Now to clarify before anyone groans, this isn't going to be something in-depth or anything else. I'm gonna try to keep this as simple as possible to lay out a few suggestions of mine/some basics about armor. And warning now. This is all a huge mouthful. Intro: First lets start out what I'll be working with, two basic types of physical armor (Shields or such are for a whole 'nother discussion). First is soft body armor. Which is.. Well, just that. Made of layers of cloth-like materials (Like Kevlar) Second is hard body armor. Which can/will be things like slabs of metal, ceramics, plastics, or a mix of such. Soft-Body Armors: Now lets start with soft, I'm suggesting two types. Ballistic soft body armor. And Thermal soft body armor. Ballistics: Ballistic will be, well, just that, soft body armor to stop ballistic based weaponry. However it'd really only be effective (Unless you decide to layer a whole lot of it), against pistol sized rounds. (Such as .357, 9mm, .45 ACP, etc etc. Anything short of a full out hand-cannon it'll probably be able to stop at most ranges, unless you got ripped off.) However it's still gonna leave you with a nasty bruise, and maybe a few cracked ribs. I'd also suggest, throw Kevlar out. Yes, Kevlar is technically soft body armor. But I'm pretty sure someone would of thought of something more effective by now. So just refer to it as whatever you want, or simply, soft body armor. Vest, whatever. However, this will offer basically no protection against thermal based weaponry or anything that is of a rifle size. (AKA plasma/lasers, or 7.62, 5.56, etc etc.) Thermals: Now onto thermal soft body armor. As its name implies, it provides protection against things such as plasma or laser based weaponry. However any one specific part of it could probably only take 1-2 rounds. (Maybe even some may get through if it's like a giant ass plasma cannon. But it wont kill you.) And it offers basically no protection against ballistic weaponry, and maybe only pistols at extreme ranges. (But that'd only be due to the fact that its trying to get through a decently thick layer of thermal protection.) Hard Armor: And now, hard body armor. (And I'm sorry but this is going to be a mouthful.) To put it simply, in its most basic form, it's a thick slab of metal. That should be fairly simple to understand. However it does get a bit more.. In depth, than that. And sadly I will have to at least touch the surface of the other two materials it can be. The other is ceramics. Which is, as its name implies, made of ceramics designed to take a ballistic round and distribute the impact. However because of that, when a section is hit, it typically crumbles to dust. And is no longer effective. The final is plastic, which is really only effective against pistol sized rounds. However unlike ceramics, it doesn't break upon getting shot. That's the basics. NOW, back to pure metal, because that's what I want to focus on. A basic half inch of steel can stop a 7.62 FMJ round. AP, API, or anything else, can get through. Now with that in mind I will also say that an inch thick slab of steel can indeed stop a .50 AP round. Now essentially, depending on the thickness, the round may or may not go through. Ignoring anything else, if the round -is- stopped, that impact will still likely knock you on your ass. (Glitch or not, I doubt glitch are THAT heavy as to avoid getting pushed over by a bullet.) Now as for thermal weaponry. These are my suggestions. Lasers can and will punch through most hard body armor, the only thing it may have trouble with is something like say, and inch or 3/4 an inch thick piece of metal. Aside from that, a laser is likely to punch right through and cause a decent amount of damage to the person in a concentrated area. But it wont burn away a huge area, just a small hole. However plasma may have a bit more trouble, due to the nature of it. I'd say the first shot would melt away a decent amount of the armor around the impact zone, and may give the person second to third degree burns, for the first shot. (Which will still hurt a shit ton.) For things like an inch thick of armor the person -may- get away unscathed, depending on the size of the plasma round. Or some of the metal may just melt with their skin, which would be arguably worse. Limitations/Availability(?): Now onto the -real- suggestions. First is, the most common armor may be simply hard body armor. And more specifically, the metal body armor. Because its just slabs of metal. The more complex/harder to make things are likely to be soft body armors. Even more so the thermal soft body armor. Dare I say that may only be available from the core worlds. That's my suggestion regarding the availability of the armors. Next is how its used. More specifically, stacking. AKA putting soft thermal under a hard body armor plate. I'd suggest a limit of being able to stack two armor types over each other, and depending on the armor that's put on, and the size of it/amount, would limit your movement/speed as would make sense. Keep in mind, beside the first hard facts of what each armor is, all of this is a huge suggestion of what armor may be like. AND, you all are free to throw what you think in here too. This is all liable to change n such.
I like the simplicity yet how well this encompasses things. I do think though, that plasma and lasers should be separate fields of weaponry, and perhaps have separate armors to protect against them. I like to think of plasma as the "Big bad weaponry" that is very difficult to stop. We'll have to be careful getting too specific into things though, as we will want a system that is easy to call upon for combat, so getting into specific bullet calibers past what is "common" may be a bit too much.
