I'm curiuos, what will hapen if an Acolyte (or an NPC) fights in some hostile environment in his or her vac-suit and gets damage? Would that mean that the vac-suit would be rendered useless immediately?

Common sense leaves no other choice, but that actuallt renders the combats with a vac-suit impossible. What do you think?

As it happens I gm'ed an archaic TRAVELLER intro adventure (called "The Shadow") concerning a pyramid complex on a planet with a corrosive atmosphere as an intro-adventure for our void-born arbitrator.

Anyway

The PC were all wearing the heavy duty hostile enviroment suit from the Inqisitors Handbook (Armor: Head 4, Anywhere else 3).

I ruled if the damage exceeds the armor value (disregarding toughness of course), each point of damage is a 10% chance the suit of being ruptured.

E.g. 5 points of damage to head (AV: 4) --> 1 point exceeds AV --> 10% chance of "holing" the vacsuit.

(In the game I played there were only animals with primitive natural weapons, which effectivly doubled the armorvalue, but it was scary enough as it was.)

In that kind of atmosphere (0,9 bar) there was no decompression to speak of, only the amount of toxic gases entering the suit which was somewhat compensated by the automatic overpressure of the suit (1,1 bar).

So every round the poor soul had to make a T-Test or lose 1 wound straight (without T or Armor) till patching up with a successfull Ag test.

egalor said:

It would depend on what that hostile environment is and how large the breach in the suit is. A small hole while in a oxygen-less environment would be a slow leak of air until found and patched (though if not found they may find their hour of air gone in 15 min). That same small hole in an area where some nasty highly contagious airborne virus would be an almost guaranteed way for the character to get said disease. What ever happens, though, it's usually not an instant thing as air usually has to be exchanged through the breach.

It just goes to show, it's not a good idea to have a knife fight in vac-suits in a highly contagious quarantined zone which is plagued by an airborne virus just like a running las battle in a promethium refinery is a suicidal cry for help.

Massaker said:

Nice idea, but, why 10% of rupture? Actually, if the damage significantly exceeds the armour value, then it definitely should be punctured.

Graver

What if we are speaking about a combat in hard vaccum, and something like Rending Damage=10 lands on a hand? Does it mean (instant) death?

egalor said:

Nope. The biggest concern in that situation, as in most situations where you lose a hand, will be system shock and bleeding out due to the chopped off hand. Granted, a close second will be suffocation due to the suit losing it's pressure and once that's gone, breathing can cause some serious lacerations in the lungs; assuming of course that the character's oxygen supply is separately sealed from the rest of his suit.

The severe drop in blood pressure could cause death a bit quicker once the suit losses it's pressure as there will be less blood to get what little oxygen is left to the brain but, on the bright side, in that situation, there wouldn't be as much pressure build-up in the capillarities closest to the skin so decompression wouldn't be as uncomfortable/painful as it otherwise would be. Of course, that's probably grossly offset by having lost a hand.

In other words, barring death by asphyxiation or heavy bleeding and lacerations in the lungs that would result from breathing in a pressure-less environment, the worst aspect of getting your hand chopped while wearing a vac-suit in a vacuum is getting your hand chopped off.

If that were to happen, mechanics wise, you will be dealing with the strangulation rules once the character was unable to take in any oxygen. If the character can and dose try to breath, they may suffer an additional 1d10X damage to the chest each time though, if your looking for realism, if the X damage kills the character, they wouldn't explode. They would just have some over inflated and ruptured lungs or lungs that are otherwise too damaged to function anylonger and they'll die from lack of oxygen to the brain in the end.

I'd say that depended upon the suit- a poor quality suit would leak air and decompress fairly rapidly (although not necessarily fast enough to class as an explosive decompression), while a good or best quality suit would have multiple sealing collars at strategic points throughout the suit, and simply seal the compromised section, or even have a (limited) self-repair capability.

The survivability would depend on the location of the breach and whether the auto-sealing collars closed around the limb/body, or cut through it.
In the first case, the affected body part would be subject to vacuum (which I doubt is particularly healthy for the tissue in question), and in addition to the air lost when the suit was first ruptured, there would probably be some minor leakage if the wearer was forced to move or flex the decompressed suit section. On the upside, if the suit does have a self-repair function, the consticting sealing collars will probably loosen up when the part is fixed.
In the second case, unless the suit has an automated medical feature capable of cauterising the amputated part, you're looking at blood loss, quite probably fatal, as I doubt that there'd be sufficient time to get to an airlock, get it pressurised, and get enough of the suit clear for someone to perform emergency first aid before you bleed out. Even if that's the case, you've just lost a major chunk of your body (just a limb, if you're lucky). On the upside, aside from the air lost from the compromised sections, you aren't likely to lose more (except, y'know, if you get hit again), as the blades in the sealing collars can get a good air-tight seal.

If you need some real life examples of the effects of rupturing a vac-suit in a vacuum, you can have a read HERE which contains a few casses of the effects of vac-sutes getting punctured and the effects it had.

Graver said:

Interesting read, thanks.

Actually, this means, that if a combat takes in the hard vacuum, then the first one to puncture its adversary's vac-suit wins. In game mechanics (and logic) that would mean, that a hit exceeding the armour value (be it 3 or even 4, i.e. almost every hit) would score a kill.

