The Nightstar Zoo

I just wonder how well he'll ambulate in one of those suits.

Since this station is staffed by ex-Gaavs, it doesn't make sense that they'd carry any suit not made for biped humanoid. Neo-Elephant have their own suit, I guess that's the best approximation he can get. Similar to the problem that Tailor haven't made a suit for Schlock, they also really don't make suit for Amorph, which is something that really should get addressed. After all, Schlock did have personal experience with decompression vacuum. It sucks.

Schlock said in the past that he makes a clumsy biped, but I don't see any reason he couldn't go triped/quadruped in a suit using the arms.

Vaccuum doesn't hurt him outright once he has a chance to expel any gases mixed into him, it's the lack of heat that's the biggest concern in the short-term. If he simply ate a portable heater it would solve that problem just fine. Hie eyes might be a problem though. They aren't as resilliant as the rest of him.

Hmm. Schlock can swallow his eyeballs. Is there any reason he can't swallow them, then use a periscope (sticking out of him) to see while having his eyes still on the inside?

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After 3 long, weaponless years, I became the wielder of the Doobie/Dobie gun!

Schlock could be armored against weapons and vaccuum like this:

Not sure how practical that would be, but it's a start. Also you will have to consider how smart these armored bead will have to be and their interface with Schlock bits.

My big problem with Schlock trying to go down the hole is not that he has no protection against vacuum or cold. It's that it's a very very long way down, and he has no way of directing his fall other than using Plasma cannon. Low profile suits seemed to have limited amount of flight capability. The new Tailored Suit more so. The fall will probably not kill Schlock, but it will destroy the emergency exosuit. We will all agree that using plasma cannon to arrest his descent is a bad idea right

For certain values of "we" that don't include Schlock, at least...

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Proud owner of the The Mad M.A.D. Bomber. Nails not included.

Nope -- more BLAM and THOOM, please!

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After 3 long, weaponless years, I became the wielder of the Doobie/Dobie gun!

It would be a bad idea for anything and everyone else around him that shouldn't/doesn't want to be on fire. And is not us, the readers. I for one hope that Schlock will try this and will enjoy the resulting hilarity that ensues .

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The MacNut
Artist and writer of The Vanguard, a space opera superhero comic.

I think the answer is, "Not well."

It's COLD out there. Schlock freezes. His nether bits go all brittle. As he has said, he makes a clumsy biped.

To me, "exosuit" means "exoskeleton," aka, powered exoskeleton. In science fiction terms, I'd call it an EAVS, or Exoskeletal Armored Vacuum Suit. As an engineer who specializes in control systems based on computers using feedback and feed forward systems, I would expect it to have gyroscopic stabilization and computerized guidance. Unfortutunately, it wasn't designed for amorph reflexes. On the other hand, it does show that with some clever programming by a robotics genius and some engineering by a brilliant mad scientist, Schlock could be fitted with armor. With hard-mounted plasma cannons and multi-cannons. And enough gravy for a pod of blue whales.

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"A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke
"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
Jack L. Chalker
"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"
Larry Niven

Schlock makes a clumsy biped because he has no skeleton, endo or exo. It's not due to an inability to understand locomotion or perambulate. Whatever you design for him will have to take that into account. I would design a mould/tub kinda thing in a sealed suit, where he all he has to do is flow into it through an access port. The mould's the interface to the suit's weapons/limbs/sensors and all he has to do is just be there and think what he wants to do, the suit's AI handles the actual doing it. (As in, if Schlock wants to go from a->b, he has no concept of putting one leg after the other... He just flows/oozes/slides there. That kind of thinking won't work with limbed constructs). The interface is enabled by his nanotic nature, with his immune system doing the handshake. It might have physical controls, but the less the better because while Schlock can manipulate things, I don't think he has the same degree of fine control: He can pull a trigger, or a lever, or push a button, or swing melee weapons, but I'd want more precision. It does occur to me that he managed pretty well with mini-tanks, so... yeah. Maybe he is capable of more fine control than i give him credit for

Schlock has fallen great distances before, in low and normal g and I don't think he'd have a problem with this shaft. If it wasn't for the freezing vacuum I'd have expected him to just drop in a blob towards the bottom and then make an airfoil; glide to the bottom:

Simples

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"You think you know munitions? Darling you don’t know jack. What do you know about micro-missiles and nerve disruptors? What do you know of micro-janglers and variable grenades? Have you ever seen an e-dust commando? No? Well come talk to me when you earn your claws. It’s a big universe out there and most of it is trying to kill you already."

