Joke… joke… joke… nope, no joke.

I don't own medabots.

So many people wanted legs and I was going to legs but every time I start to think of it I get board out of my mind and drift off to something else. So instead I will do random meda-weapions that I like. Ill try to add a section at the end about legs but no promises.

All types listed are from the Medabot Navi game for GBA, unfortunately it is only available in Japanese that I have found. Email me if you want more details on particular types or images of the bots in question. I try to have at least one type listed that should be recognized from the show in each listing.

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Medabots Anatomy 101

Lesson 5 of (?) weapons systems. Bash or Bop?

We all know about the ever classic bashing from back before time with clubs and sticks and stones. Lets see what is different from a wooden club or a rock and a fancy rivet studded block of steel.

Now a plain old wooden club dose good damage to soft flesh and fragile bone with limited wear and tear. However against hardened metals and reinforced plastics that rate of wear jumps while damage drops, making wooden clubs an ineffective weapon.

So lets make the club a hunk of steel, nothing fancy because we will deal with the outside covering of the club and arm after the club is ready, just a long protruding slightly rounded chunk of metal attached to the medabots arm. Now you have an effective tool for smashing another medabots armor and whatever is underneath. But wait a moment, something is wrong every time your medabot hits its opponent it takes damage to its own arm, Why?

Part of the answer is that your medabot isn't holding the club, it is part of him and has no place for the impact to dampen out. Lets find another example, a human with a club. A man swinging a club with hit whatever he is after and a majority of the impact will enter the target, however a part of that impact radiates back up the club. There are two kinds of clubbing involved in medabots, fisting and actual clubbing. Lets cover the fisting side first.

A human hand, clenching a rock or even a chunk of metal, is made of soft flesh around a rather louse shifting construction of bone, so is the arm to a lesser extent, this is able to dampen the impact because it lacks rigidity. The man will still feel the impact and it may even sting his hand but because of how a human hand is he won't be injured.

So we need to mount your medabots club so the shock of impact would be dampened enough to prevent injury but leave the arm firm enough to cause damage. The simplest and least effective method would be to insolate a medabots arm, particularly inside around the mountings holding the club, with a dampening agent of some kind. Semi hard silicates, foam rubber, even cotton or some other soft porous substance.

This method isn't the best, any direct hits with the club still send all that force right back into the arm and against the framing of the medabot while only dampening the vibrations that could harm components. This method is good for medabots that have very few sensitive components in their parts and strong frames able to absorb the impacts unharmed. Medabots like this are the, GMN-01NH, OCT-04NF, BFL-04BH, and RCD-01NF. To name a few.

The next method just adds to the simple one we just covered. Instead of mounting the club directly to the frame an intermediate is added. Rubber mounts or short spring coils, some have argued that a sealed hydraulic press with a minimal fluid level works as well but I will with hold judgment until I have seen it work. These all absorb the force of the impact and reduce it before it reaches the frame by slowing the force applied and slowly pressing back.

There is still a good deal of shock and impact involved but it is no longer putting strain on the frame and combined with the previous method can now be used in medaparts with slightly more sensitive structures and components. Such as WMS-01NF, SKT-01NF, SOT-11NF, and the left arm of nearly any non-transforming KWG type medabot.

So far we have covered the simpler methods, now lets try the more complex one. The club part of the medabot is just a large block of whatever that is mounted by some fashion to the medabots arm under the armor, often extending externally in some fashion. In the simpler methods the club was still mounted indirectly to the arm, this is fine for medabots with decent structures but what about those strange medabots that look so frail?

This is because the club, or simply a hefty but small weight, isn't attached directly to the medabots frame. Rather it is attached to a diver, a form of kinetic punch of you will. A device is installed in the medabots arm that allows the metal weight to move forward and back on its own or by being driven rapidly back and forth in some manor.

How dose this cause any harm to whoever is hit? Well let's look at it this way. Find a ball roll it along the ground. As hard as you push it is as fast as it moves, however if you took that same ball and placed it inside a slightly larger box and promptly hurled the box at a wall you would hear two impacts very close together. That is how a kinetic punch works.

Lets work off that ball and box again, however this time the ball is five pounds of iron and the box is a reinforced tube with very thick caps on the ends. The medabot would pull back to strike, the ball is at the back of the cylinder now, and rears forward to hit, forward momentum presses the ball back still, the fist hits and causes a bit of damage with its own weight, the ball uses the momentum it had gathered from the arms movement to continue moving after the arm stops and reaches the forward cap where it impacts, sending another impact out past the fist and into what had been initially hit. This doubles the impact and often can cause greater damage than any single impact with the same force.

I know what you're thinking, that such a method would put more stress on a frame. Your right. Those medabots at look so frail and cause such impressive damage is not that frail. They use a smaller tighter framework that is reinforced to insane proportions. Instead of having a simple triple cross ribbed framing they would have a triangulated micro rib framing used to make a quadruple cross ribbed framing. This multiple layered framing increases structural integrity greatly but comes at several costs.

