Cheap armour? what's the drawback?

[pawsplay]

Small piercing in GURPS already seems to assume a certain amount of overpenetration. I'm not enough of a gun person to be able to tell you the general ratio of powder to GURPS damage but I'm curious now.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Actually, it's frequently a bad deal. For example, light scale (DR 3) is $320 and 16 lb. Cheap medium scale (also DR 3) is $220 and 28 lb. Is $100 in savings really worth an extra 12 pounds of weight?

This actually understates how bad of a deal cheap armor often is. Medium layered leather is also $220, only 26 lbs., and avoids the -1 DR vs. crushing that scale has. Cheap armor is so often such a terrible deal that I frequently don't even bother considering checking the numbers when designing armor loadouts.

[King Leonidas]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

This actually understates how bad of a deal cheap armor often is. Medium layered leather is also $220, only 26 lbs., and avoids the -1 DR vs. crushing that scale has. Cheap armor is so often such a terrible deal that I frequently don't even bother considering checking the numbers when designing armor loadouts.

if you start in tl4 what you do is you can a tl 4 heavy plate make it front only and cheap and it comes down to 800 bucks

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by King Leonidas

if you start in tl4 what you do is you can a tl 4 heavy plate make it front only and cheap and it comes down to 800 bucks

Yeah, as noted upthread, Cheap becomes too good of a deal for expensive armor, because you wind up looking at a small penalty (-1 DR, out of a fairly high DR) for a large benefit (less than half the price). Being a percentage reduction in DR rather than a static -1 would make it more consistent between armors but would introduce rounding errors; having it instead be a percentage increase in weight would work out much better. But if you're sticking with RAW, yeah, you can exploit it to get really good armor for cheap.

[King Leonidas]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Yeah, as noted upthread, Cheap becomes too good of a deal for expensive armor, because you wind up looking at a small penalty (-1 DR, out of a fairly high DR) for a large benefit (less than half the price). Being a percentage reduction in DR rather than a static -1 would make it more consistent between armors but would introduce rounding errors; having it instead be a percentage increase in weight would work out much better. But if you're sticking with RAW, yeah, you can exploit it to get really good armor for cheap.

yeah then you can add another cheap plate for 900 dollars atop of it again. for 8+8 for the same weight of a standard breastplate.hahahaha