Soft armor and hard armor

Aug 14, 2016
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#1
I was talking with a friend about robots and androids when we drifted onto the topic of the different advantages that soft armor and hard armor have over each other. And after we was done I kept thinking about the real life advancements we are making toward creating soft robotics and soft cybernetics. And then I thought about Em-8er and how it would be likely that a few models of omniframes and thumpers would be made with soft armor rather than hard armor just because they meant to be give better protection against different things, like explosions and blunt force.

So I was thinking could anyone come up with designed for omniframes and thumpers that would use mostly soft armor? Because at the moment I can imagine why they would exist for practical reasons, but for some reason not on how they might look.

P.S. for the people who don't know. This is an example of soft armor.
 
Aug 14, 2016
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#3
Yes, I get that. I was thinking more about the use of soft parts and soft armor for the omniframes and thumpers themselves. As in rather than the body of the mecha being made of things like rigid sheets of metal it is made of flexible soft things. Think like how in some sci-fi you can't tell the difference between a normal human and an android made with soft parts because look and feel like human would. Or a mecha that has armor made out of things like rubber and plastics able to take a lot of damage because it is soft and redirect most of the forces aimed at it.

 
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Pandagnome

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#4
It could be that heavier units could use more tougher materials in relation to softer materials
compared to a lighter frame

What if you could control the level of soft and tough some will be more suited to one or the other while some may use both in different ratio perhaps.

E.g

- Soft
Medical, construction, pets, G-suit

- soft - tough
Mek, vehicle, G-suit Mk II

- tough
Defense, walls, armor
 
Aug 14, 2016
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#5
I can see that happening. Plus there is the idea of things like inflatable space stations which would need soft armor to protect itself from space debris and things like micrometeorites (remember a good number of those space rocks are traveling around many times faster than that of the speed of high powered rifle rounds). Most things that go into space that have humans in them by default needs enough armor to stop the natural bullets nature is throwing around in space all the time.

Also, I did think of one good way soft armor has an advantage over hard armor in combat. It is has to do with a trick some of us use to break out of holds / grabs. You pump yourself up to make yourself large enough to break the hold. Or you make yourself smaller to slip out of the hold before the enemy notices. Or you do both. In humans all we do is take a deep breath and tends up our muscles to get bigger or breath out while relaxing muscles to get smaller. The size change may not be that noticeable to most people, but if you act fast enough it is all you need to break free of a good number of holds in a fight.

If the aliens could do things like grab attacks having soft armor able to let your mecha change size could stop them from getting a hold on you. Allowing you to counter them or escape really easy.
 
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Aug 14, 2016
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#7
I have no problem with that. Although I still think it is kind of fun to try and think about ways of how such omniframes and thumpers might look. For example bomb suits are mostly soft armor to protect the tactician trying to disarm bombs from blast. So there might be some thumpers out there that look bulky and fat like a person in a bomb suit only because that model of thumper was designed to drill in unstable places with lots of things like gas pockets underground. Or an omniframe designed for exploring cave systems using soft armor to help it squeeze into places normal omniframes can't.

Also funny idea, but omniframes and thumpers that can use things like pneumatic parts to change the shape of their armor could pump themselves up enough to do things like float on water. Might be useful given how most people do tend to build town and cities near large bodies of water.