Body Armour, Past and Future.

I've been thinking about body armour lately, it's not widely used ('cept by the Klingons it seems) but it's been mentioned. Plus the uniforms of some races (Andorians, Romulans, Cardassians, Jem Hadar) seems like they might give some protection. But how much and against what?

And what about other types of armour? We've seen races that use primative/medieval style armour, how does it stack up? And then there's modern (20th/21st century) body armour, how does a US Marine's protection fare against a Klingon attack?

PS: Does anyone have any ststs on firearms?

That is interesting because the other day I was thinking the same thing.
I have made stats for security armor and marine armor for CODA

I guess you could decide 24th century body armour includes some sort of Enterprise-esque 'polarization' technology with deflects or dissipates energy weapon fire. Whether you want contemporary technology to stand up to baakonite depends on what kind of game you're running.

I don't have the stats in front of me, but from what I remember of the armour rules in ICON it's only a few (2 I think) points of protection. That's not much, but I guess it's to explain why nobody really uses it.

Still, I can't help thinking there should be more details on armour, from primative to 24th century.

Klingon Armor
ICON does provide 2 points protection, but only from hand to hand and melee weapons; for energy weapons the protection is only 1 point. Using the hit location rules this armor only protects the shoulders, chest, abdomen, forearms and lower leg/foot.

Cardassian Armor
This is fan made information aquired from these boards. Cardassian armor provides 2 points protection for both hand to hand/melee weapons and energy weapons. It protects only the shoulders, chest and abdomen.

Romulan Armor
This is fan made information aquired from these boards. Romulan armor (TNG and beyond) provides only 1 point protection for both hand to hand/melee weapons and energy weapons. It protects the shoulders, chest, abdomen and arms.

Starfleet Armor
This is fan made information aquired from these boards. Starfleet armor (MOV era) provides 2 points protection from hand to hand and melee weapons and 1 point protection from energy weapons. It protects the shoulders, chest, abdomen, groin and head. (There was a suggestion by a few people on the topic of the Starfleet armor that favored it providing 8 points protection for both hand to hand/melee and energy weapons; while another school of thought favored 4 points for both while the helmet only provided 3 points for both.)

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Originally Posted by ZeroArmour

I've been thinking about body armour lately, it's not widely used ('cept by the Klingons it seems) but it's been mentioned. Plus the uniforms of some races (Andorians, Romulans, Cardassians, Jem Hadar) seems like they might give some protection. But how much and against what?

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The species that wear body armor tend to carry blades and other melee weapons, so it seems likely that their armor is designed to protect against melee attacks.

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And what about other types of armour? We've seen races that use primative/medieval style armour, how does it stack up? And then there's modern (20th/21st century) body armour, how does a US Marine's protection fare against a Klingon attack?

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Generally speaking primitive armor protects against primitive weapons, but it isn't very effective against firearms. Modern armor is usually designed to protect against bullets, but isn't as effective against knives, axes and other primitive weapons. Not that we couldn't make armor that would be very effective against primitive weapons, but firearms are the bigger threat these days. The energy weapons of Star Trek add yet another type of threat, and I suspect that neither primitive nor modern (21st century) armor is very effective against such weapons. I would expect primitive armor to be effective against weapons like Bat'eths and Mek'leths,.

So how effective would 23rd/24th century armour be against ballistic weapons? A bullet is just a pointy object travelling very fast.

Which leads me to another area of recent interest, firearms. We have stats for only a few guns, does anyone know of a more comprihensive set of ballistic weapons stats?

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Originally Posted by ZeroArmour

So how effective would 23rd/24th century armour be against ballistic weapons? A bullet is just a pointy object travelling very fast.

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Depends on what the technology involved is like. Are there miniature forcefields dissipating kinetic energy in the armour? Some sort of super-cushioning material?

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Which leads me to another area of recent interest, firearms. We have stats for only a few guns, does anyone know of a more comprihensive set of ballistic weapons stats?