'Big' Kat Mikkelson to John. J. Johnson on his first day at boot camp.

I'm pretty sure Oisri doesn't have an atmosphere for an airfoil to work in. It's a wandering planet, or appears to be one, with an external temp close to absolute zero. Pluto only really has an atmosphere (such as it is) during its summer, and Oisri is a lot colder than Pluto's winter. Although its gravity is enough to keep an atmosphere, I'm pretty sure any atmosphere it would otherwise have will be either frozen solid or a crunchy slush underfoot.

Well they would just be inert beads. This wouldn't protect him from vaccuum, just from extreme temperatures and energy weapons fire. I don't think lack of atmosphere hurts him as long as he expells any gases that are mixed into him. An armored visor would of course be needed to protect his eyes from getting shot. It would be good enough in the sort term.

It's not that he doesn't know how to walk, it's that whatever passes for a motor cortex in him doesn't operate the same as ours. The best analogy for his movements isn't an amoeba, it's an ant colony. Every little bit of him has "muscle" and "brains" built into it coordinating with each other on the fly to "push" and "flow" into whatever shape and in whatever direction his mind dictates.

"Hard" armor for him would probaby be a big armored ball.

The interior lining would be a 360 degree display screen lined with motion trackers to scan his movements and shape the external field to match. The outer armored layer would be studded with both external sensors and field effectors like Ennesby has for both locomotion and manipulation.

Mind as well just call it a mini-tank for all intents and purposes-an armored shell he can pour himself into that's tough enough to stop most projectile fire, a gravitic field generator strong enough to at least resist hand-held plasgun fire, and multiple weapon ports, at least for plasgun and those multigun cannons he likes. Of course, it would also fly over most terrain.

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The MacNut
Artist and writer of The Vanguard, a space opera superhero comic.

True, but part of the reason the rest of them use suits instead of mini-tanks is to afford them much greater interactivity with the environment.

Also true, but the 3/31 strip shows clearly why Schlock can't use a typical biped powered armor suit. He can barely move in the EVA suit since he doesn't do biped motion very well. Limiting as it may be, a minitank-type suit really is the best option for him.

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The MacNut
Artist and writer of The Vanguard, a space opera superhero comic.

Well yeah, nobody is suggesting he wear a human suit on a regular basis of course.
The microbeads or armorball are viable options in addition to the minitank.

Now demonstrated/proven.

Why does he need an exosuit? We wear our protection on the outside because that's the only place we can put it. It's not like we humanoids can swallow a 20 kilo annie plant and associated hardware. That's not a problem for Schlock. Build a device that uses gravitics to shield him, keep in atmosphere, heat, deflect bullets, plasma weapons, or anything else, and he can swallow it. Whenever he wants to go outside, he can turn it on and voila - he's protected, just as well as an exosuit protects a biped. Call it an endosuit! Plus, think how much easier it will be for the artist to draw! (ie no change at all from his current appearance)

Might still be sensible to customize it to a certain extent. Usually, a minitank would devote significant internal volume and complexity to interface and ergonomics; schlock can plug directly into a dataline and mold himself up against bare hullmetal. He doesn't have much to fear from NBC sorts of threats, and likes being able to reach out and touch things, so the hatch can sacrifice seals for speed of operation. Higher gravy-tolerance makes it survivable to cheap out on DCI, get a little more kick out of the same annie plant. Probably a lot of other smaller tweaks.