[TML] 20mm cannons and bulky aliens

[Joseph Paul]

 >-----Original Message-----
 >From: tml-bounces at travellercentral.com
 >[mailto:tml-bounces at travellercentral.com]On Behalf Of Brad Murray
 >Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 9:57 PM
 >To: The Traveller Mailing List
 >Subject: Re: [TML] 20mm cannons and bulky aliens
 >
 >
 >On Jan 22, 2008 3:19 PM, Joseph Paul <josephnjody at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
 >> That is not entirely true. The 'rhino' represents a larger than human
 >> opponenet. The combat suit is proportionately upgraded in
 >protective value
 >> because the opponent has the capability to carry more armor.
 >
 >Does it?  As I understand it the proportional capacity to carry
 >doesn't scale linearly with mass, so in fact a larger creature may not
 >be able to carry as much armour per unit surface area as a smaller
 >animal (that is, while it would carry more armour, the thickness of
 >that armour might be less).  I would expect smaller animals to be able
 >to wear thicker armour and not the reverse (though as you scale down
 >you run into simple problems of mobility as thickness gets closer to
 >length between joints -- here the larger animals have mechanical
 >advantage).
 >
 >--
 >Brad Murray (halfjack)

Carrying capacity is also influenced by shape. We are not very well suited
to carry much at all. Four footed creatures are often better at it. I can't
find anything on rhinos as they haven't taken to domestication well enough
to measure a carrying capacity. I have a reference for Indian elephants at
545kilos but I think that is very conservative. The surface area of an
Indian elephant is 20 meters square found here:
http://idiosynchrony.wordpress.com/2007/11/15/a-half-wet-elephant/  That is
27 kilos of armor per meter square. Anybody got some ideas on how much armor
that is in CT/MT/G:T terms? Humans have about 1.8 meters of surface area and
60 lbs (27.2 kilo) is about the max we can carry for armor without serious
degradation of performance. That comes out to about 15 kilos per m^2. So in
this case the big animal gets an edge it looks like.

Joseph Paul