Some robot-related backprocessing:

[yvannairie]

(Reposted from Tumblr)

there was a post doing the rounds about how modern cars have plastic/fiberglass parts designed to minimise the energy transferred to the passengers in a crash, and it got me thinking about racer frames, especially frontliners.

Like, outside of aerodynamics, collision resistance is probably an important consideration for racers. As speeds grow, so do the energies involved in a crash, and there probably exists some threshold beyond which vital components like drives, processors (or, per some separate headcanons I've written down, connectors) start getting damaged. Having plating that crumples on impact is would be a really useful redundancy for those moments where even quick decision-making won’t save you from wiping out.

The problem with “soft” materials like plastics, fiber glass and honeycombed metal is that they’ll hardly stop a bullet from going straight into your protoform. And even while mass-based weapons seem to be in the minority, shrapnel and road detritus can be lethally dangerous at the kind of speeds your average racing frame is used to. The more elastic the material, the wider the energy is spread, which is useful for dampening, but also means a wider extent of injury when it does occur.

But then again, a full rigid plate armour has a bunch of disadvantages too! Along with affecting the weight distribution (thus fucking with those all-important aerodynamics) and making wiping out at high speeds more likely, it’ll also absorb less of the impact and probably result in serious damage to non-reinforced components. At lower speeds (and for heavier frames who can handle the extra weight redundant systems brings) this is less of a problem, but the energies in a crash start going up exponentially the faster you’re going.

Either way, it’s a balancing act. If you’re not going fast enough that crashing will literally rip components out of their housing, you’re basically fine clad in whatever, but the faster you go, the more heavy armour becomes a liability, both b/c it affects manoeuvrability and b/c it’s too rigid to protect vital components. The faster you go, the more frail you become, it’s just a matter of picking between what kind of frailty you’re comfortable with.

This also explains why trick drivers are so prominent among frontliners. The heavier your armour, the more dependent you are on clean driving and compensating for your own lack of squishiness by absorbing the impact by transforming (or picking soft things to crash into.)