Take a look at a marine (Raynor in co op is good). Look at where his head is. Now look at what shape his body would have to be to fit in the armor. That’s what nightmares are made of.
Conclusion: power armor a la Iron Man, SC, etc., is silly. It makes far more sense to have a central compartment and not form the arms and legs of the armor to the arms and legs of the user. Good examples are Hulk Buster armor, Obidiah’s armor from Iron Man 1, or Goliaths.
If you watch the opening cinematic, a marine’s arms don’t go all the way down the suit’s arms. The hands, on a large man like Tychus, end up in the wrists, while the suit’s hands are entirely robotic. Ive thought about this some, and it does end up fitting, if barely.
The hands ending in the wrists at least makes more sense than Iron Man’s armor. But look at the shoulders. No way does that fit. There isn’t enough space between someone’s arm and their ribs to fit that much armor. It’s not just a matter of the user’s arms only needing to reach to the armor’s forearm, it’s that the user’s shoulder and elbow joints matching the armor’s shoulder and elbow joints.
A marine’s shoulders aren’t in the suit’s shoulders at all. Theyre actually in the torso of the armor, as much as they can be. The shoulderpads are connected to the upper arm, which is why theres so little room between the shoulder armor and the elbow joint. The shoulderpads themselves contain storage space for communications equipment and ammo, since the suit’s backpack is its ventilation and cooling system.
If you look carefully, the entire upper arm of the suit is actually a flexible joint piece.
Wut?
The user’s arms are in the arms of the suit or they’re not. And the suit has to accommodate human anatomy. If the user’s arms are entirely in the body of the suit, that makes slightly more sense - but then the suit is probably too small.
The user’s arms are in the arms of the suit, which are significantly longer than the arms of the user. The entire upper arm of the suit is essentially its elbow joint, allowing the user’s arms to fit inside of it without snapping. The shoulderpads don’t connect to the user’s shoulders at all. If you watch during the cinematics, the marine suit’s arms bend just beneath the shoulderpiece, where the wearer’s elbow is.
TL;DR: the suit’s exterior proportions are not human proportions, specifically in the arms.
This is the most plausible take I’ve seen -
h ttps://www.stanwinstonschool.com/blog/starcraft-2-cosplay-by-michael-wiggins
Specifically the computer generated step-by-step image, third from the top. There, the user’s elbow matches the shoulder joint of the suit, which means the user’s hands are in the upper arm of the suit. That would be incredibly uncomfortable, but it at least conforms to actual human anatomy.
Edit: I didn’t understand what you were getting at, but after seeing this pic that seems to be what you were describing.
Correct.
Its not actually quite a 90 degree turn like that, compared to his model the torso of the suit is less wide so the arm is sloped down instead of completely horizontal, but if you watch marines move in cinematics they have a relatively limited range of motion with their arms that roughly corresponds to how their actual human joints are positioned.
And while it would be uncomfortable for, say, Tychus, who spends the better part of a year in his suit, the armor itself is supporting his arms, so they wouldn’t get as stiff as quickly as if he had to hold them that way himself, and most marines are able to get out of their armor more frequently than he is.
Marine suit design is not very good for number of reasons, but idea of wrapping men in metal suit of armor is not intrinsically bad.
Take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hlIUrd7d1Q
Now imagine metal plates being more thick and having some actuators on top of them.
Actuators kinda like this:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/xcom/images/4/44/W.a.r._suit.png/revision/latest?cb=20160629131156
h ttps://i.imgur.com/piydMMl.jpg
Lol what an interesting thread.
The concept art and the cinematics are not logical since Tychus’ opening. Sometimes, i even have to question whether the Marine’s head are too big for his real human body or not.
The armpit area stretch the Terran’s arms way too much. I think it is possible to conclude that the armpit is the weakest link in the suit.
Playing this game for too long, i kind of give in to the normality that was drawn by the artists but i agree that it is weird.
Now for the proportions, remember that men in the SC2 universe look nothing like a normal human body (contrast to the women, gotta keep the fan service!)
For the armour, I don’t think they really cared how comfortable it would be, since Marine corps tend to be largely convicts. Same reason why they really don’t care about the death rates (I seem to recall something somewhere talking about the life expectancy of a Marine being hilariously low).
There is truth to that. This entire post is obviously a little tongue in cheek; this is a fictional world with impossible things all over the place. Getting a little fast and loose with anatomy is hardly the greatest break from reality.
The marine death rate thing is kind bonkers, actually. If the marines are just cannon fodder, why do they wear such advanced and complicated armor? Certainly it cost a lot of money to make that armor. If the point is have a warm body to pull a trigger for 2 minutes before dying, it makes no sense to give them armor - much less sophisticated armor like that.
Im pretty sure it was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the tendency of bio players to consider marines to be a cheap disposable resource in game.
Well it’s an actual part of the canon that the death rate among Terran infantry is absurd. That doesn’t really jive with how much tech the infantry get.
Not… really? As far as im aware, the only evidence for that is a single one off statement for the description of the medivac adding tens of minutes to the average combat life expectancy for a marine, which, yeah, if you need active on the battlefield healing, chances are you’ve been eaten by a Zergling or stabbed by a zealot, so no crap youre in danger of getting killed.
they give him an armor because without it they would be 100% ineffective the armor provides greater mobility increases the precision, the soldiers are equivalent to an AI they are easy to follow and are more efficient, the AI in real spaces are not as effective as the administrative AI
this is seen in the guild war and when the marines sweep other marginal infantry it is simply an arms competition one group began to introduce superior armored infantry the others followed the trend not to be crushed