Star Wars Stormtroopers in Real Armor [Ultratech]

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Rupert

If the lining is just a thin skin suit, you wouldn't use a blaster, you'd use a gauss rifle or conventional rifle.

I’m pretty certain SW blasters are canonically superior to their slugthrowers, and those have a minimum Rcl 2 as well, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. About the only case an equivalent slugthrower would be superior in this case is if the body glove’s DR is sufficient to be a problem and is better against burn than pi.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

What grenades are they using?e.

What civilian underbarrel grenade launchers were you thinking of? :)

When you decide to fight the military, military weapons are what you decide to fight them with and the weapon control laws are the first casualty.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

Another piece of evidence from the Disney canon in favor of normal armor being pretty useless is that the armor that actually does block blaster bolts (whats-her-face's silver armor from the movies, beskar from The Mandalorian) is a big deal.

Maybe the difference is that stormtrooper armor is meant to stop shots beyond the 1/2D range (up to Max) whereas Besker's silver armor is strong enough to stop shots at close range where they do full damage?

Originally Posted by Rupert

They have DR100 on their Torso and DR60 on their limbs

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sto..._armor/Legends mentions "The breastplate was the strongest part of the armor"

Instant Armor 16 mentions "armor that covers only half of a location
(e.g., “front only,” like a breastplate)" derived from B284 ("breastplates protect only from the front.") so we might want to consider that as a limitation? The back portion of plate armor covering torso is called a backplate? (closest I can otherwise find is "culet" protecting lower back) and collectively they can be referred to as a cuirass.

B283's Bronze Breastplate / Steel Breastplate are listed as "Torso" rather than "Torso,Groin" like the Corselets, so we know it's not actually the ENTIRE torso despite B399 describing Groin as "lower torso". Groin is made a sublocation of the "abdomen" in low tech, so I would assume breast plates at best only protect SOME of the abdomen rather than all of it. Maybe just the digestive tract and vitals but not the groin/pelvis.

I'm wondering if maybe breast/chest plates should be chest-only rather than entire-torso, excluding the abdomen. Apparently a "fauld" was added to breastpates for protecting the abdomen, with tassets suspended from the fault to protect the upper thighs, though in some cases longer tassets could be suspended directly from the breastplate to protect both abdomen and thighs, bypassing the use of a fauld.

Supporting this is we can usually see chest/abdomen distinguished with different names in many diagrams of ST armor:
chest/back v lower torso: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/03...s/AllParts.jpg
torso v flexible cushion: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...er_Diagram.jpg
chest plate v abdominal plate: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...F6oQg&usqp=CAU

If DR was lesser quantity in the back of stormtrooper armor torsos, this could explain why "Backstabbing a buckethead with a spear does more damage than a frontal attack." is mentioned at https://www.starwars.com/news/5-tips...unt-as-an-ewok

On the other hand, https://swg.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_W...hest-plate.jpg while focusing on the front angle, seems to include a back portion too, so 'chestplate' or 'breastplate' might (sometimes) informally refer to the entire torso enclosure even though semantically it only refers to the front.

Thematically it could make sense to have front stronger than back to discourage Stormtroopers from running away from a firing enemy (exposing the weak side of their armor). Besides the Ewok video game I found a comment in 2005 referring to something else that could support this. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tal...#Effectiveness

a wooden spear penetrates the white part of stormtrooper armor in the |Battle of Maridun, shown in Star Wars Empire 18: To the Last Man, Part 3. The Amanin are probably quite strong, but it's still pretty implausible. The blow was in the square dealie in the back of the armor[1], which might be a weak spot.

This refers to a comic published April 2004 https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Emp...st_Man,_Part_3 though I'm not sure what page and can't find the panel. I did find this picture of a spike pit penetrating the armor though: https://i.imgur.com/JBwL73Z.png

Originally Posted by Rupert

In my Experience, the troopers return from battle in only one of two states - without a scratch or dead.

It's supposed to be able to help with survival (many scratches) though:

The armor, and the body glove worn beneath, were designed to disperse the energy of a blaster bolt and insulate the wearer, lessening injury.

The body glove provided insulation and cushioning while also regulating body temperature during periods of exertion, and could also act as a compression sleeve to stem bleeding if a stormtrooper was injured.

Although standard armor lacked the durability to make the wearer immune to cannon fire, it could partially deflect or disperse energy from low-, medium-, and high-energy blaster bolts; though the wearer may be incapacitated, survival would allow the trooper to receive advanced medical treatment that could return him to service.

When we see a bunch of faceless storm troopers "go down" in a burst of sparks from one shot, they're probably taking major wounds (stunned) where they'd otherwise by making death checks, or maybe making 1 death check where they'd otherwise make 2.

This wouldn't help much if a rebel could take a 2nd shot to finish them off, but limitations in ammo or cover (a stormtrooper who falls prone might be behind a barricade: no followup shots from a distance) could prevent finishing them off, allowing them to recuperate for later service instead of dying.

