Question What to mak armor out of?

For one of my more squishy characters I kind of wrote myself into a pickle; to protect herself she's going low tech mandalorian style armor with a few goodies borrowed from other scifi shows. I don't want her paying or adamantium and as far as I am aware the is no equivalent in the wu to mando iron, but I wan the armor to hold up, so thoughts?

Cryptic wrote: For one of my more squishy characters I kind of wrote myself into a pickle;

A lot depends on what's going into making her "squishy". Her strength and endurance are going to put an upper limit on the weight she can be carrying and still be effective.

Cryptic wrote: to protect herself she's going low tech mandalorian style armor with a few goodies borrowed from other scifi shows. I don't want her paying or adamantium and as far as I am aware the is no equivalent in the wu to mando iron, but I wan the armor to hold up, so thoughts?

The expected attacks (strength and type) need to be considered, but the only way the armor will never need repairs is for it to never be used. Then again, it doesn't matter that the armor remained undented against an attack that had enough momentum to pancake the chestplate against the wall behind its wearer.

In the WU? Start with Kevra if it is available. Back it with light ceramic plate of one sort or another, Like nul said, your limiting factor is going to be the person's carrying capacity.

Real-life hard armor is mostly made of ceramics and metals (steel, titanium, maybe aluminum where weight matters). Ceramics are lighter and harder than metal, and they insulate against heat better. The downside is that they wear out a lot faster after repeat hits, quickly becoming brittle, and they're not as good with blunt impacts. It's a good choice if you're only worried about short bursts of abuse and will have time to swap in fresh replacements between engagements. If you're likely to go on extended missions without opportunity to replace bits of your armor, or otherwise need minimal maintenance, metal would probably be a better choice. But it's still going to get messed up, as null said.

Cermets are a combination of ceramics and metals that can potentially offer the best of both worlds. I'm not sure how much progress has been made at optimizing them for armor uses in real-life (I've only heard of it being used with tanks, but I'm no expert). In the WU, on the other hand, there have been frequent mentions of "ceramet", which I'm assuming is a fictional type of cermet. This is probably your best bet for the main plates of armor. The downside is you'll have to comb the stories or pester the authors if you need information on its actual performance characteristics.

If there are any bits where it's more important to be lightweight than impregnable, such as in a helmet, you can use UHMWPE (e.g. Dyneema, Spectra). This is what's replacing Kevlar in the real world, both for helmets and for ballistic fabrics, and it would probably also be what you'd want to use for any bits of hard armor on your gloves.

For the suit under the armor plates, you can use UHMWPE or you can go with Loophole's Kevra . I'm not sure how the two compare in terms of protection, but Kevra is almost certainly more comfortable. If your character is building this at Whateley, it will probably be a relatively accessible material as well.

Otherwise, there's always the option of favor-trading with some gadgeteer or devisor to get a discount on something more exotic, or looting something off a defeated opponent or conveniently placed evidence locker. And you can mix and match as well, splurging on the more expensive stuff for the more important parts of the armor and using cheaper stuff on the less essential bits.

As Kristin pointed out, body armor can't magically get rid of energy. It can either absorb (part of) the energy by deformation, or spread it over a large area.
In the first case, efficacy of the armor decreases rapidly with repeated attacks.
In the second case, if the impact is strong enough, you can still cause considerable damage by crushing the wearer.
A special case is rigid armor, Iron Man style. Maybe It won't crush the wearer until it reaches the point of failure, but it WILL transfer momentum to the whole shell and accelerate the armor (and its pilot). Enough momentum, enough acceleration, and you get at the very least a dizzy pilot. Maybe one with severe internal organs trauma due to the high gees.

Another problem with metal plate (exotic "memory metals" notwithstanding) is malleability. Once it's been deformed, it may stay deformed transforming an impact injury into a crushing injury as the tissue under/behind it becomes inflamed.

Heat conduction, electrical conduction, radar/light reflection, acid resistance, gas/chemical resistance, psi shielding ... there are a myriad things that have to be accounted for just for some kids to get to class.

