What is the purpose of detail?

I got to thinking recently about all the wonderful beautiful creations that people have been... well, creating, and it is quite obvious that the best suits and weapons have a considerable amount of detail. Upon further consideration, though, thinking about the ideas and concepts on which our replicas are based, it occurred to me that all of these pieces have a "military" function, which are ostensibly designed to either keep a fighter alive, or help them deal out damage to their adversaries. I started pondering the actual, functional purpose behind just about everything, and it makes me wonder... what is the purpose behind all of that detail?

Some things are quite obvious. Armor, in general, protects the wearer from damage. Using Master Chief's Mjolnir armor as an example, the helmet has a lot of features that such a warrior would find useful, such as the lights on the sides to help illuminate dark areas. The cheek hoses improve airflow and help the wearer to breathe in potentially hostile environments. The hand armor doubles as a "brass knuckle" type apparatus to deal more damage when punching. The undersuit prevents the armor from chafing the skin. Even the brim of the visor, while it may restrict vision, somewhat, still shades the wearer's eyes from the sun.

Some things, though, while they may certainly look cool, have no apparent purpose. For example, why does the face shield have two layers? What are those boxes sticking up out of either side of the Chief's back? Why are the forearms segmented like they are? Why are the cheek hoses exposed? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep them concealed and protected? And, of course, the main question behind this thread, what is the purpose of detail lines? What are the recessed areas all around the thing? Why does the "snout" have that odd "M" shaped pattern in it? Why do the handplates have those circular dents on them?

Obviously this question doesn't have a lot of import but, for me, knowing how and why something works, and why it is the way it is, helps me better understand how I might achieve the look I'm going for. For example, some detail lines (but certainly not all of them) could denote manufacturing processes and/or assembly points, and knowing why they work may translate to better overall detail, improved segmentation, more effective strapping assembly, or even a more modular (and hopefully more efficient) build process.

I don't know, just a thought.

The recessed lines are parts of the suit that come off. The spartan armour system is extremely complex beyond the point of just a chest and back piece coming apart. Its like Iron Mans suit, every piece comes together for the whole and makes one piece of armour. And as stated in the books takes a team to put on and take off a Spartans armour, at least earlier versions.

The face shield might have two layers because the glass might have a small degree of flex to it, a rigid object is more susceptible to being broken than one with flex. The two layers might react different in a way so both will almost be a shock absorbent for impact. Or it might even be linked to how the Hud works, between layers of glass.


Most other details are just artistic in nature for the sake of awesome lol.

That ^^

As far as the "boxy things" on the Mk VI's back, the overal structure is a miniature fusion reactor that powers the suit and I'm fairly certain that the protrusions that reach up above the shoulders and sort of have two inset triangles are the motion sensor assemblies (from what I gather in one of the Eric Nylund novels)

I think you should keep two things in mind here:

1. They don't hire scientists to make something plausible, they just hire an artist and use whatever he comes up with.
2. It's science fiction. It has to look cool, and if you don't know what it does - make something up! (This somewhat ties into 1.)

So, bottom line: Just copy the visual style. You can always find an explanation later and there will still always be some part that you have never mentioned before. That's just how Sci-Fi works... For example, I bet you didn't know that re-routing energy from the secondary transporter backup buffer to the phasers can enhance combat performance - well, neither did Picard before he ordered it. And now Enterprise also has secondary transporter backup buffers as well, how cool is that? Never heard of those before

ventrue said:

I think you should keep two things in mind here:

1. They don't hire scientists to make something plausible, they just hire an artist and use whatever he comes up with.
2. It's science fiction. It has to look cool, and if you don't know what it does - make something up! (This somewhat ties into 1.)

So, bottom line: Just copy the visual style. You can always find an explanation later and there will still always be some part that you have never mentioned before. That's just how Sci-Fi works... For example, I bet you didn't know that re-routing energy from the secondary transporter backup buffer to the phasers can enhance combat performance - well, neither did Picard before he ordered it. And now Enterprise also has secondary transporter backup buffers as well, how cool is that? Never heard of those before

Click to expand...

I always laughed at that in star trek, you can always find a way to Improve something. I love star trek but still. I would like to be in that universe just to give an engineer a paper clip, rubber band and a bottle cap and order him/her to break warp 10 and up shields 500%. And than time it because i know its going to happen lol.

This is an interesting question, but I think you're digging too deep into something that can't really be explained. First of all, the Mjolnir suit is completely fictional, and as such, there's no way to know everything about it. On that note, once again there's no way to know since, in the fictional universe, the Mjolnir powered assault armor is among the greatest achievements and most complicated machine man-kind has built, second only to a faster-than-light engine.

Who knows what exactly is in the dual layered visor or the "M" shaped chin? Whatever is underneath the outer-most shell must require that space and shape. What I'm saying is that when something like this is designed, it usually starts with a pretty good plan. But as the build goes along, problems/issues arise and things have to be added or changed or re-shaped. So it's really impossible to know the "why" behind the details of the suit, which is why (no offense) I think your question is impossible to answer.