[Varyon]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Bronze is not easier to work with. Iron can be worked hot, bronze cannot. If iron tears, it can be forge-welded, if bronze tears, the entire jobs needs to be scrapped.

Interesting. I had assumed the fact bronze can be readily cast would make it easier to work with. Would you say in terms of difficulty of working with it that the ability to cast it vs the problems you mention works out to be overall easier, harder, or roughly the same (but with Familiarity penalties or similar)?

Originally Posted by CarrionPeacock

If the hoplites were cutting corners to save money, why didn't they replace the greaves with linen as well, or keep the better bronze corselet while replacing graves with linen shinguards (or trousers)?

Something not well-represented in GURPS (because it's difficult to represent) is that weight on the limbs feels heavier than weight on the torso. As a result, you really want limb armor to be as light as possible to avoid exhaustion. Going from the lightest construction (plate) to one of the heaviest (linen), multiplying weight by 2.5, is probably a Bad Idea. I suspect with that kind of weight, the hoplites would likely not bother wearing the leg armor.

And while front-only armor sounds like a good idea, I doubt it works out very well in practice with leg armor. Most fighting stances I'm familiar with (which are for unarmed combat, admittedly, but maintaining balance shouldn't change too much when you've got a spear or whatever) don't involve both feet pointed forward at all times, and legs are thin enough that a decent-length swung weapon can probably reach behind the leg a bit so that even front-facing legs would be vulnerable. Actually getting 100% protection from the front for the lower legs may well require armor the reaches all the way around.

Originally Posted by CarrionPeacock

I can accept working with bronze is as hard as iron, but I'm not convinced why it's not using segmented plate instead of plate. As I understand, Plate cost is due to the difficulty to make large plates like that of a breastplate with iron, while segmented plate is a "compromise" design by using multiple smaller plates, that's however with torso in mind. Shins are much smaller than torso and each segment of a lorica segmentata seems large enough to cover it. That would reduce the cost to $1,320.

It appears to cover the entire lower leg with a single plate (two plates if it's hinged, but I don't think hoplite greaves typically were) that's around half the weight of Torso armor. That's a pretty good-sized plate, and it has less room for error when it comes to fitting compared to smaller plates. Still, the idea of basing price on the size plate(s) involved has some merit, but there are two factors to consider - the price of the plate (which increases based on absolute size) and the price of the fitting (which increases based on the relative size to the protected location). Such a system would, naturally, be rather complex to work out. I've tried my hand at it back when I was trying to create a Damage Overhaul (which I ultimately abandoned, but may come back to try and make a simpler version); it can be doable taking the approach of the Pyramid Armor Design articles. Looking at my data from there, Plate armor for the lower legs would require plates of ~SM -4 (it's half the weight of full Torso armor, which if possible would require a plate of SM +0; if it were one piece this would be SM -2, but being two pieces - due to covering two legs - makes it SM -4). I have SM -4 plates being around 45% of the cost of normal plate, but the need for a closer fit multiplies this by 1.5, for around 65% cost.