It’s both in many cases - a lot of male figures are super bulky and a lot of female figures are waifishly thin. Jumping threads a little, I feel like an important reference point is the original Reverend Moira design, where the HMG was about the same size as the woman carrying it.
My point was that people here very often use male models as the default size. The female models only look small if you consider the male models to be the default. Put a dozen female models next to each other, non of them will look to small. They'll just look like a selection of women of slightly different heights and builds. they only look small when you add a male model to the mix. I'm talking about scale here, not body shape.
People assume that artistic liberties are being taken with anime inspired female models for the same reason anime gets creative with camera angles around female characters....
This is why I'm really considering trying to go the extra mile with some minor conversion work and make my NCA almost entirely female. Having a small Fusilier lady mixed in with the big guys is reasonable with custom equipment fitting and Haqqislamic steroids in-setting, but the more heavily-equipped Bolts and (especially) ORCs are just jarring.
Because if we use the current male minis as a base for scale, we'll end up with models that are easier to put together, paint, transport, and distinguish on table. The touched-upon topic of why have guns slightly oversized also applies here. Taking current Morats as an example: it seems that female sculpts were beefed up to match the scale of male ones, hence my praise. If CB would go the other way and reduced the scale of male sculpts - also matching the scale between sexes, but the reference scale being smaller - I'd say it's a worse solution.
The hill I’ll die on is when you try to increase the price of Jaffa cakes. In the UK this is unthinkable but the world has gone crazy so… On this particular topic I’ll die on the hill of no boob armour. The historian in me just won’t allow it. Why would you wear armour that potentially deflects the force of a blow into your sternum? I mean sure if you want to die quickly it’s a good idea? Every time a woman wears plate or similar there’s a compunction to put breasts on it. It doesn’t work. I mean they even got it right on game of thrones where Brienne of Tarth is indistinguishable from the other knights when wearing plate! On another note, armour doesn’t need to be thick to be effective. It can be wafer thin. If you look at the later plate armours they are made of incredibly thin steel yet can turn aside a 9mm round at point blank range. This is not hyperbole, the Leeds armoury performs this test at least once a week (for which you have to buy a demo ticket). Or at least they did, I haven’t been in about 3 years. I need to go back there. They let you play with some of the armour that they’ve had smithed for demos. Their seminar on the evolution of armour from ancient times into the modern era is also very interesting. Granted, at this scale the wearer of perhaps ORC or Invincibles armour may be a slightly Spritely person inside but that’s only assuming the armour is much thicker than required. (Though I do agree that on some miniatures here the person inside that armour is likely skin and bone. Especially older sculpts). The breast armour in particular is a small bugbear of mine but it doesn’t stop me enjoying the miniatures. Are they perhaps out of proportion? Yes, are some in anime “cheesecake” style poses? Yes, do I enjoy the entire range for the most part? Yes. Except that bultrak. It can go straight to hell. That thing’s in line with boob armour. Why the hell would you put your pilot there? The design has been this way since Infinity began, I doubt it’s going to stop now as this is the aesthetic that’s made the game recognisable. That’s not to say the scale of certain miniatures may not need to be looked at however especially if they’re being redesigned from the older sculpts. If the scale between the men and women was drawn more in line across the range as @Stiopa noted has occurred with the new Morat while keeping the aesthetic that Infinity is known for, I think it’d please far more people than it’d upset. Especially the guns. Having all guns be the same size regardless of whose holding them would at least help. Edit: I’m going back to my Jaffa Cakes hill. Just in case there’s a tax increase on cakes while I’m gone.
IIRC there were (and still are) several producers that make ballistic plates of steel. 3mm thick steel (of adequate composition) plating is considered to be good enough to stop rifle bullets (NIJ III-rated armor), if memory serves me. However, there are other things - cover (as in, plate carrier), anti-spall liner behind the plate, possible spacers to facilitate airflow between your body and the actual inner surface of your body armor. Which adds bulk. There's one more thing you seem to not take into account. Weight. Steel is used only by relatively few, rather low-end, body armor producers, because it is heavy. Sure, it can be thin - but there are other solutions that trade weight for bulk to maintain the same level of protection (last thing that was in vogue when I read on the topic a couple years ago was some polyethylene. Same size rifle plate made of it was significantly lighter than a steel one. Though way thickier, going to about 2.8-3cm in thickness. So yeah, roughly 10 times as thick as steel plate. But way lighter). Interesting point: this makes the troops like rifles with telescoping stocks, which can be regulated for length. Because one has to brace the gun against the shoulder strap of one's body armor, most of the time - which means there's less space for it than your grandpa had back in WW2... So, modern body armors are bulky. For a reason. And I guess it won't change much in the near future, unless there's a signifiacnt breakthrough in material science.
