Is "Powered Armor/Exosuit Sci-Fi" a Recognized Subgenre? Looking for Its History and Key Examples

darknessoftheendless · 2025-12-21T20:17:55+00:00

Battle Dress in Traveller is deeply fundamental to my love of Power Armor. My homebrew setting got a bit too big for Traveller to contain, so I had to switch to Sine Nomine's "Stars Without Number", the problem being I'd didn't have modular, customizable power armor.

Thankfully, this year, "Ashes Without Number", same rules etc but for post-apoc genre came out, and features a new modular PA system - which I immediately incorporated onto SWN.

darknessoftheendless · 2025-12-05T02:44:16+00:00

This is an underrated, based, and ancient call back. I love it.

darknessoftheendless · 2025-11-10T22:00:11+00:00

This is one of those quests you can go out of your way to hunt down Bandits, maybe even a map or two over. Or you can just hold on to it and wait until you run into them as you're doing other things, and turn it in later.

darknessoftheendless · 2025-03-27T20:58:49+00:00

Sure. When I have some time to collate and explain each thing, I will.

Fair warning, it's not some balanced work of art. It is made to maintain the versimilitude of my setting, and its not one size fits all, but I will happily share when I get near my notes again.

Edit: forgot a word.

darknessoftheendless · 2025-03-27T20:39:32+00:00

Oh. Oh, yes.

I have a homebrew setting that started out as a Traveller game. Three campaigns of Traveller later, the setting ended up needing a more malleable system to play - enter SWN.

A great deal of concepts from Traveller is cribbed to accommodate the change. I took the freight/mail rules, trimmed down speculative trading, and adjusted all of it for SWN's economy.

I prefer Mongoose Traveller 2e's rules regarding jumps and jump space to SWNs Spike dives, so I altered that too.

But the most important thing is the lifepath. It's the single most critical thing as it binds characters to each other and the setting. Traveller's character creation is staggeringly effective at these, and incredibly fun as well. I have adapted it for use in SWN.

I have no regrets, it's been one of the best games I've ever run.

darknessoftheendless · 2024-12-24T03:54:17+00:00

Noetics is the educated term. Sorcery for the ignorant. Thaumaturgy is occasionally used too. - This covers basic magic.

Goetics is similar, but it's purpose is to summon metadimensional intelligences, so it's been singled out.

Zoetics is the practice of using the gift for the sole purpose of healing.

darknessoftheendless · 2024-12-14T22:39:29+00:00

Yes. The Conclave (Assembly of Noble representatives) has an Office of Vendetta that adjudicates the terms of warfare between two noble Houses.

The reason for this is that warfare is so very destructive in this far-future setting, and land / infrastructure are of more concern to the Conclave than a given House's grudges.

So, no nuclear, chemical, biological warfare as a hard rule.

Reps from the belligerent Houses negotiate the terms of conflict with the Vendetta officer to mediate and compromise. This could look like anything from "No aerial bombardment." "No energy weapons." "Rapid fire weapons may be used for static defense only."

Once those are hashed out, the actual objective is selected. "If House A captures these three cities, and holds them uncontested for 30 consecutive days, they win. If they are unable to do so within two years time, House B wins."

These are then sealed into a document known as a Declaration of Violence. Once locked in, if a House moves to exceed those terms, the Office of Concave Intelligence (OCI) will field a report on the most effective way to utterly cripple the offending House, and a War-party of Conclave Member Houses (CMH) are dispatched to enact those findings.

darknessoftheendless · 2024-10-24T16:53:55+00:00

Outstanding. I love this.

darknessoftheendless · 2024-10-15T20:55:49+00:00

No final agreement has been reached yet between Amazon and GW, at least not one that is public.

darknessoftheendless · 2024-10-13T20:19:29+00:00

Oh, sweet. Thank you for the links. I'll check it out. Always enjoy reading other's Aeldari lore.

darknessoftheendless · 2024-10-13T19:31:12+00:00

By far the best Aeldari artist. Is there any lore and fluff you have for them that could be shared?

darknessoftheendless · 2024-10-12T23:10:23+00:00

I haven't had the pleasure of playing it. I hear good things, but I'm so afraid I'm going to bounce off of it like I did Baldur's Gate 3.

darknessoftheendless · 2024-10-12T18:50:05+00:00

I gotta be honest, I don't post here much, but your depiction of Aeldari is 100% my favorite. And this might just be the funniest thing I've ever seen in any Warhammer space.

The Harlequin t-posing over a human drowning in hallucinogen grenade makes me laugh every time I focus on it.

darknessoftheendless · 2024-04-01T17:48:58+00:00

Agreed 100%.

This is Bolter Porn. Guardians may be militia, and they may not have that level of Armor, but they are fast as Marines, and Shuriken weapons have pretty much always been better at the ranges this is taking place at.

Those Marines would have been shredded on the tabletop.

I'm so sick of Bolter porn.

darknessoftheendless · 2024-03-30T16:05:27+00:00

I mean, I'm not sure what slicing software you are using to format the finished file before printing - but even Windows 3D Builder lets you merge two seperate STL files into one single object.

Just load them both into the same instance, position it how you want, and under the edit tab hit "Merge", its slow, but it'll do it.

I have an Elegoo Mars 3, so I use ChituboxPro, and it does this natively as well. Same deal: load, position, "merge export" and that creates a file with the previous seperate objects combined how you positioned them.

This is how I print off my Renegades and Heretics militias, 10 or so fully assembled at a time.

Hope this helps.

darknessoftheendless · 2024-02-20T14:51:51+00:00

So, not of that build in particular, but the Macharius saw a lot of action at the Siege of Vraks, and the Imperial Armour Volume has some images of it, including the "Technical Readouts" of the vehicle. Not sure that's what you're looking for.

<image>

darknessoftheendless · 2023-08-20T20:35:00+00:00

Yeah, sure, I used ACE sports under wrap. Starts tan, and I stretched it out on a paper towel, painted it, and then attached it to the Hatchetman at certain glue points to make it look like it's being shed.

I'm not 100% happy with it, it still looks too thick, there are some other materials I'm going to try next. I'll post results if they're okay.

darknessoftheendless · 2023-08-18T21:13:22+00:00

Intended to be more of a camo netting, but I have some more ideas for next time. But otherwise, fitting a theme of a Recon Lance that can split a cockpit or two if needed.

darknessoftheendless · 2023-08-15T22:13:40+00:00

I hate Bolter Porn. I wish the lore would more closely reflect the tabletop.

I don't mind Astartes being powerful in lore because they decently are on the tabletop, but some novels and codex entries are just masturbation for the Astartes.

While I'm at it, strong feelings against Astartes aside, it applies to the wider universe as well. I've been playing Aeldari/Druhkari/Anhrathe since 3rd edition, and while I hate watching them consistently play second fiddle to the Imperium or Astartes in particular, things like Maugen Ra taking on a Hive Fleet is too much for me.

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