Lore curiosity: Omnis and Battle Armor carrying.

[Nightsong]

I had an idea that popped into my head about a quirk allowing BA to mount nonOmnis and it made me think about the reason OmniMechs or OmniVehicles can carry BA. Besides hand/footholds, wouldn’t they have connections for the Battle Armor to recharge their batteries, and possibly fiber optics to the comm system allowing communication without broadcasting if need be?

[AlphaMirage]

Yes to all, Battle Armor can hang onto a mech in the normal way (ala Swarm attack) but not comfortably or for a long period of time. The other thing that Omnis have is a smarter Gyro that is more capable of adjusting to varying weight loads. A Fire Moth does have to be able to adjust to nearly a 25% increase in mass with no loss of speed, this is less apparent in heavier machines but still important as it allows omnipods syncing into the gyro to prevent wobble.

[Kerfuffin(925)]

Battle armor also have the ability to mount non-omnis through the Mag Clamp system. I think it has some negative effects on the unit they are mounted on. It’s just not very common

[Nightsong]

Well the quirk I had in mind was basically that the ‘Mech has the hand/footholds, power/comm connections and gyro programming to directly support BA, just not the modularity that a full Omni has. I could imagine this possibly being on ‘Mechs like the Argus or Thanatos that were originally designed as Omnis before the government declined them, but possibly allowing the BA capacity in order to support the growing BA infantry the AFFS is pushing. But back to the connections, I imagine it almost like a militarized version of the wireless chargers on cellphones nowadays, with possibly some fiber optic jacks for the comm functionality.

[worktroll]

The handholds, comms & power rigging, are effectively part of the extra cost for omnification.

You could house rule it easily enough - only half the additional cost because you're not doing the pod-worthiness.

[Colt Ward]

I thought there was also a TacOps rule about BA handholds?

MagClamps are becoming more common, IIRC they basically take 1 run off?

But as AlphaMirage said, the big cost is that more advanced gyro . . . combat boarding is not likely to have a hardwired connection between the BA and the mechs for coms, but the start of a deployment on mechs might.  IIRC we get some stories where BA lock the hands/claws holding them to the mech.