super soldier terran marine

[solidsamurai]

I doubt the stealth is any good. You're lumbering around in a piece of heavy metal armor that makes you a foot taller. The only thing stealth does is make you clank less. If you didn't wear the armor, you'd actually be stealthier, I think.

I agree with this. They mentioned silenced foot falls however (utterly impossible by any notion of physics, given the weight of power armor), but I'd consider that an expensive custom fitting.

The ghost armor might have silenced foot falls though.

Said marine still got a zergling skewering him from behind. (That happened so many times, either zerg are super-strong, or CMC armor is made of tissue paper.) Infra-red goggles are really old tech; it's easy to bypass those.

Eh... I'd say zerg are super strong. Why would marines have paper-thin armor that's incredibly bulky. Suspension of disbelief is slightly lain askew at that, unless you denounce the entire thing as shoddy manga, and that would piss at least a few fans.

It's simple really. Hydralisks have 680-something muscles. Zerglings (at least with adrenal glands and metabollic boost) are super fast, and it can only be assumed that they are incredibly strong. It takes strength to be that fast - it takes energy to bite through all the layers of a siege tank that quickly (3 lings with adrenal glands can knock through a tank amazingly quickly... like 1.5 seconds in brood war - that's insane - it's like they probably burrow through the hull, burrow through metal).

It's basically the level of aliens, except include only the alien jaws and not the acid blood, but it make it about 20 times stronger and faster, and more horrifying. A hydralisk would pick a bone clean, but a zergling would be the one to rip and rend off huge chunks. Or suicidally dive into a body. Zerglings have very powerful pounces - their talons are designed to act like spears when they pounce.

So yeah, a talon could stab through CMC armor, which is mostly designed to maybe REACT to ballistic force in a small surface area (resists 'small arms fire', so maybe anything 10mm or below, non-gauss), rather than a larger one like a flexible, probing, zergling spear. o.0

The only way marines can avoid death is actually noticing the zergling charging in a straight line. Which is avoidable. The whole 'detecting movement!' line and then immediately followed by the zergling impaling the guy in the back before he can even turn around in the direction of the movement (and there's no real guestimate of how fast CMC armor lets a pilot turn), implies that the critters are quite fast.

Hydralisks are also strong and quite fast (implied by the amerigo cinematic where the beer chugging marine gets Eli Roth faced in half of a half second, mid-chug), but much of their strength lies in how co-ordinated they are. So they can skin somebody in a matter of moments. Because everyone was obsessed with predator back then.
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Another idea could be that the armor is just ablative. So shooting it with a bow and arrow chips off chunks of it and eventually renders the suit much less protective as anything but soft armor. Which would be silly, since it's supposed to be a space suit - so it's easier to imagine a harder casing and then assume that terran structures instead use multiple layers and types of armor (ablative included), because they can afford it.

I'm gonna move what I wrote here over into my other thread.

[phazonjunkie]

It takes strength to be that fast - it takes energy to bite through all the layers of a siege tank that quickly (3 lings with adrenal glands can knock through a tank amazingly quickly... like 1.5 seconds in brood war - that's insane - it's like they probably burrow through the hull, burrow through metal).

Stop equating gameplay with lore!
By that same logic a squad of marines would actually be able to take down battlecruiser or a Carrier all by themselves. In real life that would be the equivalent of a platoon on a beach head sinking an aircraft carrier offshore with nothing more than their standard issue assault rifles.

[solidsamurai]

Marines are equiped with gauss rifles, which are anti-material. It's um... it's gauss. 8mm at mach 10. That will go through steel, no matter what your mom says. And then it gets fired at about 30 spikes per second. Each spike stays straight in flight. That will create an ocean of ripples and snakey tunnels in a block of steel - which compensates the entire structural integrity of a hull.

Terran vehicle armor is ablative, meaning it strips off with each hit. This includes battlecruisers built at a ground base (how can a single star port field a ship? No, it has to use vehicle armor and then alter it slightly with whatever equipment is on hand to make it flight ready).

