Reason to be fat in power armor [sci-fi]

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so I have been playing some Metroid recently and wondered if there could be a good reason why Samus would be fat (other than my preference). I think I have one reason and I want to know if you think it’s a reasonable one.

the fat would be used as a bio-battery.
before I did any type of research I thought this would be a dumb reason. but there could actually be some benefits to it

weight isn’t a huge deal if you have power armor, the biggest factor in how much energy you can store is space. body fat has an energy density of 35 MJ/L (Mega Joules/Liter) and current batteries can have an energy density of 4.32 MJ/L. (I read somewhere that theoretical batteries could be 5x better which fat still beats)

there are also some fish that can produce electricity and apparently the cells that do it are modified muscle cells. so if genetic engineering is a thing then it probably shouldn’t be too difficult to modify some muscle cells into the electrical ones
(and also improve the body’s fat to energy conversion from 22-ish% to something better)

there are more energy dense materials but they have some problems

plutonium is the most energy dense at 1,700,000,000 MJ/L
why you wouldn’t want a nuclear reactor inside your power armor I let you figure out

the densest non nuclear option is boron at 137.8 MJ/L (if you must use traditional fuels , then diesel is the best at just 38.6 MJ/L). I’m assuming you maul it into a powder and burn it (like you would with iron) to get the energy out but I can’t be sure.

what could be problematic is if there is a critical failure in the generator (because you are getting shot at) that might cause an explosion or uncontrolled fire because you are carrying a bunch of fuel and oxygen. the generator itself also creates a lot of heat and pressure, that might make that critical failure more likely to happen. it could also create weak points because (I assume) the heat and pressure needs to go
somewhere for it to function properly.

if that is true then it would mean that the suits with generators need more and bulkier armor for the similar protection. then the fat option would be the quick and nimble armor type for a change, especially if the material the armor is made of is really heavy to begin with.
there is also the added weight of a generator but in the future they can probably be really small and still produce a lot of energy efficiently, but it is something to consider

if you like the idea that being fat is being quick, you could have the generator use a fuel that has a poor energy density by weight relative to fat (38 MJ/kg) like aluminum (31 MJ/kg 83.8 MJ/L) or iron (5.2 MJ/kg 40.7 MJ/L)

I might be under or overestimating the problems with having a generator in the suit. I don’t know enough to say if they work like I think or I am way off. hopefully some of you know better or can see something I haven’t considered.

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Well, science fiction is just that— fiction. If the math for a fat-fueled power armor doesn’t work out, it does not ruin any story or game you’re trying to make. As the author, you have final say over anything you create.

Regardless, I think it’s a very cool concept! You’d probably want to also account for Samus’ eating habits, as power armor would likely chew through her fat at a steadfast pace.

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Being honest with you, power armor isn’t exactly the best idea in general. They’re like mechs; sci-fi would have you believe they are the absolute apex of their field (for mechs its vehicles, for power armor its…well armor), but in reality would be fairly impractical except for a select few areas. Even the best body armor in todays world you cannot withstand pronged fire, at best you might be able to block a few high-caliber shots and that’s it. Not to mention the fact that the armor doesn’t negate the impact of the bullet but rather redistributes it, making what would be a lethal piercing impact into a more blunt impact across whatever section of the body was hit. Another issue is that even if the user wasn’t fat you would struggle to add much armor without impeding the user’s finer movement. If you want the protection of an an armored vehicle on a person, why not just use an armored vehicle? Not only would it have more armor and weapons, but it can move relatively faster, is less complex parts wise, and has more versatility.

This doesn’t mean that the idea is worthless, if the person is going into a riot situation where the most dangerous weapon would be a Molotov Cocktail or a sledgehammer in the hands of a cyborg then the power armor would actually be somewhat viable. In my eyes though, it would be more practical to simply do away with the massive amounts of armor and instead focus on the having exoskeleton carrying more weapons and equipment. Having half a dozen anti-tank rockets on you without being weighed down is more practical than encasing yourself in armor that is hardly effective and impedes movement.

