02-08-2018, 10:04 AM | #51 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour
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Well, that, or he has much of his fortune tied up in other things than hobbies, as the GM has declined to speculate on whether Vargas might control other groups of Knight Templar Cartel remnants in other Mexican states and even have other homes somewhere far south of Chihuahua. In any case, if he does, let's assume that those places have their own crazy hobby projects and we are stuck with 'merely' $50 million per year in his private, personal income allocated to his Cost of Living in Chihuahua, where he has been fighting a war comprising mostly occasional targeted raids, for the past two or three years. If we assume that Vargas has spent about 1% of his personal household budget on this project over the past five years, sometimes being consumed by interest and contracting for a lot of design and prototyping work one month, sometimes spending nothing because he had more important concerns, we get $2,500,000 as the high end of his expenditure. Any equipment, tools, machinery or other capital investment which is actually useful for running a DTO or mercenary group can come out of the larger, business-related operating revenue pool. The Knight Templar Cartel have a motor pool of trucks, one or more automobile chop shops and a workshop with everything needed to make improvised APCs like the most professional versions of these. So Vargas doesn't have to spend his personal money on plasma cutting torches, hydraulic presses or such tools. He might not even need to pay the salaries and living expenses of machinists, mechanics or other such people who can work on his project. Well, that is, as long as the employees are also able to work at least a light workweek on tasks important for either generating further revenue (changing plates and painting stolen cars to use for smuggling) or their mission of fighting the enemies of the Sinaloa cartel (making vehicle armour, welding them on trucks, repairing trucks and APCs, etc.). Any equipment primarily or solely useful for his 'Black Knight' project, as well as the salaries and expenses of anyone hired just to work on that, would have to come out of the personal finances, though. Quote:
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Of course, that would only apply if Vargas could get someone with decent Diplomacy, Finance, Law (Commercial) or Merchant skill to handle the actual interaction with the contractor or vendor. If he talks to them himself, he may just assume that it's a given that he has exclusive right to 'his' idea for an armour and react to any suggestion that anyone else might obtain one from the same supplier with threats of ultraviolence. Which reaction would be one of the many reasons one should endeavour never to get into business with crazy drug-dealing warlords. Ah, but whoever Vargas eventually found had to be a company run by someone whose immediate reaction was glee. No other way, really, as I can't see anyone else sticking with such a scary, sketchy client and near-impossible requirements, constant meddling input, etc.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 02-08-2018 at 11:30 AM. |
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02-08-2018, 11:25 AM | #52 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: [Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour
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A more ambitious method would combine padding and cooling. Elastic bladders filled with air are excellent shock-absorbers. I think that's what the 3e High-Tech item is using. They need to be form-fitting, and re-using parts of an anti-G-suit would arrange for that. Circulating cold air through the air-padding would keep the wearer cool. You'd have a backpack of ice with a heat exchanger to cool the air. The trick is maintaining the right pressure, while circulating the air, while the wearer is moving around and getting hit, which will produce major pressure spikes in the air circulation system. I think, on the whole, keeping padding and cooling separate is going to be more reliable. The cooling garment goes next to the skin, and the air-padding on the inside of the armour. Storing the armour in a refrigerator when it's not being worn also gives you some passive cooling, and may demonstrate just how loco these people are to the locals. It might even worry the PCs, as they encounter a Black Knight covered with frost, and moving as if he isn't feeling the heat at all. Addendum: there is much better CAD software than AutoCAD out there. AutoCAD is well-known because it is cheap, by industry standards, and thus has lots of small-business customers. Major engineering shops use SolidWorks or SolidEdge, or NX or CATIA if they're doing really big stuff.
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. Last edited by johndallman; 02-08-2018 at 11:39 AM. Reason: psychological warfare, CAD software. |
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02-08-2018, 11:29 AM | #53 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour
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I could promise a salary of about $100,000 to $120,000 per year, tax free, paid in your choice of cash or monthly deposit into a Carribbean island banking institution of your choice. If he has professional certifications and/or college degrees, this might affect his base salary. A mechanical engineer (or another applicable field of engineering), metallurgist or materials scientist might probably negotiate a substantially higher salary, as might someone with a professional certification as a machinist/fabricator from a respected institution, particularly if this involves a multi-year learning program and/or a professional apprenticeship working with CNC machines, programming AutoCAD, etc. Also free room and board, an open bar on site, comped access to all the negotiable affection he could handle* and the occasional party, complete with the socially acceptable indulgences in complimentary chemical refreshment**, to include cocaine, methamphetamines, various unlicensed copies of prescription medicines (Oxycontin, Viagra, Vicodin, Fentanyl, etc.) and, of course, Mexican ditch weed. Possibly imported New Mexico medicinal cannabis and artisanal weed from Nevada, for the discerning connoisseur. Probably a 'company car' (changes often) and pretty free access to work supplies for personal use, as well as the occasional lavish gift when Vargas is happy with something he is doing. I'd say that benefits which actually directly save money, as opposed to being things he never would have bought himself, doesn't need and may or may not want, would add another $50,000 to the total value of the compensation on a yearly basis, over and above the room and board. *Consent not guaranteed. Not just in a general, philosophical sense that all prostitution may or may not involve coercive consent by definition, but there is an excellent chance that these particular sex workers were kidnapped somewhere or bought from their Central American migrant family and forced into the work. I realise that this may be a deal breaker for many people, but it's not as if the kidnappings occur at Vargas' home and in order to learn about this, someone would have to make a point to earn the trust of the 'party girls' who hang about there and then question them about their pasts. **Vargas frowns on drug use during work hours, at least for anyone whom he is paying, though he doesn't seem to apply this rule consistently to himself or, sometimes, particular favourites whose only job is intimidating, hurting or killing people. This means that many of his men avoid indulging during exercises with him, but otherwise seek out assignments where he will not see them, so they don't have to be sober all day.