Carriers have shitty armor (quite simply; it's just your typical flexible alloy) - the protoss use the same machines to kill and conquer, that they have for the past 1000 years or so (it's in the lore). It's kinda like the protoss discovered the 'steel' of their world many years ago, and just kept using that. Maybe resource difficulties on their own planet are why they have resorted to warping pre-made structures. The evidence is also in photon cannons (weakest turret in the game, hp-wise).

Also, battlecruisers have to fly low for their lasers to have effect. Lasers are short range, because it takes a HECK OF A LOT of energy for a laser to travel farther, instead of making it more powerful at shorter range. That's real life physics. Don't trust blizz to quote me on that though - they'll probably trip over themselves.

Alternately, it's laser-guided plasma (doesn't exist in real life; so can be believably fudged), but the tech isn't enough to fire beyond 500 - 1000 meters (the fudge). Also, the plasma is thinner so that it travels faster and penetrates more (another fudge).

The other plasma is the 'torpedos' which were the fatter, much more anti-infantry sort in starcraft 2.

In real life that would be the equivalent of a platoon on a beach head sinking an aircraft carrier offshore with nothing more than their standard issue assault rifles.

Or the same as using heavy mortars to sink an aircraft carrier that is retardedly stupid in heading that close to shore. For the record, carriers in starcraft have enough range to exploit it against any number of marines.

Battlecruisers don't because they are battlecruisers with nothing but lasers and a yamato canyon and probably a liberal crew. Not carriers. So comparing it to an aircraft carrier is silly.

[phazonjunkie]

Marines are equiped with gauss rifles, which are anti-material. It's um... it's gauss. 8mm at mach 10.

Mach 10? Who's ass did you pull that number from? All the manual says are that c-14 gauss rifles fire at hypersonic velocities, which simply means mach 5 and above.
It would be far more realistic, in terms of weight, power requirements, and from what we've already seen the rifles to be capable of thus far, to simply assume the velocity to be towards the lower end.

What you've said regarding ablative armor seems reasonable though. I won't argue with you on that point.

[solidsamurai]

Who's ass did you pull that number from? All the manual says are that c-14 gauss rifles fire at hypersonic velocities, which simply means mach 5 and above.

Still pretty high (and still enough to create steel/aluminum ripples I'd say). I get the impression that marines are the 'kill all' versatility of the terran. Why use them so much in the games? For the hell of it?

It would be far more realistic, in terms of weight, power requirements, and from what we've already seen the rifles to be capable of thus far, to simply assume the velocity to be towards the lower end.

Um... no. It's 500 years in the future. Also, the power is commonly thought to be both chemical and electrical (chemical combustion of the casing, combined with EM acceleration down the barrel). This works out just fine, unless the energy needed to accelerate something that's already at very high velocity is exponentially greater.

[phazonjunkie]

Um... no. It's 500 years in the future. Also, the power is commonly thought to be both chemical and electrical (chemical combustion of the casing, combined with EM acceleration down the barrel). This works out just fine, unless the energy needed to accelerate something that's already at very high velocity is exponentially greater.

Were that the case, they would be doing a whole lot more damage than what they are depicted as doing, both in cinematics as well as supplementary EU material. But what we have seen is really nothing that a modern day .50 cal heavy machine gun wouldn't be capable of.

I think your confusing a gauss rifle with a railgun. They both operate on similar principles, but that's where it ends. One is a man portable infantry weapon, the other is artillery.

[solidsamurai]

Were that the case, they would be doing a whole lot more damage than what they are depicted as doing, both in cinematics as well as supplementary EU material. But what we have seen is really nothing that a modern day .50 cal heavy machine gun wouldn't be capable of.

I think your confusing a gauss rifle with a railgun. They both operate on similar principles, but that's where it ends. One is a man portable infantry weapon, the other is artillery.

Um... whatever. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how armor might work in the starcraft world and how speed of a weapon's projectile doesn't necessitate greater damage despite greater kinetic energy..

I think your confusing a gauss rifle with a railgun. They both operate on similar principles, but that's where it ends. One is a man portable infantry weapon, the other is artillery.

Who's ass you pull that from? *burp*