“Weight isn’t a huge deal if you have power armor, the biggest factor in how much energy you can store is space. body fat has an energy density of 35 MJ/L (Mega Joules/Liter) and current batteries can have an energy density of 4.32 MJ/L. (I read somewhere that theoretical batteries could be 5x better which fat still beats)”

Well technically the weight is an issue even if the exoskeleton to also be supporting the weight of the person (which would be more difficult than you think considering that the exoskeleton would have to also be able to dynamically change size to fit the user’s fluctuating weight). Main reason for that is the fatter the person is, the slower you move and the bigger a target you are. Perhaps for something like a long-range arctic mission it would be good given that you have more fuel to work with and bipedal movement is highly efficient when it comes to walking along with having the ability to scale steep or sheer rock faces with the right gear. You do have the right idea about the power source being the trickiest part but I do not really see fat harvesting as the solution. Remember, you are trying to use a body as fuel while said body is still alive and moving…I’m sure you can already see where I am going with this. You would first need a way to harvest said fat (which would likely be extremely complex and/or painful) then also have a generator to turn said fat into energy.

The generator itself also creates a lot of heat and pressure, that might make that critical failure more likely to happen. it could also create weak points because (I assume) the heat and pressure needs to go somewhere for it to function properly.

Yes, thing is a biomass converter or some similar device would likely have the same problems. So you pretty much would be having the same issue but with added problems. Being honest if you REALLY wanted to have fat a viable fuel source, a vehicle would probably be a better option in terms of movement. Even then that would pose issues as well, namely the “fuel source” health since being a gigantic ball of lard unfortunately has a host of issues.

TL;DR: Using living fat as a fuel source COULD work, but it is far more complex than you think. Also power armor is highly impractical for most situations.

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Let’s assume a few things before starting.

  1. this power suit is charged externally with a relatively universal power source

  2. Theoretically, this armor slowly recharges at an insignificant rate due to quantum energy, which may or may not be possible as of yet.

  3. Sci-Fi

Rewinding a bit, let’s assume we have managed to create a metal that is actually bullet proof, and not bullet resistant. I’m thinking a sort of advanced polycarbonate nanotube alloy, with (And I know it’s still theoretical) quantum interlays to bolster both durability and energy repression. Beauty with this armor is that carbon can actually store an effective amount of energy on its own, and with a bio-interface system, you could manage to get sort of energy exchange to function between the suit and human.

I may not be crunching numbers, but given the nature of Carbon, I’m fairly certain you’d be easily capable of maintaining roughly enough energy to last you a few days. In this case, size doesn’t really matter when you consider surface area. Depending on the weight of a person, surface are changes (Obviously). The Increase in material for certain sizes can potentially negate most requirements for energy. This might bring in questions about how you’d need to change the suit depending on size, but there’s a simple solution for that too. Hexagons, the best shape for tiling, is always used in spaceships and airplanes for their mix of flexibility and sturdiness. Make the material hexagonal on a quantumn scale, which carbon tubes do already, and you’ve got yourself a cool new way to apply new, comparatively flexible layers of carbon onto your suit.

Almost forgot heat! Shoot! That’s a simple fix, actually. Given the possibility of sodium potassium, a nearly absolute zero material, I’m absolutely positive the existence of a hyper coolant is within boundaries.

In conclusion, from what I, a person who ponders their entire life can tell, there’s no real difference when it comes to power armor and size, save for target size. If we wanted to be realistic with these results, there indeed would be soldiers on the heavier size, given how good armor on the human body. Soldiers would no longer need to be fit. Not to mention, seeing how Samus is almost always in her suit, I’m betting she’d be pretty chunky with these rules applied.

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@diorite
sure it doesn’t have to make sense but if you ground your stuff in some sort of reality it usually leads to some interesting concepts. like if in a metroidvania everything you did was connected to the same energy pool, it would probably be too brutal but still.

yes, you would have to think about how fast the armor drains the fat (there would be a some big problems to overcome if you drain all the energy in say 5 hours instead of 5 days). there is also how fast you can gain it back. it could be interesting from a story perspective if you could basically only use it for one day and you need a year to “re-fuel” (it would need to be super overpowered too justifie though)

yes, but we could have a potential future where armor manages to catch up to the arms of the day. back in medieval times arms and armor where on relative equal footing (except in terms of price) and there were a lot of armor used.

good armor doesn’t just redistributes it, it also redirects it away from you so it’s more of an glancing blow. blunt impact is still a problem but you can wear padding underneath (just like in medieval times) to help absorb that.

