[Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

You could ask David Pulver, but for a project like this I would just be inclined to treat plate as Plate [..]. After all, you can get real prices and weights online, you don't need to calculate them!
[...]

You could probably fit trauma plates to the flatter kinds of pairs of plates or brigandines without anything going too badly wrong

I agree that using 'Segmented Plate' produces very wonky results. I might come up with an alternative to 'Plate', though, used for TL4 brigandines and faulds, as the areas harder to armour with larger plates will usually have reduced protection for similar weight. Call it 'Overlapping Plates'.

If we base the stats on 'Brigandine' and 'Segmented Plate' compared to 'Plate' in Low-Tech (with Dan Howard's corrected 'Segmented Plate' weights), 'Overlapping Plates' would have about CW 1 and CC 3. That sounds like a fair way to reflect the fact that it's cheaper and easier to make armour from multiple smaller plates than larger single pieces, but it will always be heavier for the same protection than well-made 'Plate'.

By Low-Tech (as corrected by Dan Howard), 'Scale' should have a similar CW as the 'CEAD' construction of 'Segmented Plate', i.e. around CW 1.4 ('Segmented Plate' has CW 1.45 in the ´CEAD´). The CC should also be similar to the 'Segmented Plate' in 'CEAD' (is CC 1.5, calculated would be around 1.6-1.8). I think using the 'Segmented Plate' stats in the Pyramid articles to reflect 'Scale' construction would not be unreasonable.

Roman lorica segmenta could then be represented as 'Overlapping Plates' made from cheap iron or as 'Segmented Plate'.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

That "double the thickness" was my best guess "considering all the factors, [..]For a better guess you would have to talk to a plate armourer.

Ok, thanks.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

The Wallace A281, a jousting gauntlet [..], is 1215 g so about twice as heavy [...]

Loadout gives a lot of historical examples pretty hefty penalties to many tasks, with tournament fighters simply accepting that penalties to anything else than their particular sport was pretty irrelevant, as they weren't using their jousting gauntlets if climbing walls, hunting or even fighting with swords on foot.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Bulk and flexibility are two issues, but another is that moving mass at the end of a long lever arm tires you out and slows you down. Fighting in heavy greaves or gauntlets is like running in heavy boots. [...]

I'm pretty sure that Vargas will accept that random shots to his feet or hands will penetrate and just want protection from knives and swords.

He might want some protection over the areas of the hands most likely to be exposed when firing a rifle, but only if it doesn't interfere with using his hands pretty freely. And I expect he'll just wear heavy boots, maybe with kevlar inserts or something for protection against swords.

As you say, heavy gauntlets and sabatons have so many annoyances that come with them that I can't imagine them being very popular outside of tournament venues. So even if he might own thick gauntlets and sabatons, those, at least, he'd leave behind when he took his armour into real combat.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I don't know as much about titanium, I think it was controversial in the HMB world.

What's the controversy?

Originally Posted by Polydamas

OTOH, if they are playing around with different alloys and heat-treatments and then beating each other senseless, there will probably be plenty of shattered and discoloured armour lying around. Even today, its easy to leave the metal hard enough that it shatters.

Oh, certainly. Especially if the armourer, machnist and mechanical engineer have come up with a cost-effective way to fabricate a fairly close copy of a hand-made reenaction harness from materials adequate for live steel fighting. In that case, people who otherwise wouldn't have had the interest or money to order a hand-made suit from Eastern Europe might have sprung for one.

It would do a lot to popularise their invitation-only, sicario drug warrior, informal 'league' of HEMA/SCA/HMB-fighting. New recruits (mostly 17-25 year old), who may be former gang members who showed promise, ex-soldiers or police or sicarios from other organisations that Vargas has defeated, are much more likely to take part in a hobby that is likely to get their boss to notice them if the cost of beginner's kit is about half a month's pay, rather than 2+ months.

