[LT] Interesting study on the effects of wearing heavy armor
 

I stumbled across this article today and thought it would be interesting to share. The encumbrance rules look like they do pretty well with heavy armor but I'm not sure about FP usage. It seems that exerting oneself in armor would mean that a character should start paying FP in combat that lasts 5 rounds instead of the typical 10. Then again I'm not an expert in that area. Thoughts?

Re: [LT] Interesting study on the effects of wearing heavy armor
 

30 to 50 kilograms in armor weight? That right there makes the study very suspect. 50 kilogram armor is 110 pounds!

Re: [LT] Interesting study on the effects of wearing heavy armor
 

A lot of different FP usage is currently below the resolution level in GURPS.

That being said, I could easily support an optional rule that carrying lower leg encumbrance impacts FP loss at 2x the normal rate.

This is why we sprint in sneakers instead of combat boots.

Of course, building encumbrance by body part would likely get too fiddly real quick for most people...

Re: [LT] Interesting study on the effects of wearing heavy armor
 

That armor seems fairly unrealistic. IIRC non-tournament armor tended to be in the 20-30 kg range, not 30-50 and plate armor for foot soldiers often lacked lower leg protection.

Re: [LT] Interesting study on the effects of wearing heavy armor
 

after 10 seconds according to the rules you lose 1 FP plus your encumbrance level + anything else the GM would rule on (heat and the like)

so with that you could be losing anywhere from 3-5 FP in that 10 seconds.

with ST 10 and armor weighing in at 110lb you looking at spending 4 FP. not including any optional rules for extra effort or the likes.


if the person has a good HT it won't phase them much, but if we are looking at a person with average (10) HT then they will be exhausted fast.

Re: [LT] Interesting study on the effects of wearing heavy armor
 

Mind you, putting on an extra couple of pounds of sabatons/sollerets on your feet is a drag, especially on top of the couple of pounds in shoes/boots underneath.
Athletic shoes are measured in ounces, not lbs, no one can run at their full speed with a couple of pounds on their feet.


A few years ago, before Low Tech came out, we had a great thread which went into footwear discussion for a bit:
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=42907

Re: [LT] Interesting study on the effects of wearing heavy armor
 

It's fairly difficult to take a study like this and convert it into useful game data, because fatigue effects on humans are not linear in power output. Some old hpv research would suggest that going from 0.1 hp to 0.2 hp for walking would exhaust an average healthy adult in around 2h45m (vs 8h for walking normally), or about 3x as fast, whereas going from 0.2 to 0.4 reduces the exhaustion time down to 15m or so, or something like 10x as fast.

Re: [LT] Interesting study on the effects of wearing heavy armor
 

A good control would have been to conduct the test with leg armour and again without it and move that weight to the upper body so that both test subjects are still carrying the same load.

Re: [LT] Interesting study on the effects of wearing heavy armor
 

It seems that they did, if you look at the abstract:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.o...rspb.2011.0816

"However, the energetic cost of locomotion in armour was also much higher than equivalent trunk loading. "


The reporter who wrote the article wasn't very stringent, but there's no reason for us to think the study itself was shoddy.

Re: [LT] Interesting study on the effects of wearing heavy armor
 

-- Interesting article. One note is that the great fatigue loss variables seems to be the breathing restrictions caused by wearing armor (p. 3). I suppose the most GURPS useful bit I saw is in the results: