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Post by Big Fat Troll on Oct 16, 2018 16:28:06 GMT
The first thing that comes to mind is a heavy version of a Rhulic gun bunny, adding two arms with stocky open fists.
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Post by droopingpuppy on Oct 16, 2018 17:45:57 GMT
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boozy
Junior Strategist
Posts: 429
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Post by boozy on Oct 16, 2018 18:35:26 GMT
I think there's two main constraints on design space for a new chassis: the steam/dieselpunk narrative concept of the Iron Kingdoms, and the real world business costs. Design, production, shipping, and expected volume of sales are all important. It possible they just don't believe there's sufficient market for a new chassis, or that a new chassis fits into their design space map.
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Post by Big Fat Troll on Oct 16, 2018 18:47:39 GMT
What I have in mind would be like that only with the arms, a blockier head, and the big gun mounted on its back.
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on Oct 16, 2018 19:53:58 GMT
I'm more pissed off about how the Juggernaut chassis has like 5 jacks on it while kodiak is stuck with two. The funny part of your comment is that Kodiak is on the Juggy chassis also (at least according to the fluff pre-Kodiak plastic kit)
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Post by greytemplar on Oct 17, 2018 0:14:28 GMT
The Vulcan is still relatively humanoid. It just has tracks instead of legs, but it still has arms, a head, etc...
If you are someone designing new jack weapons, new jacks, etc... It is easier to start from an existing baseline than making it new from the ground up. If you need a Jack that does X, you'll see what you can do with existing chassis and parts. Only if you absolutely have to will you design a new chassis because that would take far longer. Its simply easier to slap a bigger hammer or that new gun you made onto an existing Jack instead of making one just for that new gun/hammer.
Advances in development tend to be cyclical. You'll have a flurry of new designs after a breakthrough, and then stuff will slow down a bit. Then another break through will happen. Rinse and repeat.
The design process for the Revelator didn't need a new chassis. It was just "We want a Colossal that uses our more advanced flame cannons!" "Ok, well swap the Rocket pods for oversized Vanquisher cannons and the flamethrowers for altered Condemner cannons!"
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Post by greytemplar on Oct 17, 2018 0:17:20 GMT
I'm more pissed off about how the Juggernaut chassis has like 5 jacks on it while kodiak is stuck with two. The funny part of your comment is that Kodiak is on the Juggy chassis also (at least according to the fluff pre-Kodiak plastic kit) It is still fluffwise a modification to a Juggernaut to accept the new heavy boiler. Which was the justification behind it having pathfinder and being able to go faster.
To use a real world example, its like when the Abrams tanks had their older model engines swapped out for newer ones to improve their speed.
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Post by Gamingdevil on Oct 17, 2018 6:31:57 GMT
Advances in development tend to be cyclical. You'll have a flurry of new designs after a breakthrough, and then stuff will slow down a bit. Then another break through will happen. Rinse and repeat. Innovation in the Iron Kingdoms is also extremely slow. It's extremely common for jacks in the fluff to be commissioned for over a 100 years, even for the "current" chassis. There is no need for innovation it seems, as for some reason there's not that much of an arms race going on, except with the colossals.
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leander
Junior Strategist
Posts: 185
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Post by leander on Oct 17, 2018 6:52:20 GMT
I've said this before but I'd love to see 4 legged Jacks that behave akin to wardogs. Instead of cortexes these could be wardog brains that were extracted from dying wardogs, instead of being put down they would be given a second a chance at serving the motherland. I could see Zerkova and the greylord covenant experimenting with something like this. The innovation reasoning would be pretty much this: - Not enough cortexes, we have MOW but they're not comparable to warjacks yet. - The greylord covenant (especially Zerkova) wouldn't hesitate to experiment with souls/brains if nothing else to further their Orgothian Research.
- Using dogs brains/souls to power up jacks, if it does work the chassis of these prototypes would have to accomodate for their bodies (perhaps they noticed that a warjack with a dog's soul tried to walk on its four limbs and it kept stumbling over, and so they constructed a four legged chassis to better fit their movements).
Imagine a hybrid of these:
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Post by Soul Samurai on Oct 17, 2018 9:54:45 GMT
I think you would still need a cortex even with a brain; if you recall the fluff where Strakhov is putting together a jack chassis for Karchev so they can escape from the Cryx, there's a scene where he picks from two cortices to be used for the chassis.
I suppose it's possible that it was just for use until they could plug Karchev in? After all he doesn't have cortex-boxes in-game, but of course rules are not equal to fluff and it wouldn't really make sense to give him cortex boxes when he doesn't allocate focus to himself.
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leander
Junior Strategist
Posts: 185
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Post by leander on Oct 17, 2018 10:51:05 GMT
I think you would still need a cortex even with a brain; if you recall the fluff where Strakhov is putting together a jack chassis for Karchev so they can escape from the Cryx, there's a scene where he picks from two cortices to be used for the chassis. I suppose it's possible that it was just for use until they could plug Karchev in? After all he doesn't have cortex-boxes in-game, but of course rules are not equal to fluff and it wouldn't really make sense to give him cortex boxes when he doesn't allocate focus to himself. i guess the mechanism that allowed karchev to power up the jack was pretty damaged, i'm guessing karchev was controlling his body akin to a normal warcaster, by bonding with the jack and giving it commands, basically at that point it was a jack with its warcaster inside not a caster linked to a warjack body like how it usually is for karchev. there was also that ikrpg module where a character does integrate himself into a warjack body, can't remember if his body needed a cortex though.
