Oops, better make that Battle Dress...
Battle Dress, depending on how you conceptually look at it, could be the
easiest or the hardest to crossfit. I'm not sure what MT says about it, but
I basically take the view that Battle Dress is the ultimate form of an armored
exoskeleton (in GURPS Space, for example, the first varieties of powered armor
are powered exoskeletons married to an armored vacc suit -- such a combination
is ugly and clumsy, but it is a primitive form of Battle Dress). At each TL
past introduction (I would put the armored exoskeleton at TL8), the exoskeleton
becomes lighter and faster. The armor of the suit improves with lighter and
stronger materials coming out, and new electronic toys are added for combat.
Eventually, it becomes a gracefull and deadly weapon. Now, following this
evolution, Battle Dress would be easy to crossmatch. Its more like driving a
car than wearing a suit of plate armor. Still, one suit of battle dress won't
fit everyone, but it will cover a wide range of body sizes. Also, custom
fitting doesn't make sense, to a point; why spend nearly a quarter of a million
credits on armor that only one person can wear without major modification? It
simply isn't cost efficient (whether for the Third Imperium in it's peak, fall,
or for the early Fourth Imperium). I know this goes against what I said about
battle dress in last night's post, and I apologize for that; I just had to
think on the topic a little longer.
Combat armor, unlike battle dress, needs to fit more precisely, since it is
more like old body armor. However, as someone pointed out (though perhaps not
regarding combat armor), you could make the combat armor in a piece-meal
fashion. For example, the stormtrooper armor in Star Wars (not a very effective
version of combat armor, though) consists of about 20 or so individual sections
which interlock over a black thermal body suit to form a complete protective
suit. A person could wear combat armor fitted for someone else, but it would
probably not be very comfortable. However, as combat armor is fairly cheap with
regards to battle dress (1/10th, I think), such limitations would not be as
bad.
The emergency vacc suit I had in mind was one with arms, legs, and a head, one
that you could actually walk (waddle?) in. A vaccum-safe version of a survival
bubble is okay, but somtimes not adequate.
With regards to a special skill with regards to repairing battle dress: don't
do it! Aside from the specific weapon skills in old Traveller (before the days
of Mercenary and High Guard), I can think of no other really specific skills.
In a game like Traveller where characters tend to get a very few general skills
for their age, it seems contrary to the spirit of the game to use specialized
skills. A combination of mechanic, electronic, and perhaps the battle dress
skill at some minus (-1 or -2) would do. You could even use the 'repair
defaults from weapon' idea -- it seems plausable that someone with Combat
Rifleman-5 would be able to do at least rudementary repairs on a damaged rifle.
Also, from a game balance view (I hate to use arguments like this...),
characters get very few skills -- forcing them to be specialists will tend to
make characters useless for most situations they face (anyone rememebr the old
'walking medic' stereotype of clerics in AD&D, where they were only trotted out
if someone needs to be healed or if undead needed to be turned?). General
skills keep the players involved more, because it means that each character
will be useful more often.