Re: [HOE] Cyborgs/Scrapers vs Power Armor

[Robert Holland <robert@macauley.com>]

>> My players and I have been bickering back and forth about the
>> militaries use of Power Armor if they have Cyborgs. They say that the
>> cost of a heavily equipped Heavy Can is roughly the same as Power
>> Armor (when you take into account the cost of training, power, gear,
>> upkeep, and the cost to maintain the operator). So why would the
>> military (or Throckmorton for that matter) keep producing the Power
>> Armor when a Cyborg is ten times harder to take out, needs little up
>> keep and has so many neat do-dads.
>> 
>> My only answer was: When your military is 99% living beings and you
>> don't want to place your special operation unit on the front lines and
>> you want augmented troupes Power Armor seems a reasonable. I'm only
>> half convinced of that though. What do you guys/gals think of that.
>
>I think that the costs aren't meant to represent real world costs, but
>just as a marker (hey, I could sell my car and afford an infiltraitor
>package!). So comparing the cost of a cyborg vs. the cost of a pistol
>isn't that straight forward. I would say multiply all the costs in the
>cyborgs book by 100 to 1000 times to get a more "real-world" cost.

Good point. The same is probably true for power armor--a Wolverine suit goes for
about $15,000 in the wastes because nobody has pre-War resources anymore and
that's all the market will bear these days--but the prices are much lower
anyway. I imagine a combat cyborg probably cost millions to make while a power
armor suit ran in the high five to low six-digit range.

--Robert Holland