I think most people overestimate how much armor impedes your movement (even Henry the 8ths armor that completely covers you in plate can still move basically like normal, it’s a bit hard to tell in the video because they are pretend fighting in priceless artifacts and don’t want to damage them) . but you don’t need to do super complex movement. as long as you can run, jump and aim your gun/blaster like normal that’s all you need. also if you believe that the armor would be to heavy you could basically give whatever material it’s made out of whatever properties you like. it could be super strong and light, and be so expensive that a smaller suit of armor is more economically viable than a tank.

well in the Metroid games the terrain does have a lot of person high+ ledges to climb and a lot of big pits. I think vehicles without legs would struggle in that type of terrain. there is also the caves and indoor areas that an armored vehicle wouldn’t fit in. vehicles are probably more versatile than the armor in total (mainly with weapons and potential tactics) but I think the armor would be better for traversing rough terrain

outside of a Metroid game setting there is also the fact that in order to occupy a city for example you need boots on the ground. some special forces can probably get some use of it as well.

(relatively faster is a bit of an understatement considering tanks are faster than 50km/h. future ones will probably have an average top speed higher than the fastest ones today)

it would excel at these types of situations (it is basically the same situation you used medieval armor in). the only real reason you wouldn’t is if the armor cost the same as a tank, you would probably struggle to fit 50+ tanks into the budget.

I don’t think it would be that hard actually. there are points that wouldn’t change much (hands, feet, head and neck) that you can use as a type of base. the skeleton doesn’t have to support the person inside, just mimic their movements. it would use information on where the bases are and how a human body can move to figure out most of how it should move, the rest can be done with some simple sensors. if there is a bunch of empty space between it and the person inside doesn’t matter. the only parts that need some support are the hands and feet since that is the part of the body that will interact with the rest of the world.

that is why I brought up the fish that can produce electricity and the idea of genetically engineering the person using the armor. the body is probably way better at converting bio-energy into electricity than a machine would be. the fish also use the electricity to zap other fish so you can probably make the discharging painless.

I do agree that power armor would probably rarely be used and there would probably be better fuels invented. you can make the universe in a way where it would be more likely to happen. though the price of less realism for fatties in power armor is pretty cheap if you ask me.

@Errornulll
I’m not completely sure I understand how the armor works, but it is more in the vein of making the person in the armors fatness not matter, right? it would probably be easier to justify rather than making it actually good like I tried to.

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There is always the possibility of, instead of using the body as the armor’s main/secondary power source, using the body as an emergency power bank.

For instance, instead of relying solely on thick, impenetrable armor to keep the user protected (which might be heavy or otherwise unwieldy), the power armor/mech suit could instead have some sort of field that redirects/collects the kinetic energy of an incoming projectile, causing it the projectile bounce off harmlessly and the energy to either charge the suit or be ejected by some means if the main power storage is full.

Alternatively, if the incoming projectiles are either too large, powerful, or plentiful for the system to reliably redirect the projectiles or eject the surplus power, the suit’s defense field could go to its tertiary method of getting rid of the energy that takes advantage of the “safest” form of energy storage in the suit: Empty Calories. The suit could have a system where, if all else fails and it is absorbing too much energy (kinetic or otherwise) it could activate a system that converts all surplus power into fat on its user. This can serve two purposes:

A) Mainly, to keep the suit from burning itself out and

B) To inform the user that the suit is no longer able to protect the user’s health in as literal a manner as possible.

Of course, once the power ejection system is no longer being overloaded by heavy fire, the system can move to yet another function: Ejecting the secondary power reserves and slowly replacing them with any of the fat that the user didn’t initially have. This could be considered a more delicate process, making it slower than the previous function, and (for safety reasons, of course) the process will cease once the user is at the weight that they were the last time they entered the suit and the suit will return to normal functioning.

Honestly, this process probably makes less scientific sense than other suggestions. But I feel like it makes a bit more sense than using fat as the main battery of a mech.

As a side note, I personally would not make power armor that fattens its user, as that would get very tightly packed very quickly. Instead, I would use a Mech Suit with a cockpit, as that would give the user room to grow.

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that is an interesting take on how shields can work. I personally don’t like them usually because it feels kinda like a hand wavey way of why people can be shot but not die (less so in a base that can have a huge power supply). it does fit in a gamey sort of way where hp-packs and heal stations could be something to dump the excess energy into. regening hp would make sense too since excess energy could be turned into heat. (it would be funny to see someone instead of flying away from some massive attack just absorb it and get really fat instead)

converting energy into fat could work because an electrical generator is in principal just an electrical engine. so if you spin the rotor on an engine you get a current (I also ones saw someone put a current through a solar panel and it emitted infrared or ultraviolet light). if that principal is the same for cells that make electricity they might be able to convert electricity into something the body can use.

another thing is that gunpowder has a much lower energy density than fat (3-6x lower than fat depending on quality). so even if someone came with 300kg of gunpowder and shot you with that you would gain a manageable 100kg.

you would probably want something flexible instead of armor. it could be an option for a Zero Suit Samus type thing.

