Where do we go from here?!?

[Blackwater Sniper]

New Technology is never born out of a vacuum, it takes steps from older, established approaches. Look at our main methods of mass transportation: trains, planes, and automobiles; each began as crude, inefficient ways of getting from Point A to Point B and now, by today’s standards, are so economical and worry-free that we take them for granted. At certain points along our history, we gained advances in technology, applied them to our everyday lives and have become a more all-around advanced society.

Now we have a game where robots, power armor, and other technological marvels are commonplace, but how did they evolve from 21st century war machines? The easy thing to say is, “Well, we reverse-engineered a lot of alien technology.” That works great for many of the high-tech gizmos we don’t have today, like hand-held LASERs and quiet hover capability, but I like to connect-the-dots with today’s technology to see if it’s feasible to get from today into the (gaming) future.

My first “dot” to connect is Graphene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0HHg1cn_Jk). The single best way to be used in the future is ultra-density batteries and electricity conduction. Graphene batteries are potentially so efficient and heat resistant they may have the ability to power an automobile with a battery a fraction the size of what is used in EVs today. While fusion reactors are the ‘go-to’ energy source for larger robots and power armors on Rifts Earth, smaller personal craft and handheld energy weapons could benefit from graphene batteries and conductors.

Another leap in technology is the use of Carbon Nanotubes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIif11QOsRI). In recent years we’ve just begun to tap into the near limitless potential of these single strand building blocks. Being over 100 times stronger than steel and 30 times better at ballistic resistance than today’s Kevlar at a fraction of the weight, carbon nanotubes could be the backbone of any military force.

I would suggest one of the first uses in direct action power armor utilizing carbon nanotubes is the Glitter Boy. While individual body armor may have been used earlier due to their smaller size and being more economical, the firepower a suit of power armor provides on the battlefield is like that of a tank or artillery battery. Glitter Boys have a frame and skin of carbon nanotubes. Carbon Nanotubes are an excellent method of dissipating heat from energy weapons as well as strong enough to deflect the heaviest impact weapons.

A Glitter Boy is only a robot if not for the patina that gives it the iconic image and therefore name. Most materials that reflect (or refract) light tend to warp or buckle when in contact with extreme heat variances. Industrial diamonds, with specific facet angles could be used to scatter lasers into their component light waves. In most cases, laser light would have little effect upon natural diamonds as the light would pass through, but cultured diamonds would be able to add enough impurities to not only refract the light waves and absorb any residual heat of a focused shot. Uses in the Glitter Boy’s outer skin were not further examined due to cost and lack of combat usefulness; a platoon of shiny soldiers advancing upon your position make for easy targets.

Each of these three steps in technology have a common link: carbon. To build an automobile today, companies must perform a scavenger-hunt across the globe to gather the many components for the final product: copper, bauxite (aluminum), lithium, iron (steel), glass, petroleum (plastics and rubber), leather, etc. By using an element that is common across the globe you lessen the risk of having supply lines disrupted and can set up manufacturing sites only determined by sustainable sources of power (fusion reactors).

[taalismn]

And pulling and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere is considered one of the steps in combating climate change.
So the Golden Age of technology that becomes the Megadamage Age is also a 'Green' age, with carbon-collecting stations feeding the new M-factor materials factories.

Protect the Planet, Build More Chromium Guardsmen.