From:	Paul Jonathan Adam <Paul@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject:	Re: Mil-Spec Armour
Date:	Sat, 10 Jun 1995 00:48:05 GMT

In message <2FD72F50@******.msm.telia.se> SHADOWRN@*****.nic.surfnet.nl writes:
> >Ha, wait untill someone gets their hands on the mil suits in FOF (its
> >reach ont and catch the missile time)

I highly recommend "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman to anyone whose players
want mil-spec armour, especially if they get notions of powering it.

The stuff has to be *sophisticated*. As a veteran of much small-unit work,
especially urban warfare training (FIBUA), you get *hot* doing all that
running and skirmishing. Winter on Salisbury Plain, maybe five degrees
below zero (Celsius), and all I was wearing was combat fatigues and a
Norwegian shirt underneath. I froze for two hours waiting to move up,
then for most of the rest of the day I was horribly hot because we
were skirmishing back and forth through Imber Village.

Where does that heat go in mil-spec armour? Or security grade, for that
matter? I've seen people pass out from heat exhaustion just marching in
NBC suits, let alone trying to fight. That's just one of the many, many
systems that can go horribly wrong. Internal atmosphere? Vision amplifier
subsystem? Perhaps the comms gear malfunctions and delivers 130dB of
white noise to your left ear, defying all attempts at repair. Where do
you get spare parts?

The classic was a sec-guard in military armour chasing Lynch into a
Barrens slum. On the seventh floor, Lynch jumped the guard with a
roundhouse kick and knocked him flat on his ass: in fact the guy fell off the
stairs and landed on the wooden floor. The century-old wooden floor. Wearing
mil-spec armour.

CRUNCHaaaaghCRUNCHaaaaghSMASHaaaaghCRUNCHaaaaghSMASHaaaaghSPLAAAAT!

When the players want something they shouldn't have, let them have it.
Then make it really hard for them to get rid of it :-)

--
When you have shot and killed a man, you have defined your attitude towards
him. You have offered a definite answer to a definite problem. For better
or for worse, you have acted decisively.
In fact, the next move is up to him.

Paul J. Adam paul@********.demon.co.uk