DOV-II "Grizzly" Hardsuit

The DOV-II Hardsuit is the current medium mechanized hardsuit model employed by the Imperium's Marines and other special forces.


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The DOV-II, lovingly nicknamed the "Grizzly" by its pilots and the Imperial Marine groups they're attached to, is a tank on legs. Its duralloy-titanium armor and light ray shielding makes the hardsuit virtually immune to small arms fire, while its heavy armament can dish out enough to annihilate enemy infantry and cripple light vehicles.

The Grizzly was designed as a fire support and heavy shock infantry unit, capable of lending troops on foot a hand in clearing out and dispatching groups of enemy infantry, breaking through fortified positions, and eliminating the threat of enemy vehicle support. It can also operate independent of infantry, working in small divisions of hardsuited Marines to work toward specific goals.

The DOV-II Grizzly's predecessor, the original DOV Medium Hardsuit which gained notoriety for its use in the Velonnian Civil War, set the standard for the roles the MSI's medium hardsuits would fill in later years. Unlike the original DOV hardsuit, which was designed as an all-purpose combat unit, the Grizzly is specifically geared toward a specific task as a support unit for small groups of Marines in tight-quarters environments, something the first DOV Hardsuit excelled at and the Grizzly now does even better. This role predominantly extends to urban and ship-board combat, fields that the Grizzly dominates.

In spite of this single-role mindset used in its development, the DOV-II model was also built to be as adaptable as it could be without sacrificing what was needed for its main role.
The Grizzly is extremely modular, allowing for most of its components to be swapped for mission-specific equipment, upgraded, or easily replaced if damaged.
The Grizzly is also was built for drop pod compatibility, allowing it to be deployed quickly and independently to battlefield hotspots and making for easy ship boardings.
Other new features include improved armor, hardened electronics, vastly improved pilot controls that allow for better multi-tasking, new manipulator arms, a more extensive sensor system to give the pilot a better view of his surroundings, additional weapon and equipment hardpoints, an integrated sublight comms transceiver, a multi-AI processing system for superior coordination, and a higher-output power core.



The Grizzly's standard armament consists of two fire-linked MPC-47 15mm Pulser Autocannons with in-built secondary ABM/b-5 Light Repeating Laser Cannons.

After much debate over an ideal armament, projectile weapons were decided on for the Grizzly's main weapon so as to conserve power, reduce heat build-up, and give it a better chance at knocking out enemy vehicles that may use ray-shielding to stop energy weapons.

Initially designers were in favor of equipping the Grizzly with a coilgun, giving it a very high muzzle velocity and thus dramatically improving penetration while using less power and ammunition. However it was later decided that a weapon with a high fire rate would be preferred in case the anti-infantry repeating laser cannons that were set up for it overheated or failed, thus allowing the heavier projectile weapon to serve as a secondary anti-personnel weapon. Thus the MPC-47 Pulser was designed and equipped on the Grizzly.

the MPC-47 was also chambered for an unusually low 15mm round, as opposed to the medium 23mm round that MPC-45 Pulsers used. Aside from requiring less power to run the pulser, the smaller caliber round sports a dramatically higher muzzle velocity than the 23mm, increasing firing range, with only a 10% total loss in kinetic energy.

The MPC-47 also carries over the burst-fire system from the '45, except increased the total round count from 2 to 5 rounds per burst. An improved feed system also allowed for the weapon's maximum fire rate to be increased from 2,200 RPM to 3,500 RPM, and it was certainly taken advantage of.
As a result, the full 5-round burst can be fired off in a fraction of a second, maintaining flawless accuracy on a single point for all five rounds.
Because both of the Grizzly's MPC-47s are fire-linked, this adds up to ten shot hit almost the exact spot on a target, with a projectile spread of no more than two inches at its 600m max effective range.
Due to this tight focus of its ten-round bursts, as well as its high muzzle velocity and the armor-piercing rounds that are usually equipped, a burst can penetrate up to 7 inches of duralloy-titanium composite armor.

When circumstances call for the MPC-47s to be used for other tasks, the pulsers can be set to full auto, with non-custom fire rates including semi-automatic, then 500, 800, and 2,000 RPM. Each MPC-47 is equipped with a 930-round-capacity, allowing for 186 bursts in its cyclic fire mode, or ~70 seconds' sustained fire in its medium fire rate. Low power requirements, as well as an extensive cooling system, also mean that the pulser never needs to worry about overheating or overtaxing the Grizzly's power systems.

The MPC-47's semi-integrated ABM/b-5 repeating lasers were equipped to give the Grizzly a good anti-personnel weapon. While some debated whether it could be called a "laser cannon" due to its low stopping power, which is more comparable to small arms blasters than a vehicle-mounted laser cannon, it was decided that its good steady fire rate of 750 RPM compensated for that. In spite of this, it overheats quickly, lacking its pulser counterpart's super-efficient cooling systems and having greater heat buildup.

Other armament options exist as well for the Grizzly. The MPC-47's body is modular and allows for other weapon systems, such as the alternative anti-vehicle coilgun that was first proposed, or a variety of energy weapons in place of the ABM/b-5s.



The Grizzly's control interface was subjected to very thorough design criticism over and over again to ensure that it was streamlined yet adaptable to the pilot's needs. Due to a hardsuit's need for the pilot to have a high level of control over his vehicle, which is more comparable to a giant suit of armor than a traditional combat vehicle, developing an interface that allows for both quick action times and high adaptability to different situations is paramount.