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02-08-2018, 12:04 PM | #54 | ||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour
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None of them seem to consider the weight of the vest itself worthy of note. It must weigh more than just a wicking undershirt, as there's this tube system involved.... 0.5 lbs.? 1 lbs? 2 lbs? 3 lbs.? Quote:
Of course, no matter the outside temperature, armour eventually causes overheating by removing much of the natural evaporation and air circulation that humans tend to rely on. Sounds like a cooling system might be outside the budget of sicarios trying to impress their boss, at just over $1,000, but it should be affordable for everyone else. Quote:
Well, Chase Taylor (my PC) thinks it's nice, being used to balmy 'Bama weather and disliking the cold. I don't really know what the other PCs think about it. Special Agent Danny O'Toole or Dr. Michael Anderson might consider even temperatures in the 60s °F dangerously hot for February, having grown up in the frozen North (Boston, MA, and New Haven, CT, to be precise). Though, to be fair, O'Toole, at least has been working about an hour's drive from our mission area, in El Paso, TX, the past two years, so he ought to be used to the local climate. Agent Ilana Rubio is a Californian, but also locally adapted. Quote:
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 02-08-2018 at 12:37 PM. |
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02-08-2018, 12:08 PM | #55 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: [Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour
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Depending on their COMSOC policy, that avoids the need to send detailed sets of photos and measurements of the boss and his henchmen internationally. But again, with their budget, they can afford to ship a set of full body casts around the world and find someone who accepts polaroids with the Special Customer's face missing. There are some videos of Hatian fencing with sharp machetes (complete with washing scratches with rum) under the name Papa Machete. There might be some issues around face, shoulder, and breast armour and preferred ways to shoot from the shoulder. I would imagine that the inner circle would get them sorted out, but it might give random penalties to some of the hangers-on who just have armour because it looks badass and keeps the boss happy and never imagined wearing it on a raid. I don't shoot, but on my breast-with-fauld the roll at the arm opening sits just where I would want to set the butt of a rifle. Some 16th century firearms had butts designed to rest against a breastplate.
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02-08-2018, 12:34 PM | #56 | ||
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: [Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour
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02-08-2018, 01:08 PM | #57 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour
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It might well be worth it to have two guys who understand the process, requirements and technology in house, with them being in charge of deciding what can be done on site, what needs to be ordered as off-the-shelf components, what must be custom-made and what is going to require specialised design or even R&D beyond what they can do, before they can even approach someone about manufacturing it. Quote:
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As the armour gets cheaper, acceptable performance becomes 'being able to shoot an AK or AR-15 from the shoulder, at least', though I expect that there will be a temptation to deal with mobility, flexibility and heat concerns in the traditional way of soldiers everywhere, by leaving the limbs, neck and abdomen lightly covered or even bare. Vargas is liable to make any sicario who shows up in armour wear it through all the exercises that day. The proper way to impress him would be to be not only buy a cool suit of armour, but to be tough enough to do four hours of cardio, combatives, land navigation, defensive driving, small unit drill, MOUT and patrolling exercise in your armour, even in the summer heat.
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02-08-2018, 01:28 PM | #58 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour
Thanks.
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I mean, when do you ever see a scene in a movie or TV show set in Mexico without the blazing sun, sunbaked deserts or bright beaches, blue skies and blue ocean, with heat mirages everwhere? So when I looked up the weather in the Juarez Valley on the date and time when the PCs arrived there, I was shocked to discover that the heat was about the same there as it was here in Iceland on that fairly cool day. Of course, Juarez Valley being 3,000-4,000 feet above sea level doesn't help as far as heat is concerned. Walk up the nearby mountains and you might get frost in the night time. Get down from the highlands and it gets a lot warmer. That being said, summers get very hot there. Dry heat, though. Still enough to make the thought of a full, enclosed suit of plate over ballistic fabric pretty daunting. Maybe acceptable for HT 14+ supersoldiers, but not so good for regular mortals. They might want to go with light or no limb covering, at least in the summer.
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02-08-2018, 01:59 PM | #59 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour
In the deserts yes. In the coastal jungles around Yucatan no. It's a biggish country.
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Fred Brackin |
02-08-2018, 02:30 PM | #60 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Cutting-Edge Armor Design] Real World SCA-legal Armour and Ballistics Armour
'There' referred specifically to the Juarez Valley mentioned above the sentence, the climate and weather of which I researched for the campaign, not Mexico in general, which I understand is very large and varied, yes.
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cutting-edge armor design, hema, jade serenity, pyramid #3/85, sca |
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