Chapter 1, Page 15
VX-II Power Suit (Specifications)
Type: Power Suit (offensive terrain combat / advanced bipedal unit)
Designer: Horizon Global Solutions
Production: Prototype phase (model II)
Unit cost: 87 million (projected)
Weight: 3,234kg (fully-loaded with operator)
Height, Width: CLASSIFIED (final specs TBD during model III development)
Crew: 1 operator
Armor: Taktus-7 explosive reactive armor
Main armament: Gatling-type cannon (cyclic multi-barreled design)
Ammunition: 20mm (4,000 rounds with back-mounted support magazine / 8,000 with optional “full blitz” magazine)
Fire rate: 1,600 rounds per minute
Secondary armament: CLASSIFIED
Operational range speed: CLASSIFIED
Additional specifications: CLASSIFIED
Danger Zone One. Story by Midnight. Art by Katsu.
20 rounds standard? That’ll last a couple of seconds with a Gatling gun’s typical rate of fire. And high rate of fire is the Gatling’s raison d’etre.
Funny enough, I initially switched that ammunition rate several times before settling on, likely, my worst choice. You’re absolutely right, complete brain fart on my part. Swapped it to a more believable amount and also added specs for the round per minute fire rate.
Your typical Gatling will pump out 4-6,000 rpm. The usual choice for a gat is that at that rate a malfunctioning round is automatically ejected along with the spent rounds. Another consideration is barrel cooling, and an all-terrain powersuit needs to keep the overall weight low because of ground pressure considerations, so the barrels, as well as the receiver, need to be as light as possible.
1600 rpm of 20mm is still very impressive, being 3-4 times the rate of fire of a typical man portable machine gun of medium caliber and of course it probably uses either explosive or discarding sabot ammo.
As both Infantryman and Tanker in my former life, I would have to ask what the weak spots on the thing were before engaging. I suspect I’d have only one crack at the thing.
Addendum. 60t is the weight of an M60 tank. It would be useless in a built-up environment because it would crush a staircase instead of climbing it, and it might well pull down a building by trying to climb the outside girders.
Heh. That’s sort of what my brother tripped himself up with in his “Honor Harrington” books – his original dimensions and numbers meant that, either the biggest ships in the RMN were somewhat less dense than air, or the smaller ones were maybe more dense than neutronium…
@Sheik Thanks for the fantastic comment and info! I’m thrilled that people are actually reading the extra backstory segments beneath the comic.
This also taught me a valuable lesson…I need to do more research when it comes to weapon specs! I went ahead and scaled back the power suit’s weight way down. A power suit that’s too heavy is definitely a major design problem. Though even with the new specs, stairs may prove troublesome. I’m roughly basing the updated weight on something similar to the given stats of ED-209 from RoboCop.
@Fairportfan It can be tricky business, especially when coming up with dimensions/numbers for fictional ships or weapons. I know there are writers who get heavy into the tech aspects, which never ceases to amaze me.
Hmmm. I mentioned moire in the art last week? It turns out that i only see that at my screen’s standard resolution – if i zoom in in the browser to 200%, it disappears.
Regarding the moire, I too noticed a strange thing yesterday when I looked at the comic on a friend’s laptop screen. The toning had a different look than what I see on my current monitor. Screen resolution has a major effect it seems.
Call Tony Stark…I bet he could send someone to help.
🙂
I’m reminded of the second episode of GitS:SAC. Too bad they don’t have Chief Aramaki to go to bat for them, that would end the corporate bureaucracy problem real quick.
Shouldn’t the description for the gatling-type cannon be “cyclic multi-barreled cannon,” not “cyclic mutli-barreled cannon?”
Thanks for catching that!