First is production and maintenance. This form of structuring is extremely hard to produce without flaws, flaws that would compromise greater areas of the structure than the same flaw in a simpler type of frame, and any minuscule damage could be compounded if not readily repaired. Second is cost, all that work in production and then latter maintenance means more expended costs on repairs, even for those who are capable of such work themselves.

Back to the kinetic punch. Fiction is a problem for the kinetic punch, too much rubbing inside the driver and the weight inside losses speed before it is able to deliver its needed impact. To this reason most driving chambers are vacuumed sealed, not all however, and made as smooth as nanoly possible. Other lubrication methods are the ever-classic oils and using a 'fluid' weight.

A fluid weight is a joke in my opinion and doesn't sound as if it would work, but I will list it as I have heard so many people swear by it. the sealed driving chamber is filled nearly full with any form of liquid, heavier liquids are supposedly better, while the weight is restricted in the front part of the chamber or removed entirely. All the liquid acts in the same fashion as the weight, dawn back, swung forward and then slams ahead at the sudden stop. I have never tired this method and have not seen it used but far to many people have told me it works, or would work, for me to not mention it. the only thing I can see is that the driving chamber is now heavier and causes more damage in the initial impact.

Lets move on to the other kinetic punches, shall we? We have coved the original KP now let me tell you about the newer ones. First there is the gas modal, this is the first KP to use an unsealed driving chamber. Also the weight is no longer a ball that moved freely, rather it is a cylinder with flat, slightly concave ends that is held in the back position by a weak magnet, either electrical or more archaic artificial loadstone, the end caps of the drive chamber are shaped to fit into the concaved ends of the weight with a slight hallow for the gas valves.

The Gas KP fires in much the way of any BB or paintball gun, using a burst of compressed gas to force an object away at high speeds. The concave end of the weight is shaped to rest soundly against the rear end cap of the driving chamber, upon firing the gas is forced out of the firing chamber located just behind and against the cylinder, forcing the weight forward as the gas expands. The cylinder strikes the forward end cap and provided its impact force as the gas is vented out of holes placed towards the front of the drive chamber. The hole are placed so that they will not vent the gas until after the cylinder has passed, often being placed just back of where the weights rear ends is when against the front cap.

To return to a pre strike positions the cap at the front fires another, weaker burst of gas. The gas vents rapidly because the positions of the vent holes are closer to the front cap and means a lower speed of travel for the cylinder. this combined with the slight rubber coating on the back cap reduces the force of the reverse impact.

The gas chambers, pumps and any triggering methods are often storied in the upper arm or shoulders and ran by hoses to the drive chamber. The gas used is dependant on how many times a KP can be used, after the gas is expended the medabot with be reduced to using a normal punch. Environmental air, whatever is around, is the preferred chouse because then the medabot can activate a small pump to restore its ammunition. However this means you might be introducing minute obstructions into the drive chamber. Pollens, dust partials, any chemicals or fumes that may be floating in the vicinity. These microscopic particles increase friction over time and mean that a medabot will require frequent disassembly and cleaning of its Gas KP. Professionals often use caned oxygen or CO2 to prevent any such obscurities and reduce the frequency at witch the Gas KP diver needs removed, dismantled and cleaned. Professionals also replace the single double sealed gas tanks with multiple smaller tanks under a light armor layer to prevent loss of all ammunition if damage is sustained at that location.

As you can image this method isn't as good as the free moving KP because it has to be triggered and has a reload period that while short means that only every other hit, depending on how the weapon is configured, will be a KP. Incidentally a Gas KP provides more force than a free moving KP is capable of and is only slightly higher in cost.

The last form of KP is the Mag KP this system is overly expensive for such a limited weapon. The weight is once more a cylinder but now runs on interlocking notches and tracks, made molecularly smooth by nanos, and holds a permanent mid level magnetic charge. Circling the vacuum filled drive chamber are rings of concentric super electro magnets that are densely packed near the rear cap and only marginally less at the front.

This Drive chamber is made of composites and non-magnetic substances so that the full strength of the electro magnets reaches the cylinder. The driving chamber is also much larger, thicker walled, longer and greatly reinforced than any other KP. Several high-powered energy cells are located further up the arms, away from where they can cause interference of be interfered with by the stronger magnetism, to power such an energy hungry system.

Like the Gas KP before it the Mag KP fires its electromagnets as sensors in the medabot trigger it. the first circle of electro magnets activate around the rear cap of the drive chamber and start pushing against the cylinders same polarity charge. The rings fire progressively, forcing the cylinder further up the chamber faster and faster. The multiple rings fire so rapidly at to human perception they would look to have fired at once but in fact fired only after the cylinder started to pass them and remained on until the cylinder left its constrained field of magnetism, witch is incidentally less than 3 inches by means of directional focusing.

