Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander
So if there might be a SCA armourer, CNC/CAD technician/machinist, mechanical or industrial engineer or someone with some other background providing him with the skills to build medieval-esque armour incorporating modern ballistic protection who allowed his intellectual passion for the project to entice him to a life of crime... well, let's just say that I wouldn't say no.
Especially if he might be a Ukrainian or other Eastern European armourer/machinist/engineer/designer with legal problems back home, which explains why he was ready to jump into the unknown like that. His skill set might also work for less fanciful welding, machining or design work, like making improvised APCs out of trucks, which is genuinely a thing cartels do.
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The US Army has experimented with high-end 3D printing for vehicle spare parts in the field, and has found those capabilities useful for field-expedient modifications. So someone fired from one of those units for discovering new forms of corruption enabled by technology, or someone from an Eastern European equivalent that shut down for lack of budget, might suit. They'd have good vehicle mechanic and machinist skills, CAD/CNC/3D-printing skills, and general military engineer skills. They'd also have a good background for learning Armoury (Body Armour)/TL8, and would have a default from Machinist/TL8.
Put them together with someone enthusiastic about medieval armour, and you could get a lot of progress quite fast. An obvious thing to add at TL8 is some kind of active cooling system, to negate the extra FP costs for fighting in hot weather (B.426). Something else is a better shock-absorbing system than cloth, to reduce blunt trauma damage. The 3e version of
High-Tech, p104, has a suit of medieval-style armour made of modern steel (but not this really fancy AR-500 stuff) with air-cushion padding, which seems a plausible idea.