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Going a bit off of the original topic of this thread here, apologies for that.

Yeah, shields are inherently a hand wavey concept in science fiction. In fact, I’m pretty sure one of the main reasons they became so common in sci-fi was because having them can save money on special effects in shows and movies. That said, I do feel like there is potential in having a field that can somehow absorb and convert kinetic energy rather than using the traditional “We can make a wall of energy. The more energy we have the tougher the wall can be” energy shields that are more commonly seen. Especially since such a shield presents a danger far worse than just running out of power for your shields in the form of overloading your power supply. While you could deactivate the system if there is too much power feeding out of it, there is always the possibility that enough firepower could very quickly cause an overload or discharge of the power supply. Though that could be counteracted by the use of the energy-to-fat system I talked about above.

This concept could lead to a bunch of other implementations that could be far better applied in other fields than just power armor. In space, for instance, heat is a very big problem. So if you could have some sort of system that can absorb excess heat and convert it (at least temporarily) into another more easily stored form of energy that can either be used later or put into some sort of battery that can be dumped into space if the ship is desperate (like how a lot of heat from a bullet leaves the gun when the casing is ejected).

To go a bit further off topic temporarily, you should also consider the offensive technology being used as well, as that will be heavily influenced by the defensive technologies in use. For example, if the standard method of protection being used are the energy absorbing shields I’ve been talking about, there would only be two really good ways to counteract that.

  1. Make a weapon that can hit a target so hard that the shields can’t absorb enough energy to weaken the attack enough to stop it from penetrating the armor (Which, throughout history, has been the traditional way to break through defenses)

  2. Fire many smaller projectiles that have just enough energy to be a threat if the shield doesn’t stop them from hitting the armor at full power. Then, keep firing until the target’s shields overload and either shut down or discharge.

The second concept is going to be the one I talk about here, since the first one has a pretty straightforward solution (More armor and better shields).

In order to keep the batteries from being overloaded or overheated, frying the vessel (ship, mech, power armor, tank, etc.) and whatever may be inside her, there would need to be some sort of battery system inside the vessel that can absorb all the energy that is coming its way. The best battery for the job would be a battery that effectively has no capacity limit aside from the space limitations of whatever it is contained in. For the purposes of the logic of the fetish that we so very much enjoy partaking in, this would make the crew of the vessel an obvious choice for an emergency absorption battery.

An absorption system in which the crew of a vessel (be it anything from a single one-manned mech suit to a space battleship) would effectively be invulnerable to firepower as long as the energy being handled by the system does not exceed the rate which energy could be converted to mass, or as long as the crew is still able to perform their combat duties.

While this does feel like it would make most fights just a battle of two targets firing at the other until one of them gets a Sticky Keys alert (which honestly sounds pretty boring to me), it could also potentially make war a bit less terrible. For one, the chances of someone dying in a battle between two warships would probably sink dramatically, as the goal of fights would no longer be to destroy the opposing vessel. Rather, immobilizing the crew of a vessel and capturing it could become the new method of fighting.

On the other hand, another strategy could be splitting the fight into two phases, at least for starships and other large shielded vehicles. The first stage could be the same as what was described above, and is influenced by how many crew members and passengers are currently hooked into the power system, as well as each ship’s firepower and defensive capabilities. The second stage comes when the vital crew of one side’s ships are no longer capable of operating the ship due to being too fat. The ship that has won the first stage of the battle then attempts to attach to the immobilized ship once they are certain that it has been rendered unable to fight (Either because it sends out a message stating that they surrender or because the ship has stopped firing/maneuvering). There are three ways that this could go. First, if the entire crew of the defeated vessel was used up and immobilized, the other ship could send their own crew members to secure the ship. Alternatively, the defeated ship could have kept some crew unplugged from the system to act as a final line of defense. This could result in the boarding action becoming a fight over who gets what ship, which could even end favorably for the defeated ship since it’d be more likely that the crew that remains unplugged will be in better physical shape than the boarding party, which could result in the ship that won the beginning of the fight being captured itself.