Brutal, yet realistic.

But is it good in game terms, still?

No, he wouldn't. It takes several minutes for hard vacuum to kill (contrary to Hollywood you neither blow up nor instantly freeze in space -- why would you? Vacuum is as perfect an insulator as you can get. That's how thermoses work.) and IIRC 30 seconds or so before loss of consciousness.

So if you are really close to an airlock...

Perhaps I'm wrong - I mean, if I puncture my enemy's vac-suit in hard vacuum, that would be actually a matter of seconds before I win?

egalor said:

Factually, a human can remain conscious from 8-15 seconds in a vacuum without protective gear of any kind (this is based off of multiple research sources). Out of that time about 5-10 seconds seems to be how long before there is any noticeable detriment to the victim. Additionally, modern suits worn by astronauts allow for a sustainability of 30 minutes provided a hole no larger than 4mm (I'd say that's about a laspistol puncture). There are significant efforts to both develop a viable self-sealing polymers and laminates to incorporate into future EVA suits and habitats. Sources viewable both here and here. Factor in the strong likelihood of a self-sealing laminate and/or polymer being used in most EVA suits in 40K that should far exceeds what we can do today, and more than likely decompression is a virtual non-issue versus most small arms and close-combat weapons.

The answer is not a simple yes or no, Egalor. A lot of Imperial tech seems bass ackwards, but there is a certain practicality in not wanting waves of troopers in hard-vac simply dieing from a shot that would be otherwise nonlethal in a life-sustaining atmosphere.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

I get your point. Definitely, in 40k the technology would most likely allow the vac-suits to self-seal to a certain degree.

Anyway, in this case we will need more errata, and/or additional notes from the designers. Otherwise, these are just home rules, which I'm no big fan of.

egalor said:

I meant per point of damage exceeding the AV an additional 10%.

So 1 point of damage above AV -> 10%; 2 points of damage above AV -> 20% chance of suit being ruptured, 3 point of damage -> 30%, etc.

This simulates the suits self-sealing ability quite nicely, I think. But the bigger the hole (more damage) the less the possibility the suit can compensate.

egalor said:

Actually, dealing with the puncturing of vac-suits would be a home-brew rule. According to the RAW, armour and armoured vac-suits by extension do not degrade (except under a few critical results) through being hit. So, the RAW puts forth that, for one reason or another, you don't need to worry about punctures to your vac-suit. If you want something different from the RAW, then you'll have to "house rule" it as per normal.

I don't think an errata on this is needed. We have enough errata, we have a big lumbering nasty beast of an errata. The effects of a punctured vac-suit would be a rare occurrence in DH and, as such, doesn't need extensive separate rules covering it. We GM's have the tools at our disposal to deal with such a situation when it occurs already. There are rules for decompression and vacuums on DH 210 (though they buy heavily into the space is cold myth... but then again, it fits with the game's internal physics) and if you see it as logical and a natural occurrence for a vac-suit to be punctured if it's AP is bypassed, then you have the rules in the RAW for the effects of being in a vacuum. There you go, no errata needed.

As for who ever punctured the other guy's suit wins, no. In that situation, what is stopping the other guy from sooting you before is air is gone or before he starts blacking out due to a lack of oxygen to the brain? Such a situation could easily lead to an everyone losses outcome. When it comes to the vac-suits though, i like the sealing ring idea... it's simple and makes sense if the Imperium has fella's fighting in vacuums much. Again, though, if you go by the RAW, it would seem the suits are self sealing ;-)

I love the idea of space combat involving Orks in big, rusty orky vac suits.

bogi_khaosa said:

Preved! You must be Russian

Citizens! Do not fear! Remember these instructions in the event of a hull breach!: Hold your breath, turn on your emergency light, recite the Litany of Vacuum, kick your legs in a swimming motion towards the breach and back to the ship then await rescue teams to bring you safely back on board.

Seriously though I like the sound of the 10% chance per point above your Armour thing. Perhaps have somehing like that for standard quality void suits and say best quality ones just repair themselves.

There's also the possibily of Emergency Patches as a commodity for those expected to get into combat in a hostile environment. Should your suit suffer a non-catastrophic puncture then slap a patch over it as a temporary seal. Guardsmen are reminded to seal both entry and exit wounds in the event of such a puncture.

Really this should depend on the kind of weapon that does the damage. Explosive weapons and chain weapons would probably beyond the capability of suit self-sealing.

If memory serves the Inquisitor's Handbook contains a repair kit, with sealant.

Ok, having checked, I now know that it doesn't have a suit puncture repair kit, but it does have an emergency kit including a hull sealant spray-gel. While that would work to fix a breached suit, I suspect I really wouldn't want to get any of that anywhere it could contact my bare flesh as it set (such as, for example, in the open wound under the tear in my suit).

egalor said:

His handle sure implies it... it reads as "Gods [of] Chaos..." (sadly, the BBS doesn't handle unicode...)

But those big rusty Orc suits should have been painted red anyway...

If you really want to get technical, I'm an American expat in Russia. Not that that is relevant to this thread,