Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:they appear to have a second joint lower down with canine-like foot articulation (looking at page 67 of Phase World).
in CB1/r, the picture of the three Canine races shows that both Wolfen and Kankoran, at least, have a knee that bends like a human, and then a reverse-join lower down above their foot/paw. (page 77 of CB1r, not sure on CB1).
The Kankoran, especially, has a very pronounced second joint.
Pretty sure those are just ankles and they have very big feet and walk on their forefoots (heels raised) like wolves in the wild do. I sometimes walk around this way too, great exercise for the calves/soleus muscle endurance, helps stretch out your toe flexors by hyperextending them.
Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:In the real world, humans are the only form you have to account for, and we dont build millions upon millions of a particular vehicle.
So, yeah, they dont build a bigger version of the F-16 (or F-35, or F-22, whatever) to suit bigger guys or smaller guys, because, AT BEST, we're producing a few thousand of those vehicles (in the modern era, not even that many - usually a few hundred OR LESS), and it would cost tens of millions or even hundreds of millions to build a variant that is just a little bigger.
This is not the case in Phase World (or even Rifts Earth, though it IS kinda pointed out in NG1/2 (whichever one has Power Armor) that Power-Armor for non-human-shapes is not common, has to be custom ordered, and is stupid expensive; that's the reason the whole Dog Boy Power Armor was created in the first place!).
The CCW has TRILLIONS of sentients. Four of those races make up over FOURTY PERCENT of their population, and one of them (the Wolfen) are extremely likely to enter the military and are noted as pursuing military careers in excess of their population numbers (not that that is small - well over 10% of the entire CCW is Wolfen).
There's plenty of roles for the Wolfen to serve in the military besides Silverhawk pilots though. Assuming it's adapted for their use on a regular basis is not necessary.
Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:On top of that, a lot of these military devices/craft are produced by independent corporations that are trying to sell to the public and independent Star Nations as well! There's no way they limit themselves to "humans and very human like only!" when about 1/3 of the population of the entire 3Gs (or maybe more, im just back of the napkin mathing here) are not human shaped or sized AT ALL (Kreeghor, for instance).
Well, I'm sure that Naruni would opt to customize their suits for a wide variety to maximize sales, but the CCW isn't interested in maximizing sales, because the soldiers who wear them don't tend to actually buy the power armor.
I'm sure with how amazing it is, the amount of those willing to pilot it eclipse CCW resources to actually produce them, so if it would cut costs in any way to limit it to the most humanoid of humanoids, they probably would.
Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Given the population sizes involved, and the fact that most of these craft are available on the open market from the companies that make them - they HAVE to be made in variants that fit most of the major races at the very least.
Silverhawk aren't available on the open market to my knowledge. They're a specialized anti-ship armor made to jump through force fields and harass the hull, probably at an angle where many guns couldn't hit them (if we actually had some rules for that)
If you're talking about the cheaper knockoffs with less MDC which lack the disruptor/stealth systems, those might be built from scratch and have other unspecified variations from the "Statistical Data" (perhaps there are 20 ft tall knockoffs, for example) so I think I'd be fine with that, since the CCW isn't producing them.
Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:With Wolfen making up ~15-18% of the population of the 3Gs (remember that the TGE has about as many Wolfen in it as the CCW does, and even the UWW has a sizeable population of Wolfen (higher than 5% IIRC).. no way that most of the standard fighter craft and power armors dont have Wolfen variants.
Fighters are big enough that I don't think they would need much (if any) customization to allow wolfen to fit into their cockpits.
There are plenty of fighters to accomodate Wolfen, so I don't see why we'd necessarily need Silverhawk armor customized for them too.
Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Its not like the US Air Force being like "no, you have to be between size X and Y because you have to fit in the cockpit of this 100$ million dollar aircraft that we only have 200 of" (F-22). Given the size of the CAF, we'd be talking MILLIONS of suits of Silverhawk armor, with potentially a million or more (likely more) for Wolfen and Seljuk (who ALSO have the two-joint leg) alone.
Just because the CCW produces a lot of them doesn't mean they aren't expensive and they might be hesitant about wasting cost on customizing new versions of them to accomodate new CCW races.
You're talking something that goes for 3.4 million credits on the market, when a CAF Trooper makes only 24,000 credits per year. He wouldn't be able to afford one if he served 100 years in the army.
Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:So its not like the cost doesn't pay off, unlike, say, having them produce a variant of the F-22 for taller people when you have a massive pool of people that ARE the right size who are happy to fly. (I.E. you have many times more potential pilots than planes for them to fly, so you get to be picky).
What makes you think that isn't the case here too? The "power armor squadron" that accompanies a Scimitar-Class Light Patrol ship is only 10 PA, and there are 10,000 in CAF service, so that would only account for 100,000 for example, and some of those might be Ground Pounders rather than Silverhawks.
I'm not sure exactly how many humans are in the CAF, but I'm pretty sure with over a trillion humans, there's at least a billion who are the right age to fight in the military, and a million of those willing to pilot a silverhawk.
Did we maybe get clearer numbers of how much of each vehicle exist in the CAF in a later book?
Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:It DOES pay off. You're going to have to be able to fit all your major races, and THEN you look at the sub-1% of the population races and THOSE are the guys you tell "well, we'll find a place for you to serve".
Or you can just tell Wolfen to pilot the tanks they brought to the table to honor their engineer ancestors.
Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:As for fighter cockpits - most of the cockpits on the Fighters in the 3Gs have enough space for a passenger, or at the VERY least, have enough space for a decent bit of gear - im not getting the impression that Space Fighter cockpits are as cramped as modern Jet Fighter cockpits. Again, there's no way they COULD be, given that you want to market those to EVERYONE.
Cockpits are almost surely adjustable. It would be insanity for it not to be. "Nope, only human shaped, human-sized people can fly fighters"....
Just think how stupid that sounds in a setting like that.
I 100% agree with you on this.
The best example I can think of for big guys in human-intended cockpits is in Vampire Kingdoms pg 112 where a 940lb 12ft D-Bee is able to pilot an "exploration and light combat bot": the TR0992 found on RMB 215 which is 20'8" tall, 11 feet wide, 7'2" long, with room for 1 pilot, 4 passengers and 4 feet for clothing.
I think it a safe assumption that Mii-Tar the Destroyer probably engages in some Manspreading so you probably couldn't still fit the full compliment of 4 human-sized passengers, given that he probably takes up the volume of 8 humans by himself.
Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Also, can we all stop pretending like the average human is only 5 feet and the average Wolfen is obviously their max height? Srsly.
Who's doing that? I've repeatedly brought up the 7 foot minimum height of Wolfen.
That said: I don't think there's any guarantee that a Silverhawk (or a SAMAS for that matter) would necessarily accomodate a 6'6" human. Either might well be made with average/short humans in mind. We don't know since we're never given guidelines as to acceptable ranges, but we are given a fixed height for these power armors.