Vargas pays his soldiers lavishly. Trainees receive five times the salaries of Mexican soldiers or police, full sicarios are paid about five times what Mexican Special Forces and elite police tactical team members are paid. Those who are selected to join his personal Grupos de limpieza ('Cleansing teams') or his household guard will receive a minimum of ten times what members of special operations units in the Mexican military do.

Unfortunately, having salaries that are many times the local norm is worth less when the average household income in Mexico is $10,000 to $14,000 a year (usually more than one person earning income), depending on the method used to convert buying power form pesos to dollars.

Factory workers in Ciudad Juarez, an hour's drive away, and about the best plausible alternative employement for many of the recruits, receive between $5,000 to $6,000 per year. That's for the very lucky who have a full-time, relatively high-paying job, working insane hours to stay afloat. The hourly wage for Mexican factory workers is about 60% of what Chinese factory workers receive. More than half the Mexican workforce falls short of making $2,000 a year.

Engineers, college professors, lawyers and doctors may often make less than $15,000 a year, unless they are lucky enough to be working for foreign companies or clients. Police chiefs are paid less than $10,000 per year and from what I can tell, prosecutors are barely making any more.

So even with high salaries by local standards, sicario trainees are only getting about $15,000 in total for the six months they attend training camp. The sicarios who are accepted as full-time soldiers for the Caballero Templarios cartel have a yearly salary of $40,000 to $50,000. Those who finish training, but don't meet Vargas' approval, are often allowed to join allied or subordinate organisations, where their pay might be half that.

Vargas pays considerably better than the $15,000-$25,000 that even highly skilled former soldiers and police are getting as sicarios for many other cartels and much more than what Central American or local teenagers who have been run through training camps for Los Zetas will ever get. It is, however, not quite enough so that having a custom plate harness built by a skilled armourer is feasible as an impulse purchase.

Only Vargas' long-time personal guard and the full-time members of his most elite commando teams are making anything that would be considered good money on the other side of the border, at $80,000 to $100,000 a year. That's awesome, but still makes buying a $20,000-$40,000 custom made plate harness from a sought-after armourer in the HEMA/SCA/HMB world a purchase equivalent to the average American buying a new motorcycle.

Sure, this is all tax free and if they don't want to make any private living arrangments, they can probably get free room and board most of the time (all of the time for those assigned to Vargas' protection), but if you want to live a life of luxury, importing expensive toys for hobbies, it will run out pretty quickly.

And it's not as if they have good credit ratings, as all their cartel money is off the books and they are either officially unemployed, not registered anywhere for the past several years or with unskilled cover jobs that pay only slightly over minimum wage, i.e. maybe about $5-$6 a day. Even those with cover jobs as legitimate mechanics or something will still have tiny incomes, officially.

One of the reasons Vargas pays well, albeit mostly in cash, is that several of his men are former soldiers from various Latin American militaries and are formally without any criminal records. He has to pay them well, as some of them have previously worked for Blackwater/Xe/Academi, Triple Canopy and other international private security companies, and might well entertain offers from them in the future.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I am just saying that in CEAD, you can get a surprising amount of bullet-resistance from a not crazy thickness of forgeable steels. I am not saying that those alloys and shapes will really do that, I am just talking about how I read those rules.

Back in the 1920s, the rule of thumb was that steel needed to be as thick as the calibre of the round it was meant to stop, and AP rounds doubled that.

Yeah, I don't think it's unrealistic for steel armour to stop pistol or even rifle rounds. I just think that wearable armour that does it will be much heavier than tactical gear + trauma plate inserts. I'm basically just closing the gap slightly, making Vargas still crazy, yes, but not quite as crazy as he seems. At least not when it comes to tactical issues.

Megalomaniac? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. Thrill-seeker who'd risk his life for fun? Yep. Someone who'd wear impractical armour because it contributes to his legend and he thinks it's really cool? You got it. But he's at least someone who'll make an effort to make his eccentricities less suicidal than if he were less trained, experienced and capable.