Indeed, I cannot recall the manufacturer name for the life of me but there are those that still produce steel plates for modern armours. They are being eschewed for lighter materials though as you correctly pointed out. The modern armour we currently use as well as that seen effectively on the Ariadna units would undoubtedly be bulkier but not significantly so else movement becomes an issue. Weight is of course also a factor, I had forgotten to include it in my earlier post. With plate armour the weight is mitigated by the wearer being used to it over time. Knights slept in it, are in it and became accustomed to it. I proposed it as an example primarily to correlate with the armour worn by ORC and military order knights and to display that metal suits of armour don’t need to be seen as increasing bulk to an extreme extent. With the modern armour troops undoubtedly train extensively in it but it’s lower weight and lack of need to maintain it mean that less is required to use it effectively while it is indeed bulkier than its steel equivalent but also more comfortable too especially in certain theatres where heat and cold are a major concern. Metal is undoubtedly being phased out in our modern armours in favour of lighter materials (less fatigue for the wearer) which I believe you’re very correct in stating is some weird polyethylene based substance. In certain cases certainly the armour adds considerable bulk to the point where the telescoping stock is incredibly in vogue. I believe the G36c rifle employed by NATO currently uses this for the very reason you mentioned. So yes, modern armour is indeed bulky and can be to the point of making its wearer seem ungainly (though this is far from the actual case else no modern military would use it!) A wearer of modern combat gear is relatively indistinguishable in it from any of their compatriots regardless of gender. My previous statement only meant to display that in some miniatures you can easily imagine someone in the suit of armour/combat gear whilst others are so thin they’re very odd to look at. Edit: I forgot cost too. Each knight in plate armour is wearing the equivalent of a Ferrari or Lamborghini. A modern trooper is equipped for far cheaper… though it is still an expense in the thousands if not tens of thousands.
Non-Newtonian Fluids are already a thing. Their application not yet... There are some studies to use some to create the perfect slow-down obstacle. Low speed => fluid, high speed => solid and your problem! The same concept could be applied to armour plates (blob armour?), if you can reduce the tranfert of impact force
Oh, AFAIK they are being studied for that application. Been for years. If they can be effectively used, that will mean body armor that is flexible (well okay, we do have flexible ballistic armors already - stuff like Kevlar inserts. Except they are not good enough to stop rifle rounds. but work fine against low-velocity projectiles like pistol rounds and shrapnell), and yet able to stop high-energy impacts. But it still doesn't answer us the question of how much of such a non-Newtonian fluid would you need (to provide an equivalent of NIJ III, or, preferably, NIJ IV-class armor) in terms of mass and thickness. Physically stopping a projectile is one thing, but then there comes the problem of shedding the kinetic energy it carried. And here we reach the issues of temporary and permanent deformation and so on. I guess I should stop the offtopic about here ;) just stressing that IMO there is a reason why, even in Infinity, body armor can be pretty bulky. Also, since ORCs and other HI armors were called: actually keep in mind most HI armors in Infinity are power armors. There's a powered exoskeleton under the plating, so it can mind the weight of the plating somewhat less (and thus keep armor protection level while trading armor weight for thinner plating), unlike any poor grunt that has to carry all that stuff with his own muscle. Though some "light HI" sculpts the CB has been releasing over the years doesn't seem to represent that well (looking at ya, EVAders!)...
Indeed. I forgot about the exoskeleton under the plates. Hmm. Some then look like they have a person in. Others may just be a brain in a jar (or perhaps even an Alita like cyborg). Back on topic as @Errhile said, any updates on teasers? I know there’s been a June speculation thread but an update on stuff would be great. Especially if that update contains a second set of arms for the new shinobu…
A "brain in a jar" would qualify as a full cyborg. And no, most Infinity HI don't qualify here: they still have a living, breathing, and bleeding body inside. Absolute proof: they have Wounds, not Structure. You need Doctor or Medikit to treat them. A few, well, are heavily cybered enough to have STR, and require Engineer's attention. Most of Infinity body modification tech seems to be biological or nanotech in nature, as even Aleph's combat LHosts tend to have Wounds. Even if they have obvious cybernetic parts visible on the sculpts. Bah, even Posthumans, despite having digitialized consciousness, still use more or lss organic LHosts as proxies, rather than purely robotic bodies...
Lol, yes I know, I was just using it as an example of how some look in their armour. I know that for the most part the HI of Infinity are people in highly sophisticated power armour, even if the inspiration (at least for the panoceania ones) happens to be a cyborg from the works of masamune shirow. Although the ability to download your consciousness into a whole new body, flesh and blood or not does tend into “do androids dream of electric sheep” territory but this is of course the nature of anything that deals in cyberpunk.
Thank you! Love that limited edition Shikami with naginata! It looks amazing. I’m still not sold on the nodachi on shinobu but she’s still a really pretty mini and comes with two heads. Looks like a few here on the forums called the pano multiple figures box! They all look sweet. It will be bought. Now I just need to get up to Birmingham for that limited Ed Shikami… Edit: People here also called the haqqi vs Aleph content. I am quite excited to see what new minis and profiles will be there especially as we’ve been promised an “explosion” of stuff!
I’ve transported worse… but yes. She will give a mild headache. Damn pretty though. I’m more concerned about her centre of gravity. Getting it slightly wrong when I glue it to the base and she’s falling over when I look at her wrong.
