[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

But is the +3CF for bronze plate justified? A good portion (i.e., presumably a higher portion than in relatively-easy-to-make armor like scale or segmented) of the base cost of plate armor is "labor" rather than "parts" (not to mention the mark-up in price for having to use high-quality steel when making large plates rather than the decent-quality iron one can get away with in most armor), and, even if I were willing to grant that crafting bronze plate armor is no easier than equivalent steel, I categorically refuse to believe that it is significantly harder or more labor intensive.

On plate, which is $125/lb, the +3 CF calls for bronze to cost around $375/lb, which seems pretty excessive. On scale, which is around $20/lb, the +3 CF calls for bronze to cost around $60/lb. That's a rather massive discrepancy. With GURPS' default of $62.50/lb for copper, the former calls for tin to cost around $3200/lb (assuming ~10% tin content) which is... quite high. The latter calls for tin to be a bit cheaper than copper. A simple +$n/lb works better. How much n is would depend on the price of bronze, and the cost of iron. Using the LTC3 Classical Mediterranean price point of $18/lb for copper and $122/lb for tin (so $28.40/lb for bronze with 10% tin), and $7/lb for the iron, making armor out of bronze would be roughly +$20/lb. If bronze instead cost $77/lb (something like the default $62.50 for copper and then $207.5/lb for tin), that would instead make it +$70/lb. Ideally, the costs for all items would be separated into materials and labor, and each could be adjusted up and down depending on various factors. Using bronze would increase material costs but possibly reduce labor costs (bronze is apparently easier to work with), making armor Tailored or a weapon Balanced would have no impact on material cost but would boost labor cost, making Hardened Steel armor or a Fine weapon would boost both material cost (they call for higher-quality starting materials) and labor cost (they are harder to make), and so forth. Such a system would be... difficult to work out, and probably more crunchy than GURPS 4e's design goals would allow for. I tried my hand a bit at making one, but never really made something satisfactory. An interesting thing I noted was that, with armor made from extremely expensive materials (spider silk, various flavors of fantastic metals, etc), the various weight-reducing enhancements - tailoring, fluting, etc - could actually cause the armor to cost less.