Power Armor, and the Lack Thereof

There are numerous instances of power armor in SW, such as crushgaunts, spacetrooper armor and Mohc's Dark Trooper suit. But why not more? Why don't RC's, who already have a shavitload of money poured into their equipment, training, and genes, have armor that lets them throw around landspeeders, or even just genetically engineered strength? Why didn't the NR or GA equip their elite with fully-sealed armored suits that give them the power of a cyborg Hercules?

 

I'd hazard a guess that in the case of the RCs, Palpatine might not have wanted them to get too out of hand - the effectiveness of obedience conditioning being (admittedly rarely) variable (moreso in clones such as the RCs, ARCs and other clones closer to "pure Jango").

The NR ... between stamping out/exiling the leftover Imperial warlords, and later dealing with various degrees of political inanity (glares at Borsk, Pwoe and co.), might have had to focus on "basic" military gear, instead of experimental programs such as power armor.

And the GA is such an amalgamation of differing political systems - the former NR representative democracy, the authoritarian IR, and the matriarchal nobility of the Hapes Consortium - that there may have been political pressure to avoid creating power armor or other enhanced-tech weapons systems, so nobody got an "unfair" advantage.

That, and the Jedi are supposed to be the super-soldiers, seems to be Del Rey's line AFA the NJO onward.

Not that, oh, the Myrkr strike team couldn't have benefitted from some better power armor, a few flamers, some plasma rifles ...

(And there's a possible comparison to be made between the fanaticism of the Space Marines AFA their Emperor, and the Jedi hyperfocus on the Force ... but that's probably off-topic.)

 

That makes sense, given the number of defections in the RC novels. On the flipside, if power armor could be made compact enough and flexible enough that their movement was unimpeded, RCs might have been more effective against Jedi, and certainly more effective against Rebels and other such scantily equipped criminals.

Again, makes sense. In such an environment, the Hapans and similar groups wouldn't want to research power armor on their own, either, for fear of being accused of preparing for war or starting an arms race.

Actually, in the case of Jedi power armor would probably be more of a hinderance than an asset. Given their already augmented agility, speed, and strenght, any sort of rigid or heavy armor would just hamper their movements. Something flexible and light, however, would have helped immensely, with maybe a rigid vest.

Ther is indeed a strong resemblance between the two, especially in the case of Librarians. There's a surprising similarity between the SW and Warhammer franchises. Warhammer is basically Star Wars with the GRIMDARK dialed to eleven.

 

I usually put things like this down to cost. That's usually the explanation for why the Empire didn't just replace all its TIE Interceptors with Defenders, or a fleet of Executors. When you have millions and millions of stormtroopers, I guess even Palpatine had to draw the budgetary like somewhere.

If 99.99% of the population of the Galaxy couldn't hope to afford this kind of super advance technology, I figure the Empire just didn't see the need to fit out all its troops with the stuff, as stormtroopers were good enough at their job the way they were. Basically the same reason as why they initially used thousands of cruddy TIE Fighters, preferring to rely on cheap swarms of cannon fodder to overwhelm, as opposed to expensive wings of TIE Advanceds.

It might, perhaps, be interesting to see the odd super soldier bolstering the ranks of the mega rich like Xizor, maybe. Of course, as far as the Empire itself went, they did have Dark Troopers, which I imagine the Phase III ones would have been seriously nasty had they ever completed the program and built more than just one prototype.

 

I agree. Powered amor must be expensive. When they finally had one model (DarkTrooper were said to have a suit variant) they obviously decided that a droid was a better fit. Usual troops come in masses. And 5.000 men are probably more effective than five powered-men who can nevertheless only be in five places.

Jedi Academy had Powered Stormtroopers, by the way. Quite powerful. But slow and vulnerable to things they couldn´t dodge.