Of course, none of this accounts for AI, War Crimes, or any sort of automation, but it’s an interesting thought on how a WG Sci-Fi could handle combat.

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no need to apologize it is close enough to the topic and also interesting.

there is actually a third option. it is more viable against people over ships but you could immobilize the target with handcuffs or nets. if you really want to lean into the capture the enemy angle you could make wealth disparity super big. then if you have captured someone important then you can ransom them off for a large sum of money. you could also make the shields so effective that capturing people is basically the only option. there could also be relatively common for people to put bounties on each other.

I mean the fights can be as fun or boring as you want them to be. since the shields works similarly to an hp bar in a game you can ether have fights where two people takes turns biffing each other in the face or make fights like in a fighting game. you could also make it so that there is more of a time element where you sort of need to do burst damage or keep a steady streams of good hits.

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you know going off the same thought. maybe the same Fat to fuel could be used in other ways. maybe for vehicles. or power plants. maybe not something like city wide but like for a camp or personal house. like a mobile generator. I mean if you had one to charge a exosuit/powerarmor it would likely be better as a mobile generator.

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Alright thank you for clarifying that. Just thought we were going with a future where weapons progress faster than armor like with today’s world

That is true but even then you do still have to worry about the impact. Padding only does so much to absorb the impact and there’s a reason why people get broken ribs with body armor, you can only do so much to redirect the impact and most of it will still be on you.

I probably should have clarified that when I thought “power armor” I was thinking of the power armor from Fallout and while yes fine movement is not necessarily required it is still something great to have. Especially given battlefields where there are a multitude of weapons that can tear through tank armor with ease or for certain tasks like EOD. Also in terms of economic viability, a tank on paper is more expensive and is in practice, but the thing is their parts are cheaper overall and require less maintenance than the sophisticated power armor that has tons of very fragile and delicate internal parts.

I did bring up the mobility advantage in my paragraph “bipedal movement is highly efficient when it comes to walking along with having the ability to scale steep or sheer rock faces with the right gear.” So I do agree that the urban/terrain advantage is a key advantage with powered armor and I do agree with the fact that you need boots on the ground to control a location, at least with modern day technology and tactics. Also with that speed thing, I figured the powered armor would provide a significant speed boost as well given all the extra power.

I don’t really understand what you mean by this, could you please clarify it some more?

Well don’t forget the arms, legs, belly, and chest all bulge outwards quite considerably with all the added fat. If you were going with a fully enclosed suit of power armor like Metroid or Fallout not only would it be extremely hard to squeeze all that fat inside but it would also provide physical stress on both the user and the suit since the person is effectively being squeezed into a tighter space than they should be and the suit since there is an internal force pushing out.

I sincerely apologize, I completely overlooked that part. I thought you were just talking about regular fat. But I do think that with something like that the idea of the fat battery makes far more sense due to the electric energy going directly to the suit instead of the suit having to process the chemical energy and turn it into electrical energy. In that case I think it would actually be a fairly viable source of fuel given that you don’t need a reactor or generator onboard but instead a fatter individual hooked up to a cable of some sort. Would make maintenance less of a pain since you have to worry about the connection between the suit and the person rather than a downsized reactor or engine.

Well that’s the fun part about fiction, it can be what you want. I was just pointing out some of the realism aspects of it in hopes of giving you some insight as to the challenges of it, especially considering some ingenious ideas that can come out from it (like with your organic electricity idea) and given how some people favor having some sense of realism even if some of the finer details are deliberately overlooked for the sake of fun and story.

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I know this is REALLY of off-topic but the more armor and shields thing is exactly why plate armor fell out of style when firearms got better, you would need way more armor than you could realistically wear on your person to defend against said firearms. So adding more armor and shields would just be a repeat of that exact event.

A better way to go about defending against something that relies on a single large projectile would be to redirect it away from the target, disable it before its able to penetrate the target, or to destroy it mid flight.

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You are right, when I said “Better armor and better shields” I meant it in the sense that in the sense of not just having stronger shields (and armor), but also better types of shields (ie deflecting shields) and active defense measures (such as CIWS and what you described), rather than just passive measures like armor.