The take away of course, being there is no perfect defense. You are always making a compromise between protection and mobility. Surprisingly, a lot of cops, to this day, don't like wearing a Kevlar vest because even with the most comfortable model it is restrictive of movement, heavy and hot to wear. And by hot, I mean hot enough that special T shirts are made with ribs to hold the armor off your body to create a cavity for air to move in. But most police uniforms are super permanent press polyester and they don't breath for nothing.

And even if you put up with all of that, it will only stop pistol rounds without out an 8lb steel trauma plate added front and back. So if your car stop goes froggy and the guy pulls out an AR or an AK, all that extra weight you're hauling around just became useless.

So you figure out the most likely threat you'll face and decide what you'll trade off in the weight vs mobility numbers that will counter that most likely threat and you take your chances. That's real world.

Now in Whateley, you have some cool new inventions, but they have their drawbacks too. T Shirt thickness Kevra^TM will stop center fire rifle rounds up to twenty two caliber, up to 12Gauge slug and defeat handgun rounds to .357. What does that mean?

In armor terms, a defeated round has no impact on the wearer. The energy of the impact is completely circumvented by deflecting the energy through the garment and transferring very little to none of that energy to the wearer. (You might get a welt or a nasty bruise, but you're not out of the fight.)

A Stopped round is just that. The round does not penetrate the fabric, but some significant energy may be transferred to the user. That could be anything from being knocked down, to broken bones to even major tissue damage. But the round is stopped. Kevra^TM deals with this by recommending a padded undergarment or a thicker Kevra^TM weave, which then feeds into the mobility vs protection problem.

You can assemble a one inch thick Kevra^TM garment that will defeat a .50BMG round at the muzzle but you won't want to wear it for very long without some kind of artifical cooling system, nor will you be very agile. Now there are Kevra^TM grades that will stop that .50BMG round at T shirt thickness. But it will ONLY stop the round and you very likely will not live through the impact.

Sir Lee wrote: As Kristin pointed out, body armor can't magically get rid of energy.

Whateleyverse. Yes it can

Of course, since we're talking about Mandalorian armor, poor mobility can be partially compensated for with the requisite jetpack . It won't help your flexibility, but it'll help you get up to speed while lugging around all that armor and gadgetry. You might also throw in an anti-grav devise to share some of the burden, and also to provide redundancy in case some smartass has the bright idea of shooting your jetpack while you're in the sky.

annachie wrote:

Sir Lee wrote: As Kristin pointed out, body armor can't magically get rid of energy.

Whateleyverse. Yes it can

Isn't that a PFG and haven't some people with them discovered that unless they are anchored you can still end up tumbled across the battle field?

Anne wrote: Isn't that a PFG and haven't some people with them discovered that unless they are anchored you can still end up tumbled across the battle field?

Yeah, in the last segment of 'the Final Trump', JJ runs into that problem, including the fact that even a PFG won't magically stop all incoming force.

Offense vs. defense, the age old debate and conundrum of human kind. A truly wondrous discussion to be honest.

I will exclude the more special and unique Whateley Universe materials, because well, I don't know them that well or really understand them. As folks have pointed out however, there is ALWAYS a trade. You increase protection but sacrifice something else. (speed, mobility, comfort, etc.) with only a very few exceptions throughout history (then it is in terms of being relative to some other, equivalent defense).

First, if you are dead set on Mandalorian style armor, you have to decide how to mount it on the person. You could go medieval and do an articulated suit of armor (full plate, looks great, distributed the load better, and relative to say a mail hauberk, provides better mobility, comfort and protection, though clearly less comfort and mobility than say your favorite jeans). Alternatively, instead of one massive interconnected suit of armor, you can mount the plates on a garment of some sort. I am sure you have seen the padded motorcycle jackets with metal plates on them. Same concept, but you'd be using something a good bit tougher than that pretty brushed aluminum.