 

Hm, yeah, cost is probably the main reason. Sure, crushgaunts are good, but I think Han mentioned that they were hard to find, and rare, even for Mandalorians, or something like that. Han got a brand new set of crushgaunts because Boba Fett is a jerk. Also, considering most battles these days are gun battles, involving blasters and people shooting at each other... who needs powered armor? Sure, the Dark Trooper was very powerful, but then again, that was a droid. There's also the fact that Palpatine probably doesn't want his troops to be too powerful, whenever some admiral tries out the warlord thing. And the New Republic doesn't want to be the kind of tyrannical power that had stormtroopers.

And then there's always the trade-off of speed for power, which would then require a lot of defenses. Heck, just making war droids might be easier. And the Jedi can usually match most opponents relatively easily, even without too much armor. Though even the Myrkr strike team had a lot of gadgets. Lando, on the other hand, just produced his own personal army of high-quality war droids, which sort of counts. Though I sometimes wish Lando would build enough YVH droids to take over the galaxy. He couldn't be worse than the current ruler.

 

I remain perplexed as to why Darth Vader - formerly Anakin Skywalker, mechanical wizkid - never went all Tony Stark on his suit. Well, okay, I'm not wholly perplexed, I've got a rationale that I think would suit Vader (ba dum dum tsch) but still... Iron Vader would have been great.

 

Someone needs to Infinitise that.

 

He might've thought about it, but getting the kind of components (read: madly expensive) and such he likely would have needed would have garnered Palpatine's attention. The Dark Side should be all Vader needs to dominate, and if he "cheats" by turning himself into some pseudo-Mandalorian armored powerhouse, it kind of defeats the purpose of the Sith philosophy.

But really, as noted the reason there aren't a bunch of "Iron Man" style supertroopers running around the SW galaxy is because the Jedi/Sith are supposed to be the "superheroes" of the setting.

 

You're assuming a lot when you claim that such a thing might be possible. I know Star Wars technology spends most of its time outside the possible but that doesn't mean that they can do anything scientifically impossible.

 

*ahem*

[image=http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/5/51/CloneBlazeTrooper.JPG]

 

Yeah, that's pretty much the aforementioned rationale I go with.

Still... I'm with Zor on wanting an Infinities take on that.

 

Or http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Spacetrooper

There's no evidence that Blaze Trooper armour provides enhanced strength though.

There are Corellian Powersuits in some of the RPGs but they're quite limited.

What's the strategic value of being able to push over a tank anyway? If you're that close to an enemy tank you're either throwing mines or being run over.

 

Yes, there is: the armour's size.

For another example, the description of Mandalorian Heavy Armour's "internal stabilizers which allowed the distribution of energy throughout the frame" is quite similar to the description Rico gives of how the Mobile Infantry "apesuit" functions in Starship Troopers, though strangely enough, these seem to be more or less unheard of among contemporary Mandos, along with cybernetic augmentations.

Obviously, you can push it over, to avoid being run over.

 

Yeah, there are a few examples of mild-to-moderate powered armor that show up in the continuity, but for some reason it doesn't seem to catch on as a commonplace thing, despite the suits in question not really being prohibitively expensive (at least according to RPG costs...that I can remember).

I suspect it's also a bit of a Real World influence. Now that we're starting to see exoskeleton technology being studied for military use, authors might start to incorporate more of those ideas into the fiction...but because powered armor has already avoided being a major force/commonplace in galactic warfare up to this point, they can't really retcon it in on a wide scale without things getting really murky.

Truth be told, I dunno that I'd want to see it anyway...I don't need Stormtroopers to be WH40K Space Marines.

I suppose the lack of large-scale powered armor use will ultimately be lumped in with the wide variety of other anachronisms and nonsensical avoidance of certain demonstrated technologies that Star Wars already suffers from with the usual explanation of: "They just don't."

I guess maybe you could make some retroactive explanation that due to the Mandalorian wars and their use of "Heavy" powered armors, such items were "banned" in the Republic for a while, and once they again became legal folks were just no longer of the mindset to use them. Or something.

