Jedi ... sort of (Destiny)

by Durandal, Thursday, May 14, 2015, 00:15 (3736 days ago) @ Earendil

From the economy grimore all of the city's supply of programmable matter comes from catches recovered by guardians. Ships as well. The city may not have the resources then to support a large mechanized force.

Furthermore large mechanized forces have large logistical tails. You need to fuel and arm them. A modern main battle tank gets gallons per mile, not miles per gallon, so you have to preposition large fuel dumps to support a big advance. Now in Destiny you can teleport equipment across space, like your sparrow, so it may be easier but I suspect the city still can't afford much in the way of heavy armor.

Guardians themselves act as special forces, and modern special forces often eschew heavy armor in favor of firepower and speed. Your special forces group is often out manned and out gunned, operating alone with little access to backup. They can't afford large, noisy and obvious heavy tanks and APCs. They need to sneak around, strike hard at soft targets then fade before the enemy can react. SF often call in the artillery and air strikes, but don't tend to pack much of it themselves. So it may not make sense for us to be cruising around the cosmodrome in our own personal T-120 MBTs (or whatever those rusted hulks are).

I suspect the city can afford at best armed frames with white gear (such as seen in the hallway leading to the hangar), with transport via the tower cargo dropships. They can't even really afford to outfit the Guardians with much, and if I were Joe Citizen hell yeah I would eat nutrient paste for a week if it meant that the immortal guy with Dinklebot could gear up and defend me instead of wasting time killing a bunch of hive around the cosmodrome waiting for purples to drop.

As far as pre-collapse goes, I imagine that once it became obvious that the darkness was coming, they mobilized anything and everything they could, even old tanks and projectile guns languishing in national reserves and museums. If it means life or death you do whatever it takes. Heck, the US probably still had tones of conventional firearms in use by hobbyists and affectionados. AI antimatter weapons probably aren't covered by the 1st amendment, but future ballistic guns certainly are. Plus you can't hack that which doesn't have microprocessor control.