Aye, I was a bit iffy on going into specific bullet calibers. So simply going with 'rifle round' or 'pistol round' for ballistics works just fine. And I'm also gonna re-suggest that maybe armor that's around a thick inch could count as two 'slots' (If that is implemented.) And I'm not too adept at plasma and laser weaponry, so anyone who is knowledgeable about that speak up plz n thanks. Ninja Edit: And yeah, depending on how we figure out how lasers/plasma weapons work, separate types of thermal protection may be needed. [DOUBLEPOST=1438788207][/DOUBLEPOST]Well, I apparently really fucked up a bit while giving suggestions of availability. SO re-check that section for my fix if you guys want.
I apologize, but I do not think you are keeping this simple. If we were going to work with any sort of armor mechanics, I think it should probably be boiled down to its bare essentials to allow access for the lowest common denominator. I'm not really suggesting a replacement (I just had fun writing the following), but personally I think if you were to get into armors, a paragraph or two is all you need. So perhaps format it more like the following. ARMORS Clothing Offers virtually no protection, but of course typically allows for movement. Softsuit Ballistic armor is a soft armor that effectively prevents bullets from penetrating your body. It is capable of stopping a wide array of small to medium sized bullets. However it does not stop the force of a bullet, often resulting in blunt force trauma to the area the bullet hits. However what it lacks in raw defense it makes up for in being lightweight, and concealable, as well as fairly affordable in Antares. However, it offers virtually no protection against larger caliber bullets, thermal, or plasma based weaponry. Hardsuit Hardsuits are thicker, full bodied suits of armor. Unlike their lightweight counterpart, the Hardsuit is bulkier, often encompassing the entire body of it's wearer, and often weighs a significant amount more. Hardsuits are far less practical but offer a significant boost in defense over their soft-bodied brothers. More expensive hardsuits tend to mitigate some of the negatives, such as weight and movement, however it comes with an enormous price tag. However, hardsuits can typically soak up more bullets and higher calibers with less trauma to the body, as well as offer some protection against thermal and plasma weapons. However, without appropriate gear, thermal and plasma weapons could potentially cook someone within their own armor. ENHANCEMENTS Thermals Thermals are an armor enhancement developed to repel laser weapons, and mitigate some of the effects of plasma weapons. The enhancement works mostly by regulating the temperature of the user rather than actually attempting to repel laser rounds. Effectively it can regulate small sudden bursts of temperature, or long slow escalations in temperature. However, thermals are quick to lose power, and cannot effectively hold off fire indefinitely. More powerful thermals require a larger energy source, resulting in more weight on the user. Repulsion Repulsion enhancements were developed specifically with the intention of dealing with plasma, although its effects can effectively be described as wonky. The enhancement works by magnetizing the surface of the armor, and creating a repulsion field around its wearer. This does not stop all bullets from hitting its wearer, but rather pushes bullets away, either reducing their force, or sometimes allowing bullets near the edge of the body to miss. The magnetized surface however is supercooled, so it requires a thermal enhancement, causing the system to be a lot clunkier and heavier. On top of that, repulsion tech often makes it difficult to interact with objects, including personal weaponry, as well as others wearing repulsion. However despite all of that, it does excellently defend against plasma.
Well if we're talking about laser and plasma weaponry here, I'll take a leaf out of 40K's book. Quite a few leaves, actually. Firstly, laser weaponry. There are three main kinds of laser weapon, the laspistol, the lasgun (rifle-sized) and the lascannon (bazooka-sized, or bigger). There's a running joke in 40K that Imperial Guardsmen (the human soldiers who use laspistols and lasguns the most) are essentially using laser pointers to try and kill you., because 40K presents them as being strength value 2, while most infantry are toughness 4, which makes it quite hard to kill someone with them, so they'd likely be easily stopped by most armor types. The lascannon, however, is strength value 9 which reflects the fact it was built with tank-hunting in mind. Thus, it could very easily punch a hole through anything it's aimed at, maybe even impervium. There are also variants of laser weaponry, such as lascarbines, "hotshot" lasguns and others which provide higher power or faster firing rate. Secondly, plasma weaponry. There are again multiple sizes of plasma weaponry that are utilized by multiple races in the 40K universe. The most common being the plasma pistol, the plasmagun and the plasma cannon. All of these fire superheated blasts of fiery gas, much like what Novakids are made of but much, much hotter and thus are generally the same power, at strength value 7. Yes, even the pistols are strength 7. However these are prone to overheating and potentially killing their users with radioactive backlash so these would probably be rare and disused in any case. However they all posess incredible penetration power and so would be able to blast through absolutely anything the projectile hit. The only real way you could protect against such would be to have a forcefield or such which could dissipate the heat without melting, as there is nothing to melt but energy. All in all what I'm trying to get at here is that lasers probably aren't very good at piercing decent-quality armors unless you hotwire them to be more powerful, and plasma weaponry would likely be so rare or temperamental that you'd likely never even encounter such in a frontier such as Antares in the first place. Sorry this has been so exhaustive but I tend to get carried away by these sorts of things.
(Node) It's fine node, this is a suggestion thread for a reason. I think yours covers what actual full out armor suits could be like fairly well. (As I only have limited know-how regarding hard suits and bodysuits.) (Lyro) And yeah, but it once more depends on what the staff decide on, will depend on what thermal armor will defend against well/not well.
