably be clear too. Near-IR would still escape,
which means your thermal dampening would be less effective than, say, black
material (you know how black clothing heats up much worse in summer than
white clothing?).
Incorporating these sorts of mods into a clear bodysuit would be a little
expensive, and would, to some degree, throw off the ability of the ruthenium
polymers to produce a clean image. Light coming through the "clear" suit
would be somewhat disorted by curvature of the clear lining (lenses such as
in glasses are merely curved glass), and so partially magnified, elongated,
or otherwise distorted images would be received by the sensors. Placing the
sensors outside the suit might help alleviate some of this, but then the
image that they are receiving is not in the same position as what the
ruthenium polymers are, and so the polymers on the other side will display a
slightly wrong image, which would be just as bad.
The more additional layers of material you add on, the worse these kinds of
effects would become. In addition to interface effects such as reflection of
light at particular angles (you know how light glints off a polished car?)
and obscuration of light due to adsorption (even high quality flat glass
adsorbs some light, and you're certainly not using that sort of material as
armour or thermal dampening, so it'll probably adsorb much more light),
you're going to increase the thickness of the suit. This will lead to
greater problems with image clarity, as I described above, as the refracting
material (ie the suit) is thicker, and because there is more material,
variations in thickness will be more likely to occur.
I'd probably apply a flat -1 modifier for wearing even an appropriately
tailored clear unarmoured, un-thermal dampened suit at all. Then a -1
modifier for each point of armour (either ballistic OR impact) added, and a
-2 for each point of thermal dampening added. The thermal dampening would
not function as well as normal thermal dampening (say half modifier?). The
cost of the armour would be significantly more than normal (like 10 times
more than equivalent normal armour), as you'd need to get some sort of
unusual materials to make it from, and probably custom tailor it to the
person during production. As for the thermal dampening, it'd cost a
veritable fortune (like 100 times as much), and probably be very prone to
damage, rupture, or other detrimental effects, especially if shot or
otherwise damaged.
--
Damion Milliken University of Wollongong
Unofficial Shadowrun Guru E-mail: dam01@***.edu.au
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