[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Wavefunction

What would the stats be if you used Arachnoweave as the ballistic fabric instead of improved Kevlar?

From the looks of things, the shear thickening fluid (which is probably the bulk of the armor's weight) has comparable - but possibly a bit better - protection to arachnoweave. I'd probably go with a WM of 0.025, 110 DR/in (MaxDR 55), and CM of $710. The lower the proportion of STF, however, the better these stats are going to get.

Originally Posted by Wavefunction

Next question: In Ultra-Tech the concealable ballistic vests at TL9 are actually inferior to High-Tech's concealable vest (DR 12/4* versus D12/5*, same weight). Sure it states that the major advance at TL9 is limb armour, but the vest shouldn't actually get worse. What would you recommend changing to bring these in line/what am I missing?

Honestly, I'd ignore the UT and HT armors and just design things using the Pyramid article. UT has a lot of issues involved with it already, and HT, as noted, didn't really get into the specifics of partial protection (pretty much all modern armor gives only partial protection).

Originally Posted by Wavefunction

Then we've got High-Tech Advanced Body Armor with its DR 35/5*, the 35 applying to everything but crushing. It's heavy sure, but it's concealable, unlike any of the Tactical Vests in Ultra-Tech, and provides more DR. I assume the answer to what's going on here is going to involve trauma plates, as well as a little excessive generosity on the part of the authors when making those stats.

The ABA is based on Pinnacle Armor's Dragon Skin - more specifically, it's based on the previously-claimed (and now-disputed) statements on how well the armor performed. Dragon Skin is actually something like Improved Ceramic scale armor (not allowed by the article, but should be doable, as should plate inserts - the various Ceramics should probably be R/S, not Solid; I should note here that the CW of scale is inconsistent with LT, and should probably be 1.6 instead of 1.1), possibly built something like a jazerant inside of Improved Kevlar or Improved Ballistic Fiber (the actual Dragon Skin armor apparently uses non-ballistic textile, some sort of glass fiber, but I don't see why you couldn't/wouldn't use something better). Looking at Wikipedia, 0.83 sf of Level III protection (DR 35 vs Pi) weighs 6.4 lb, for a functional WM of 0.22. As it's basically just the ceramic, adjusting for the 1.6 CW of scale means an actual WM of 0.1375 - which is probably close enough to the 0.15 of TL 8 Improved Ceramic. DR 35 is too high to be concealable, however - you'd need to drop it to 22 for that (even TL9 ceramic can only give you up to DR 33 with concealable armor).