The pilot controls the bulk of the Grizzly's movements and actions through a pair of control sticks, one in each hand. The left hand controls the vehicle's direction, while the right hand aims the fire-linked weapons. Foot pedals, meanwhile, control other key functions, such as movement speed. The pilot is given a large variety of other uses for these basic features as well, though. The two sets of joysticks and pedals can instead be set to exclusively control the legs, allowing for more complex movements than the pre-programmed movement pattern uses. Also, both sticks can be set to control each weapon independently, useful for when mobility isn't necessary whereas tracking multiple targets is.
The cockpit is also equipped with a helpful holographic control interface, which can project additional controls three-dimensionally and vary them depending on what's requested by the pilot.

Finally, the Grizzly utilizes eight independent AIs that assist in running the hardsuit, controlling functions such as the targeting computer, sensors, auto-managing the weapons or legs when the pilot is handling the other, power output, the manipulator arms, and so on.


Download LDD file: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Ariklego/Models/dov_hardsuit_posing.lxf



*A tank crushes its way through the Fourth Wall, and I hop out of the tank*

Well, this is actually a really old model. I started the DOV Hardsuit project two years and eleven months ago, which makes it one of my longest (if not the longest) running projects I've ever completed. It's my third Hardsuit, with the previous two being utter junk, so I'm extremely happy to have finished this one finally.
Over the course of building it, I'd also totally forgotten what the "DOV" acronym I gave it stood for. So then I made a new one for it 'cuz I couldn't remember. ...I've repeated that process about four times since, and right now am still coming up with a new one because I've forgotten again. Sooo I'll get back to you guys on that.

And the photos and description are still "works in progress". Don't have the time right now to do everything, but I'll get to it.

Arik, that thing is BEAUTIFUL!!! And VERY scary. I LOVE it! GREAT work! It was worth the wait.

Wow. This is one of the most beautiful small-scale MOCs I've seen in quite a while. Seriously. It's amazing. I really love the small arms that can extend or retract. The lower legs feel a little too big and the feet actually feel a tiny bit on the small side, I feel like they probably need to extend a little bit more in the front, just by like a plate or two. Also, it'd be pretty sweet if you made various weapons packs for this, like an Anti-Air pack, Anti-Armor, Anti-Personnel, Boarding Party, etc.

Dino: Thanks




J-Red: I can see that with the legs/feet. Though really the only way to make the legs thinner is to take off the 2x2 grey dish pieces on them, and they look pretty blocky after that. So that'll take some experimentation first. ...I'll make the feet a bit bigger, though.


    The retractable mini-arms are a new thing, glad you like them. Normally hardsuits like this just use ordinary big arms, and then for weaponry have guns that they hold onto with said hands.
     However that often isn't the best of options, as articulated hands are highly sensitive and fragile, and often have very little strength behind them.
     Whereas you can mount bigger weapons if you just swap the entire arm for one big gun instead of making one small enough to be held by a hand, and it's also much more adaptable.
     The tricky thing about swapping the entire arm for a gun is that, while it's more effective overall, it... well, leaves the Mech without hands. Which, unlike with larger Mechs who don't have any need for hands, is pretty serious for a small hardsuit that's basically supposed to move and function like a person would normally, which includes pick up things and stuff.
     Anyway, it's technically not my idea. I saw this Mech here a long while ago and stole the mini-arms from it for the Grizzly. http://7-themes.com/data_images/out/61/6978775-fiddler-mech-warrior.jpg

Sure, I'll go ahead with that. My Mech-building style (which is basically outright stolen from somebody else ) is well-suited for modular construction, and swapping out components is nice and easy. I've also got a couple potential mounting points for additional weapons built in already, so that's not much trouble. I'll see what I can do.

Ooo, this is cool! The little orange highlights pop well against that grey. Those joints too, those look suitably workable. I do second JR's suggestion of weapon packs too, but some Titanfall-esque mega guns could work... I dunno, so many ways to go about it.

Nikolo: Yes, with the MSI's "standard"-ish colors, I FINALLY have an excuse to steal the orange highlights from the Mech builder whom I've already stolen all my Mech aesthetics and building techniques from. You can take a look here to see what I mean: http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/288862
...Though I'll be trying out some camo-ish paint jobs for my vehicles in the near future, just to make them a bit more original (and hey, never hurts to have camouflage).

I could try something like that, though, as stated previously:

Lord Admiral Ariklego wrote:    ...Normally hardsuits like this just use ordinary big arms, and then for weaponry have guns that they hold onto with said hands.
     However that often isn't the best of options, as articulated hands are highly sensitive and fragile, and often have very little strength behind them.
     Whereas you can mount bigger weapons if you just swap the entire arm for one big gun instead of making one small enough to be held by a hand, and it's also much more adaptable.

...I'm gonna go for a more "built-in" method of having weapons. I'll look into Titanfall's weapon selection though and maybe try building some for it, though, and I might even build a variant of the hardsuit with actual arms and hands for the fun of it.

If you can figure out the shoulders, you should totally build a four armed hardsuit. Two harms with hands, two with built in cannons, and then upper/outer shoulder mounted hardpoints.

Love the mech, but I need more pictures. Love the description, I highly appreciate a long well thought out well written description.

I had more to say here, but I forgot it before I started this post.

*is still waiting for more pics*

This looks really good, Arik. Honestly I'm not sure what to say, because I've likely already said it about one of your other works - they're all (as usual) of a very high quality. And I see you're already enjoying being able to use the pulser weapons technology.

Bump!

I finally (two months later ) got around to cracking out my photo-editing skills. The main picture's up, and I'll look into getting more done too, as well as making specs for it.

Ah, you've finally updated the file; very good to see. I'm not a huge fan of the legs, but i do like the rest of the model; combined with the description, it gives a very good Space-Marine-Dreadnought-type feel, which I like.