So, full suit of armor or plates mounted on something else individually? The first is classic and functional, but hard to get into, some suits are even impossible to get into without help. The later form, you can put on your fighting togs just like any other article of clothing, no help needed. Obviously, neither is going to be comfortable for all day wear everyday... There is also a third option, partial plate armor. Channeling my inner geek, I seem to recall that Mandalorian armor was often shown to be individual pieces and plates worn over some other garment. You have more openings in the armor, but you can choose to wear it, not wear it or only wear part of it as needed. You have better mobility than a full suit of armor that way and somewhat improved comfort while still distributing the load over the whole body. Sort of like how a baseball catcher can just strap on the shin guards over his pants, they are not permanently fixed in place or attached to some other part of the armor.

Next, materials... This is where it gets fun. What threats do you wish to defend against and how?
In ancient times you could opt for things like quilted cloth, which was good at protecting you against blunt objects (it is real thick padding). It could also offer some degree of protection against penetrating and cutting attacks, but each attack would weaken the armor (it is cloth, you can stab through it or cut it). For "ye olde conscripts" this stuff was common, because it was cheap and did an OK job...compared to wearing no armor. We use the padded/quilted armor concept to this day for motorcycle jackets.

Quilted and padded material is not the choice of the professional combatant however. They wanted something that offered more and better protection. The padding was retained for most forms of armor as the gambeson. A padded underlayer for whatever the primary defense would be. After all, a club doesn't have to penetrate your armor to hurt or kill you, blunt force is dangerous all by itself.

The next step was hardened leather armor, cuir bouilli. This stuff was pretty decent for the price. Better than mere quilted cloth by a long shot. But not as good as plate armor. The neat thing was that not only could the leather be hardened, it could also be faced with various materials. Some Arabic texts suggested a glue and mineral mixture that was painted on the surface of the hardened leather. This greatly improved the resistance to cutting and piercing attacks. You can also reinforce it further by using rivets, grommets or plates of metal. This could be viewed as sort of a "mid grade" armor back in the day. But you still have that degrading under repeated attacks issue, it is leather, it can be stabbed, crushed and cut.

Sometimes you just need more protection. Armor plate was considered to be the top of the line defense at one point. Bronze, iron and steel have all been featured over the years. Mobility is determined by your training, the weight of the armor and just how it is made (proper articulating can make one suit of plate far superior to another). The biggest advantage was that cutting or piercing a plate of metal is far harder than getting through mail (aka chainmail), cloth or leather. It can still be crushed however... When talking about any form of plate armor, the question is what exactly is it made of and how was it treated...

Softer metals, copper, bronze, iron, etc. are easy to work with but also easy for an attacker to deform. They just lack the rigidity needed. So, we eventually moved to various forms of steel. The first armors were likely iron that when worked in a charcoal forge developed a thing facing of steel, essentially they were case hardened. Then, you eventually got to proper steel with a decent carbon content. Now, we have a huge variety of steel alloys. Each alloy has different properties.

As I recall my Navy training, the properties were: hardness, brittleness, malleability, ductility, elasticity, toughness. You can also look into the density, fusibility and conductivity...but those don't enter into most discussions on armor (but might be more applicable in the Whateley world).

Hardness- resistance to abrasion, cutting and penetration.
Brittleness- more brittle means it breaks, less brittle means it deforms.
Malleability- the more malleable it is, the more you can shape it without damage. Less malleable means working the metal is more likely to cause damage.

Ductility- how well it bends and twists.

Elasticity- how well it returns to its' original shape after being acted on by some force.

Toughness- resistance to tearing and shearing forces. A tougher metal will deform, a less tough metal will fail (tear, break, etc.).

Density- weight by volume. A more dense material is heavier than the same volume of a less dense material... Obviously, a more dense material will make heavier armor than a less dense material.

Fusibility- the ability to become liquid when subjected to heat. A metal must be fusible to weld, this deals more with the temperature at which that becomes possible. But in theory it might apply to resisting heat based attacks...your armor might be able to survive a 5,000 degree F attack (but the person inside is now in an oven I would suspect).

