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Old 06-03-2016, 03:12 AM   #1
Wavefunction
 
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Default [UT, Pyramid] Cutting-Edge Armor Design and Ultra-Tech Armors.

A few questions:

STF Liquid Armor in Pyramid #3/85: Cutting-Edge lists STF Liquid Armor as being ballistic fabric like improved Kevlar soaked in a sheer-thickening fluid.

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

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?

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.
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Old 06-03-2016, 04:32 AM   #2
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Default Re: [UT, Pyramid] Cutting-Edge Armor Design and Ultra-Tech Armors.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavefunction View Post
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?
What I'd probably do in that case is give Reflex the Nanoweave stats, Nanoweave the Monocrys stats, and increase Monocrys by a proportionate amount.

This will probably require adjustment of the Tactical Vests and Tacsuits as well.
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Last edited by Phantasm; 06-03-2016 at 06:05 AM. Reason: fixed typo
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Old 06-03-2016, 05:52 AM   #3
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Default Re: [UT, Pyramid] Cutting-Edge Armor Design and Ultra-Tech Armors.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavefunction View Post
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?

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.
HT was a little generous - specifically, they didn't get into problems of partial coverage of the torso. It's pretty easy to argue that the coverage is actually 5/6 or 4/6, particularly with the trauma plates - some of which might really only cover the Vitals. The Ultratech armor wouldn't suffer from this.

But if you don't want to deal with rolling 1d every time someone gets shot, you're still left with an issue.
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Old 06-03-2016, 07:22 AM   #4
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Default Re: [UT, Pyramid] Cutting-Edge Armor Design and Ultra-Tech Armors.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavefunction View Post
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.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavefunction View Post
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).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavefunction View Post
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).
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Old 06-04-2016, 02:19 AM   #5
Wavefunction
 
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Default Re: [UT, Pyramid] Cutting-Edge Armor Design and Ultra-Tech Armors.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
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.
That looks pretty reasonable, I'll use those stats unless Douglas himself gets in on this and gives me a different answer.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
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).
The Pyramid article is clearly designed with HT and UT in mind, so using it doesn't really solve much. I'll stat out two examples:

Concealable Vest
5.25 square feet
Improved ballistic polymer
Optimized fabric
DR 12/5*
Weight: 5.25*0.04*0.8*12 ≈ 2 lbs.
Cost: 2*$250*2 = $1,000

Reflex Vest
5.25 square feet
STF liquid armor
Fabric
DR 12/4*
Weight: 5.25*0.032*1*12 ≈ 2 lbs.
Cost: 2*$150*1 = $300

Both have stats in line with their respective UT and HT equivalents. Admittedly the Reflex Vest is a lot cheaper than the Concealable Vest, but you'd damn well expect it to be. Of course it also doesn't have chinks, but enemies not being able to take a -8 or -10 to halve your DR doesn't seem like a huge benefit. However, I suppose if I make the Reflex Vest optimized fabric, I can get a DR of 15/5* for the same weight, which is a slight improvement. If you do the same for Arachnoweave you get DR of around 16/4*. Doing the same thing with the stats you gave for STF Arachnoweave we get (treating it as optimized fabric):

Improved Reflex Vest
5.25 square feet
STF Arachnoweave
Optimized Fabric
DR 19/6*
Weight: 5.25*0.025*0.8*19 ≈ 2 lbs.
Cost: 2*$710*2 = $2,820

Which seems like a good value for a higher quality concealable ballistic vest, if we make it normal fabric instead of optimized, we can get a DR of 15/5*, which is still pretty decent.

Another problem is that article doesn't really go into what kind of armor/how much armor can easily be worn on limbs/made into gloves, which is one of the important distinctions between HT and UT ballistic armor.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
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).
I imagine that CW multiplier for scale has gone down because in a higher TL society the links between the scales can be made much lighter and less bulky. I guess I'll do what you suggest and build that, and any more advanced equivalents as a combination of ballistic fiber and scale.

Thanks for your help.
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