The level of electricity and the sudden bursts of rapid movement create large levels of heat in the workings of a Mag KP. For this reason there is a small liquid cooling system interrogated around the power cells and the firing chamber itself with heat venting higher up.

This form of KP is so strong that one hit will critically injure any meadpart it hits. Unfortunate it has its disadvantages, no frame or structure, no armor or even soft padding has been found yet that can house it in a medabot without harming the medabot that uses it. during initial testing of this KP the cylinder was forcefully fired right out of the drive chamber and out of the corresponding layers of structuring and armor. Even at half power a Mag KP will still cause extreme damage, not quite enough to be a one hit KO against a bot with decent armor or structuring, but still damage the medabot it is attached to.

Retrieval of the cylinder, if the arm of the medabot and the drive chamber are still functional is done by reversing the polarity of the electro magnets and slowly drawing the cylinder back to its starting position, this takes less time than a Gas KP but is still more than a free moving KP.

Any medapart capable of using a KP can be installed with a Gas KP and vise-versa. However a Mag KP cannot be installed in any part not explicitly made for a Mag KP because of the powerful magnetic fields and increased size, not to mention the required stability. In retrospect I would imagine that a custom Gas KP or free moving KP could be used to replace a Mag KP. Made larger to fit the space of the Mag KP it would provide more force than a normally sized unit and would mean less damage to the structural body and armor of the part. However a standard sized Gas or free moving KP would not be compatible with a part normally using a Mag KP.

Some Medabots that use either free moving KPs or Gas KPs are, JBT-01NF, BAN-13NF. The only medabot capable of using the Mag KP is the medabot corporations Belzelga. Rumors say that there is a RAM out there with a fully capable Mag KP that doesn't harm itself but I won't put much faith in those rumors, the arms of a black ram are too short.

I believe that covers the three main kinds of fisting clubs but before we move on I should explore how the club works in relation to the armor and external surface of the arm.

We see on many medabots, like the ever-popular KWG that there is a strip of stiffer stronger metal with studs on it. this is not the club itself, rather just the part of the armor meant to convey the striking of the club into the target. Think of it this way, that plate sets in a lose moving setting with the rest of the armor of the arm, however it is only connected firmly with the weight, the main force of the club, that is behind it.

Those rivets are in fact holding that impact plate against the club, this way instead of having to repair the entirety of the club if damaged all that needs fixed is the impact plate. Other impact plates can be concealed as just another part of the armor, but are attached in a similar fashion to the internal part of the club. Certain medabots, those that are simply made to take that brute feedback of shock, have no impact plate. Instead they have multiple layers of armor and metal that are riveted and bolted in place directly to the frame or weight. Such constructions are often able to deliver more force in a swinging motion rather than a punching motion, and are often considered a swinging club rather than a fisting.

It should be noted that while punching arms are meant for punching they don't have to be thrust to work, they can be swung into the strike but often enough it causes less damage than a thrust. And KP fists only direct the force forward, directly into the impact plate and whatever is beyond, firing a Gas or Mag KP without the fist against something is likely to make the medabot unbalance and possibly fall as their own arm instead of the target would stop the force.

On to swinging clubs finally. A swinging club is one that relays on speed more than on the power of the medabot although power will only help. In a swinging club the fashion of anchoring the inner weight ins the same as the first two options as up above, either by making the frame insanely strong to handle the shock and avoiding sensitive equipment, or add some rubber mounts and shock absorbing padding.

However a swinging club arm isn't meant to take the hit to the front, rather it is meant to take it around the outer edges of the front or even the sides of the arm. a club arm needs a counter balance of the shoulder even more than a fisting medabot because the less weight the servos have to forcefully move the more speed than can get on the swing. Also joints in a swinging club arm are stronger, stiffer than a fister or many other kinds of melee attacks. This is because if that joint where to bend accidentally, or break, on impact all the force of the swing would be lost.

A popular medabot part that uses this type of arm is often mistaken for a fister because it has no counterbalance and has used it as a fister and appeared to be quite powerful. The STG's left arm is NOT a fister. The remarkable strength and speed of this medabot with a very well formed body allow it to use a swing club arm as a fister against opponents. If in fact this arm was swung the way intended it is likely any medabot, with an armor over structure rating of 20/ 42 pounds per square inch with a armor grade of 110 over a 302 against impacts or less, would be crushed under its impact. (in other words Metabee could be ok, if lucky, but not in the best form after taking a hit to the head.) Anything weaker than those numbers, not counting other environmental or modification factors, would be heavily damaged and likely ceased function.


I recently start making an armor/ structure / damage scale for medabots, that is where I got the numbers for the damage capable by Sumiladon's StrawHammer. The list will show up when I have checked my numbers and made sure I'm not forgetting something.

I could be forgetting something but I think that is it. review with any questions comments ideas or problems and I will try to deal with them next time. this chapter hasnt been idea checked yet, so call me on baleint wronghoods.

Class dismissed.