Conductivity- how well the material carries heat and electricity... Again, a material that conducts heat well might just help some flame powered attacker cook the person wearing it. Same for electrical attacks. Meanwhile, a material that is a poor conductor (one that acts as an insulator) might help to fight those attacks.

Then we get to how the material is worked... Traditional armor plate is just that, a piece of metal. Sometimes there are layers of metal (duplex and triplex armor plate). Now, there are even "foamed metals". A few years ago a NC State professor developed a foam metal armor plate that could stop a 7.62x51 NATO round with just 8mm of material. Highly impressive and much lighter than a solid 8mm steel plate.

So, in the interest of being nice and needing a new research project, give me a list of desired properties or the types of attacks you most want to protect against and I will see what I can find in terms of "real world" materials for you.

Based only on what you have presented here, my initial suggestion would be a under suit of something like Kevlar or Dyneema along with some padding, then use plates where needed. The plate material, using real world prices could be magnesium alloy based, assuming your character has the means to work it (or get someone else to work it). The dealer price is about $3 per pound. Magnesium/silicon carbide alloy is roughly 18 times stronger than steel but the weight is closer to that of aluminum. It is commonly used as a backing plate in a ceramic faced armor system. You can face it with a kiln in theory (you would be doing small plates, not a whole tank), then wear the plates over your padded and kevlar-like material undersuit. Your highest cost would be the kevlar/dyneema.

Terribly sorry about that... I really did not think I typed that much... But seriously, the offer to do research stands if the wall of text does not offer you any help.

Anne wrote: Isn't that a PFG and haven't some people with them discovered that unless they are anchored you can still end up tumbled across the battle field?

Depends which flavor of bullshit it's made of. A fancier devise based system might cheat by finding a way to directly convert the kinetic energy of the incoming projectile into heat, electrical charge, or some other non-kinetic sort of energy, or push against some extra-dimensional mass instead of the physical housing. I'd expect that kind of PFG to have a more spectacular explosion than the normal kind when overloaded, though, and maybe some other fun quirks (e.g. where does all that waste heat the kinetic energy was converted into go, and can you weaponize it?)

Of course, if what you want is a magical shield, you should probably look at actual magic instead... But if that field of bull is just a little too aromatic, look at adapting some psychic based techniques to technology. If it's possible for a telekinetic to lift a car with their mind without the weight of that car being applied to their body and pushing them into the ground, then it's also possible for them to halt the motion of an incoming projectile without that projectile's momentum pushing them. All you have to do is figure out how it works so you can replicate it with a machine. I bet that's a really trivial problem to solve!

Ultimately, unless you're a brick, not getting hit at all is the most efficient defense, generally. Of course, that comes with a whole lot of issues and caveats - particularly vulnerable to being blindsided, and therefore heavily reliant on awareness and reactions. PFGs would generally help such an approach greatly in a pinch.

If you think about it in real terms, there will always be a bigger gun (especially in Whateley) that can punch through whichever armour you have. Therefore the best use I can think of is to trivialise incoming damage up to a certain degree, or to compensate for errors and let you survive something that would otherwise kill you, even if just a one-off. Avoiding that kind of damage through mobility, intelligence and general caution/planning definitely seems like the way to go, personally.

But that's more along the lines of the meta-discussion. To bring it back to the original question, what would your character go for? Do they have preferences or personal reasons to opt for one over the other? How many design approaches and material types is she aware of? How accessible are they? What does the story necessitate and how can you reasonably facilitate that?

Why you make it out of the most resilient material ever, plot, so long as it isn't red you should be fine..

mhalpern wrote: Why you make it out of the most resilient material ever, plot, so long as it isn't red you should be fine..

Yep, and if you're only a minion and your boss offers you red armor run, don't walk out the door!

Anne wrote:

annachie wrote:

Sir Lee wrote: As Kristin pointed out, body armor can't magically get rid of energy.