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Post by borderprince on Oct 17, 2018 10:53:13 GMT
I've said this before but I'd love to see 4 legged Jacks that behave akin to wardogs. Instead of cortexes these could be wardog brains that were extracted from dying wardogs, instead of being put down they would be given a second a chance at serving the motherland. I could see Zerkova and the greylord covenant experimenting with something like this. The innovation reasoning would be pretty much this: - Not enough cortexes, we have MOW but they're not comparable to warjacks yet. - The greylord covenant (especially Zerkova) wouldn't hesitate to experiment with souls/brains if nothing else to further their Orgothian Research.
- Using dogs brains/souls to power up jacks, if it does work the chassis of these prototypes would have to accomodate for their bodies (perhaps they noticed that a warjack with a dog's soul tried to walk on its four limbs and it kept stumbling over, and so they constructed a four legged chassis to better fit their movements).There was/is an IKRPG adventure which involved someone trying to put a soul into a warjack. It worked, more or less, and did involve a rogue Greylord. So there might be something there. But it seems to be unscientific and more or less pot luck - after all, this is a process that took Cryx and the Convergence quite some time and effort to get right. Also focused on the soul, and we don't know if animals have souls in the setting (and all kinds of difficult questions of whether putting the soul of a predator into a warjack might be a genuine or PR issue with the relationship to the Devourer). And doing this overtly would run up against the popular and religious disapproval of necromancy - doesn't mean the Greylords wouldn't do it (I'm sure there is someone there who does things just for the SCIENCE!), but it might well have to stay as a secret project, rather than part of the Khadoran military generally.
Putting brains into a jack body might be even harder. We've never had it really explained, but Karchev does at least have some body parts remaining which might be relevant - you could see the bpdy as more of a prosthesis. Just a brain would be different. Karchev also appears to be very unusual - there is older fluff of him seeming to survive outside of his life support apparatus for longer than should be possible, suggesting his survival (and perhaps use of the jack body) are tied to his arcane abilities rather than the simple science of it.
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Post by onijet01 on Oct 17, 2018 11:07:18 GMT
Chasis design is also slow due to 3 things.
1. Cortex- if memory serves these are made of extremely rare metals, minerals, and magics. This is the main reason jack chasis stay for so long as new chasis need a new cortex.
2. Machanicaly (both fiction and real life) a bipedal, self stabilizing, reactive system is incredibly hard to construct maintain and build.
3. The biggest reason. No need to upgrade or construct a new chasis is the old ones perform well. (In the Iorn kingdom story new creations were formed across factions in response to being blind sided by a far supperior opponent)
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leander
Junior Strategist
Posts: 185
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Post by leander on Oct 17, 2018 12:51:08 GMT
Putting brains into a jack body might be even harder. We've never had it really explained, but Karchev does at least have some body parts remaining which might be relevant - you could see the bpdy as more of a prosthesis. Just a brain would be different. Karchev also appears to be very unusual - there is older fluff of him seeming to survive outside of his life support apparatus for longer than should be possible, suggesting his survival (and perhaps use of the jack body) are tied to his arcane abilities rather than the simple science of it.
I kinda imagine the greylord covenant would go directly to the empress if they succeeded with such a procedure and she'd (even though she's a morrowan, she's very pragmatic) make it so these 4 legged jacks "cortexes" would be a national secret, in order to keep the general populace focused on what she deems important. As far as the army is concerned, these things have cutting edge technology inside them. But hey I'm just trying to come up with lore friendly reasons that can justify a 4 legged lightjack chassis.
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Post by Korianneder on Oct 17, 2018 13:44:49 GMT
Putting brains into a jack body might be even harder. We've never had it really explained, but Karchev does at least have some body parts remaining which might be relevant - you could see the bpdy as more of a prosthesis. Just a brain would be different. Karchev also appears to be very unusual - there is older fluff of him seeming to survive outside of his life support apparatus for longer than should be possible, suggesting his survival (and perhaps use of the jack body) are tied to his arcane abilities rather than the simple science of it.
I kinda imagine the greylord covenant would go directly to the empress if they succeeded with such a procedure and she'd (even though she's a morrowan, she's very pragmatic) make it so these 4 legged jacks "cortexes" would be a national secret, in order to keep the general populace focused on what she deems important. As far as the army is concerned, these things have cutting edge technology inside them. But hey I'm just trying to come up with lore friendly reasons that can justify a 4 legged lightjack chassis. You don't need to put a dog brain into a jack. Convergence has 4 legged lights, cryx and rhulic have kind of dog shaped lights. None of them are putting dog brains into a robot. Leave it to khador, the civilization with doom reavers, to come up with the crazy solution to a problem instead of the simple one.
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