 

Actually, there were two kinds of power armor in academy: the slow and power hazard troopers, and the the rocket troopers, the almost as powerful and much faster flying stormtroopers.

Anyway, the RPG, or at least one of them, had power armor as it own class...but noted that a suit of power armor cost nearly as much as a starfighter.

 

Quiet_Mandalorian: The stat block for the blaze trooper doesn't include any strength enhancement; the bulkiness of the armor is from the jet pack and the flamethrowers (and possibly thicker armor plating; it's indicated that it is fire-resistant).

I do find it surprising that - especially with a society with traditions of armor and of assimilating people from many walks of life - some kind of powered armor project was rarely pursued ...

Jose: I'd agree that there is a strong correlation between the psykers of WH40K and Force-users - most especially, IMHO, in the taint effect of misusing such powers (dark-side for Force-users, Chaos/Warp mutation for psykers).

Although we could do without Space Marines. The induction process is just ...

... actually, it's rather reminiscent of Vong shaper techniques.

 

Sure, the Dark Trooper was very powerful, but then again, that was a droid.

The Phase IIs & IIIs were designed to be able to be worn as well, IIRC.

Phase II


Phase III

 

I find that difficult to believe. There's no way something that large and bulky would not require some sort of power source to use effectively.

Sissy.

I think you're thinking of Chaos Space Marines...

 

I haven't played the game they appear in, but if they use their jetpacks all the time maybe they're not physically capable of walking. Then again, just because wearing it doesn't grant any strength advantage over someone who isn't wearing it, that doesn't mean it doesn't have servos that assist in movement.

To be honest its only slightly heavier than the environment suits in the KotOR games.

Chaos rarely create Space Marines, they turn them.

 

Again, I have to disagree. If the suit has a servo system to allow the wearer to use it with any degree of effectiveness, it's still going to end up making him stronger than the average humanoid outside of such a suit, simply through the amount of artificial muscle power necessary to heft all of that armour-plating.

The environment suits from KotOR are so clunky and awkward as to be completely useless in a fight.

My impression is that the reverse has been more common since the Horus Heresy, or has Fabius Bile's work replenishing the man-power of the Chaos Legions since been written out?

 

I haven't read any recent material but Fabius Bile never did that much anyway. He was stated to have tried to create new space marines but was never some kind of one man legion supplier. The original backstory for Chaos Space Marines is that the majority of them are the same warriors from the Horus Heresy.

 

Huh. I seem to recall he was supposed to move from one Legion to another, brewing up new Chaos SMs as needed, so that he wouldn't be seen as showing favouritism to any particular faction and thus incurring the wrath of all the others.

I know, but there can't be that many left of the original Legions, can there be? What with their repeatedly going out to get stomped on by the Imperium in this Black Crusade or that, or knocked off by plucky Inquisitors or steam-rollered by Macharius's Guardsmen (or so I've heard)...

 

I believe the original legions from which the Chaos legions were spawned were meant to be a lot, lot larger than the modern Space Marine chapters. IIRC, aren't the chapters all limited to just 1000 men each or something? In contrast, I think the Chaos legions were huge. I think the idea was meant to be they downsized the individual legions to smaller chapters so the next time a primarch (or I suppose now chapter leader) went bad, they'd only take a much smaller force with them.

My impression was generally that--despite what happens on people's tabletops-- there haven't actually been that many direct confrontations between Chaos legions and Space Marine chapters. Abaddon might launch a Black Crusade, but that a vast majority of it would involve ransacking normal everyday planets who had no Space Marines to defend them. Imperial Guard would just be crushed, and it wouldn't be until the Space Marines/Inquisitors mobilised that the Chaos forces got pushed back into the Eye of Terror, by which time they'd already have multiplied by enlisting massive new armies of cultists.

Or something. I confess, my Warhammer knowledge is not up there with my inner Star Wars geekery.

 

It doesn't make sense but that's the way it was back when I played Warhammer 40k.