Whateleyverse. Yes it can

Isn't that a PFG and haven't some people with them discovered that unless they are anchored you can still end up tumbled across the battle field?

\
beh, bring logic into things. I was thinking of giveing her a mando force field bucklers. small, Arm mounted, ..
and layered onto of an under suit based off Sto's energy dampener suits. armed with a force lance or Schlock's plama cannon...

and by squishy I mean no one has a clue on how to teach jess about her mimicry and untilshe works it out she has the popwers of a teen girl.

let me tell you about a little know historic fact

all those shields the the knights used in the dark ages??

they where only leather! that's right leather stopped STEEL blades!
At one time someone had a recipe to tan leather so well that one sheet or skin under tension was as strong as steel!

but they lost that process along the way as steel became better

use that for an armor, some refound lost process that makes it tough to bullets but still Fonzi leather jacket soft!

The techniques for cuir bouilli haven't been lost. Longbows and crossbows simply got that much more dangerous to the aristocracy. Don't forget that having the weight of leather or thin steel instead of oak or thicker steel means that that much kinetic energy from a sword, axe, or halberd blow is being passed on to the bearer.

Mark VI unobtanium, backed with a layer of bureaucratium. Whatever penetrates the unobtanium will be so slowed by the bureaucratium that the attack will simply give up.

Or there's this:
www.popsci.com/metal-foam-stops-bullet-in-less-than-an-inch

Thats awesome Elrod...But the question remains. How much energy was xferred to behind the plate. And then there's the...How much does it weigh? If each plate weighs 50lbs...Not very field worthy.

Yolandria wrote: Thats awesome Elrod...But the question remains. How much energy was xferred to behind the plate. And then there's the...How much does it weigh? If each plate weighs 50lbs...Not very field worthy.

There's not much detail given, or in any published journals, so I'm guessing that someone in DARPA doesn't want a lot published. Possibly the research is even funded by DARPA. My guess is that it's lighter than the base metal, since it is foamed.

Well for bureaucratium the problem isn't that it really is secret, it is that you didn't fill out the request for the request for the request for information form correctly in quadruplicate in blueblack ink and then your failed to submit it to the correct subdepartment, that tends to roundfile even correctly filled applications for request forms, especially for that particular request form, because even though you filled it out exactly correctly for them to take any action other than round filing it would mean that they had to possibly take a risk and there is no creature in all the universe(s) more risk averse than the denizens of the subdepartment which deals with the distribution of forms for the request for the request for information....

Anne wrote: Well for bureaucratium the problem isn't that it really is secret, it is that you didn't fill out the request for the request for the request for information form correctly in quadruplicate in blueblack ink and then your failed to submit it to the correct subdepartment, that tends to roundfile even correctly filled applications for request forms, especially for that particular request form, because even though you filled it out exactly correctly for them to take any action other than round filing it would mean that they had to possibly take a risk and there is no creature in all the universe(s) more risk averse than the denizens of the subdepartment which deals with the distribution of forms for the request for the request for information....

That sounds like the bureaucratic system in place in the Futurama universe.

Yep and if you do happen to actually know the form number to start your request(s) for forms, then they demand your ID which they copy and send to other subdepartments, especially those involved in investigation. They don't accuse, but will infer to the other subagency that you must be a subversive, or have forbidden knowledge of govt research or projects, or just procedures. Of course there is one beast which is of great help in navigating the bureaucratic maze, it's proper name is Lawyerus Stinkingus Aurilius....

I tend to use an inner layer of Redtapium with an outer shell of Gordianum.

That works too! Redtapium is always available in unlimited quantities... gordianium is a bit more rare, but seems to be a derivative of redtapium so it probably only takes a commonly available refining process.

Valentine wrote: I tend to use an inner layer of Redtapium with an outer shell of Gordianum.

Well, the Gordianum is the hard part seeing how the most abundant supply is on the planet Mongo, and they are under strict trade sanctions because of their tyrant renegade ruler, Ming I also known as Ming the Merciless.