Not sure how to work armor working as a compression sleeve but that sounds pretty useful against physical attacks, if not so much against burning/energy ones that likely cauterize and don't leave bleeding wounds.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

Not sure how to work armor working as a compression sleeve but that sounds pretty useful against physical attacks, if not so much against burning/energy ones that likely cauterize and don't leave bleeding wounds.

Realistically, extreme burning attacks (major wounds and worse, according to BT131) cause the victim to leak plasma, and there's no clotting mechanism to help them - without medical attention, the person is likely to die from fluid loss in short order. I'm not certain how much a compression sleeve would help there, but for Star Wars you're probably fine to say the wounds get cauterized (that's certainly what happens with lightsabers). The typical uses of compression sleeves fall beneath the resolution of GURPS, although a bonus to rolls to recover HP lost by a critical failure on an Extra Effort roll might be appropriate.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I’m pretty certain SW blasters are canonically superior to their slugthrowers, and those have a minimum Rcl 2 as well, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. About the only case an equivalent slugthrower would be superior in this case is if the body glove’s DR is sufficient to be a problem and is better against burn than pi.

Slug throwers can be fully automatic. Also, we're talking UT gear, and a thin liner with heavy plates over it means the liner isn't going to have much DR. So the liner being so exposed will encourage using 'primitive' full-auto slugthrowers by lower-skilled shooters, and that's counter to what you want.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Slug throwers can be fully automatic. Also, we're talking UT gear, and a thin liner with heavy plates over it means the liner isn't going to have much DR. So the liner being so exposed will encourage using 'primitive' full-auto slugthrowers by lower-skilled shooters, and that's counter to what you want.

While most of the handheld blasters we see appear to be semi-automatic, I don't think there's anything preventing full-auto handheld blasters (certainly in the Legends canon there are things like light repeating blasters, and the video games almost invariably have similar - in Jedi Outcast the E11's alt-fire mode was full-auto, and of course Battlefront II has plenty of full-auto blasters). I also don't see the 1/6 chance of scoring a hit with underpowered (against the armor anyway) weapons as a problem - this isn't armor for PC's after all - but it's certainly not strictly necessary. Indeed, looking at the stormtrooper armor again, the gaps seem smaller than i had remembered, so I'd be comfortable agreeing they have full protection with chinks/gaps as normal (although were I to run a Star Wars campaign, I'd probably design the armor plates as giving 5/6 protection, but the liner would probably be thicker, particularly where the gaps are located).

[AlexanderHowl]

If you had stormtroopers with Space Armor/Space Combat Helmet, it would be impossible for anyone to take them down with melee attacks with anything less powerful than a force sword. In fact, I would argue that the prevalence of such armor justices the lethality of a force sword. On average, a force sword deals 8/10/12 points of damage through Space Armor. Of course, that means that heavy blaster pistols need a lucky hit to penetrate the armor.

One possibility for the low quality stormtroopers armor during the Battle of Endor is sabotage. If the Rebels had access to the stormtrooper armor production facilities, they could have easily produced versions of the armor that had a tenth of the required DR. If the Rebels also bribed the inspectors, the Empire would not know of the sabotage until it investigated the cause of unusual casualties after the battle. Of course, the Empire would likely execute everyone involved in producing and inspecting the defective armor after discovery, but that would have occurred off screen.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

If you had stormtroopers with Space Armor/Space Combat Helmet, it would be impossible for anyone to take them down with melee attacks with anything less powerful than a force sword. In fact, I would argue that the prevalence of such armor justices the lethality of a force sword. On average, a force sword deals 8/10/12 points of damage through Space Armor. Of course, that means that heavy blaster pistols need a lucky hit to penetrate the armor.

For torso hits - the heavy blaster pistol is perfectly adequate for hits off the torso.

I think this works fairly well game mechanically (especially with the fairly poor helmet), but it doesn't work like the movies, where the armour was effectively useless against anything but people punching you (maybe).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Rupert

I think this works fairly well game mechanically (especially with the fairly poor helmet), but it doesn't work like the movies, where the armour was effectively useless against anything but people punching you (maybe).

In the Rebels animated series (still New Canon) we had an example of stormtrooper armor not being effective against stun blasts either. An old Clonetrooper certainly thought his armor was much better too.

Why would the later armor be less effective than the earlier? Because the Emperor (a looney Dark Side cultist) designed it that way for his own amusement. It's the same reason the TIE fighter is a death trap. Its why the design of the Death Star didn't stop at being able to pierce planetary shielding and destroy Rebel bases.

[Say, it isn't that bad!]

Unfortunately, I feel like there's too many explanations, and too many voodoo shark explanations, including for things that already had explanations.

Like any decades-long property with many authors, you kind of have to pick your canon.