Pyramid #3/52: Low-Tech II

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Weight Multiple/multiplier/thingy.

I'll need to ask Steven if it's OK before I can put it up anywhere - and my preference is really stuffing it up somewhere for people who bought the Pyramid issue, since it in some ways ends up replacing the article :P

I learned how to make checkboxes go in Excel 2013 today! I should be able to back-export to Excel 2003 with relatively little problems, from what I'm seeing. GDocs is probably a no-go, I'm into features it just doesn't do. Not sure about LibreOffice/OpenOffice.

no worries, I was thinking of doing it myself too but Googledocs does not do everything I want too.

I was thinking of breaking the list down into options/stages.

1 - pick material
2 - pick design

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Bruno

On a non-chicken related subject, I was home sick today and spent my conscious hours tinkering with an Excel spreadsheet for the Low Tech Armor article, although I'm not sure if it'll work in older versions or GoogleDocs.

Heh - I was thinking about doing the same, then expanding it for higher-tech armor. I also would like to replace the way the Holdout Modifier works so that it's based on armor thickness and flexibility, rather than just DR.

It seems like it should be related to density (WM) and tensile strength or hardness (DR/in?), based on my not-a-materials-engineer vague impression? I tried fitting Max DR to a cube root and a log of DR/in and can't. Does being a flexible material factor in somewhere?

It should be based entirely on thickness, DR/in, and flexibility. Makes no sense for it to be based on anything else.

[DemiBenson]

Originally Posted by Langy

Heh - I was thinking about doing the same, then expanding it for higher-tech armor. I also would like to replace the way the Holdout Modifier works so that it's based on armor thickness and flexibility, rather than just DR.

It should be based entirely on thickness, DR/in, and flexibility. Makes no sense for it to be based on anything else.

If you do, will you share? :)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Bruno

It brought up an interesting question though: What's the connection between physical statistics, DR/inch, Max DR, and WM for various materials?

I don't have the issue, but 1 square foot with a thickness of 1" has a weight of roughly 5 lb * Density (so 40 lb for 1" steel). Max DR is probably empirical, realistically the reason you don't use Kevlar against rifle-class threats is because it has poor scaling (realistically, given how GURPS DR works, the DR of fiber-type armors should vary with the square root of weight) and generally performs poorly against high velocity attacks, not because it has a true maximum.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I don't have the issue, but 1 square foot with a thickness of 1" has a weight of roughly 5 lb * Density (so 40 lb for 1" steel). Max DR is probably empirical, realistically the reason you don't use Kevlar against rifle-class threats is because it has poor scaling (realistically, given how GURPS DR works, the DR of fiber-type armors should vary with the square root of weight) and generally performs poorly against high velocity attacks, not because it has a true maximum.

The 'Max DR's are said to be chosen because any thicker amount of armor wouldn't be reasonable to wear - it'd hinder movement too much, etc. This is half of the DR/inch for most Flexible armor (except Cloth, which has it listed at a full inch of armor), greater than an inch of DR for Wood armor, and about 1/5 of an inch for most metal armors. It's 10/75th of an inch for Lead armor and 1/6 of an inch for some metals. It's about 1/2 an inch for 'stone'-type armor.

I honestly have no idea how a lot of these things were decided.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Langy

The 'Max DR's are said to be chosen because any thicker amount of armor wouldn't be reasonable to wear - it'd hinder movement too much, etc.

Sounds like made-up numbers, then.

[jacobmuller]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Sounds like made-up numbers, then.

It's peculiar how many things in GURPS seem like invented numbers; the authors have even admitted some numbers are just holdovers from earlier game versions with no solid basis.
What I've experienced, however, is many hours of patient/ insane number crunching and reality comparing usually end up giving you numbers sufficiently akin to those "made up numbers" such that a more complex way of doing things is, well, have you seen this bottle opener?

I'm only surprised I hadn't started putting the numbers into a spreadsheet yet myself. And for UT armor too.
Bruno & Langy: insanity is infectious - I've to go stand in the snow for 9 hours but, when I return, my Excel 2007 will be played with, bwah, ha ha! {may be watching too much ST-ToS}. Great minds think alike but fools seldom differ.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Sounds like made-up numbers, then.

Actually, I'm not getting an exact fit but it's looking like a root function of MaxDR/WM is a reasonably good first-order approximation.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Kromm

If Abraham Lincoln had worn "Judge Bradshaw's Hat" to the theater, history might have gone a different way!

Surely one removes one's hat when one is sitting at the theater, even if one has a private box. :)

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Surely one removes one's hat when one is sitting at the theater, even if one has a private box. :)

That was PK's line, but . . . If you're so worried about assassination that you wear an armored hat, you leave it on. Nobody is going to tell the freakin' President to take it off.