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The fundamental problem with armor is that it’s easier to make (and carry) a bigger gun than it is to make armor capable of stopping said gun. If you can overcome this issue, I’d say armor’s right back on the table. For centuries, bows were maxed out at what a human could draw, so it was feasible to make armor to defeat arrows. Crossbows changed this dynamic somewhat, and firearms totally blew it away.

As for why someone who wears it would get fat, I’d flip the question around. Assuming custom-fitted armor, getting fat would be a huge problem, which makes for good storytelling. Maybe Samus hasn’t been on a mission in a while, but she’s still been eating like the super-soldier she is. Trying to find room for a bit of extra bounty hunter in an unforgiving suit sounds like fun to me.

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@Silent_Songs
I don’t think you would use this to power vehicles or your house because what makes the fat fuel good (compact,safe fuel,no emissions/pressure/exhaust, convenient fuel “tank”) isn’t big upsides. in a vehicle or off grid house having a convenient fuel source is more important and getting a bunch of food to turn into fat is pretty cumbersome compared to just getting some diesel (I guess on a candy planet fat fuel would be better). I can see it for camping more since the “generator” and fuel would be really convenient to carry
and fat is relatively similar to diesel in terms of energy to weight and size. “fueling up” would be less of an issue since you start in a place with lots of resources and you are not gonna"refuel" while camping

that is true. you could have the absorb shield thing under the armor. you probably need to give the shield some inefficiencies (say 50% can be absorbed and the rest still kicks you) for it to be used with armor as well.

I was basically thinking that the hypothetical material was so expensive that all other expenses are negligible in comparison. then it would be cheaper to produce the smaller armor. (also a tank can be less expensive because you can easier get economies of scale compared to custom made armor)

of course but I think that you can only push the human body so far even with assistance. actually apparently Usain Bolt runs at 44 km/h so you can maybe run twice as fast before the person inside breaks.

a riot situation is more of a police stations job to handle rather than the army and the police have a tighter budged. you also can’t just kill the rioters so you need more people to control the situation. also the armor would mostly not be used since riots are (hopefully) rare but you would still need to have some maintenance of it. not to mention that armor needs to be at least somewhat customized to the person using it. so yeah, if the armor is really expensive the police would probably invest in something like riot shields and some more basic armor

you would make the armor/skeleton in the size of XXXL and when you get slimmer there is just extra room inside because the skeleton is what is carrying the armor. also the way I imagine you put on the armor is in pieces (instead of like Fallout where you walk in the back). so you start with the skeleton and put the armor pieces on one at a time (like medieval armor) so you can have more parts that open and close.

which was the point of even posting the idea. my defenses of the idea is more for other people if they want to use it and also get the follow up. as I said before if you keep your stuff somewhat grounded you usually get some interesting problems or solutions.

naw mate, just suck in your belly and push really hard, you will get in there ez

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With a material that expensive it would likely be more practical just to invest in better weapons instead. Besides unlike the powered armor the tank can have far more space to put armor along with having options like explosive or electromagnetic reactive armor. You could get the same amount of protection the experimental/expensive material at only a fraction of the cost.

After a certain point the impact of the feet rapidly hitting the ground with enough force to run at that speeds would like cause sprains or even full on bone breaking. In fact running tracks are often padded since running on completely solid ground like concrete for prolonged periods of time can cause permanent damage. So depending on the person’s mass and bone density/structure, they could very easily suffer leg damage before even getting close to Usain’s speed.

Well just because it’s powered armor doesn’t necessarily mean it has to use lethal weapons. Flashbang launchers, pepper spray cannons, adaptable rubber bullet guns (change air pressure to ensure non-lethal and non-scarring damage at different ranges), hell if you really wanted to just give them amped up paintball guns. However I do see what you mean about the armor issue.

That sounds like a massive pain to deal with but it does make sense. It decreases unit cost and complexity since you don’t have to worry about hydraulics for the back entrance, however that comes at the cost of taking longer to suit up and the possibility that the individual sections may fall off if not properly secured due to poor training.

Ah nice, also that’s one of the reasons why I like keeping the fiction “realistic” or at the very least logical.

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you could have some shock absorbents in the soles of the shoes. I don’t know how big the soles can be and not become too awkward though. you could also put a furry that has feet made for running rather than climbing trees in there.

well there are no solutions only trade-offs. but it taking longer to get ready isn’t such a big deal in the specialized situations that the armor would be good at I think.
since the armor does have some electronics in it you could put some sort of sensor that can tell you if the armor was put on properly if it becomes an issue

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