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Is there enough grain in the ICON system to mechanically differentiate a large number of weapons? By 'comprehensive,' do you mean contemporary firearms, or the history of ballistic weapons across known space? : P

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Originally Posted by ZeroArmour

So how effective would 23rd/24th century armour be against ballistic weapons? A bullet is just a pointy object traveling very fast.

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It's not that pointy. Just how effective Trek armor would be is entirely conjecture. Since it is technology beyond what we are capable of, we really have no basis for comparison. We can assume that they are capable of making armor that can withstand bullets, but the fact that we see firarms used rarely in Trek and no ballsitc armor to speak of suggests that such armor isn't common.

The Klingons wear an armored uniform, but it is fairly light and leaves a lot of areas exposed. And Klingons have a dueling culture where the people walk around armed. Odds are the armor they wear is designed to turn a blade.

I think that the major powers in Trek are more concerned about energy weapons, and since phasers, and disruptor are capable of penetrating meters of rock or metal, most body armor isn't going to make much of a difference. At most the shooter just turns up the setting.

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Which leads me to another area of recent interest, firearms. We have stats for only a few guns, does anyone know of a more comprihensive set of ballistic weapons stats?

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I think I had, but I don't have access to the computer it is on. If you don't mind posting the damage stats for the firearms in the CODA book, I'll see if I can recreate the formula I used. I think I based it on weapon energy, energy/area, or momentum. The trick is to find a progression that matches the know data and seems reasonable compared to the other weapons in the game. Once you have a formulatic method, it becomes easy to get damage ratings for any firearm.

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Originally Posted by ZeroArmour

PS: Does anyone have any ststs on firearms?

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Oh thats just lazy... This thread was only about 6 threads down... :p
http://forum.trek-rpg.net/showthread.php?t=16286

As for armour. I suspect that archaic armour would be as resistant as normal clothes (only more cumbersome) against energy weapons capable of disintegration...

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Originally Posted by Dan Gurden

As for armour. I suspect that archaic armour would be as resistant as normal clothes (only more cumbersome) against energy weapons capable of disintegration...

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But what if the weapons are not set for "disintegrate with extreme prejudice"? Maybe armor could give the wearer a saving throw vs stun setting.

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Originally Posted by Sarge

But what if the weapons are not set for "disintegrate with extreme prejudice"? Maybe armor could give the wearer a saving throw vs stun setting.

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Possibly. I wonder if metal armor would be effective though. The theory behind most energy beam stunners is that they deliver some sort of electric charge down the path of the beam that disrupts the targets nervous system.

If I recall correctly, in ICON you compare the stun damage to the character Resilience to see if it knocks him out. So you could just have armor work normally and subtract it's value (or part of it) from the damage roll. I wounded have a problem with Klingon body armor soaking a point or two off the stun damage.

Come to think of it, consider how high the damage scores are for the higher phaser setting, I don't have much of a problem with body armor coming off the damage for the higher settings either. It's not like a couple points of armor will make much of a difference against 6D6+100.

Yeah, but as tonyg already pointed out... Different armours tend to serve different qualities verses different attacks.

So modern ballistic armour is not as useful against a simple knife. So you now have these anti-stab vests. Its all part of the general arms race.

So from the POV of the question posed; how would modern armours fare against energy weapons... I guess not well at all. Perhaps the example would be unloading an M16 on a Knight in plate mail.

As for less than lethal settings on Phasers, that rather proves the point. How exactly does armour protect you against stun setting? Even the on-screen established armours on screen (Klingon and Starfleet) seem to be faily useless against their contempary energy weapons.

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Originally Posted by Dan Gurden

Oh thats just lazy... This thread was only about 6 threads down... :p
http://forum.trek-rpg.net/showthread.php?t=16286

As for armour. I suspect that archaic armour would be as resistant as normal clothes (only more cumbersome) against energy weapons capable of disintegration...

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Oops. But in my defense I didn't think from the title is would have firearms stats.

So, at the end of the day body armour is just window dressing. Only realy practicle against knives and other "staby" impliments.

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Originally Posted by ZeroArmour

So, at the end of the day body armour is just window dressing. Only realy practicle against knives and other "staby" impliments.

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No surprise there. And a good reason why armor is glossed over in the various Trek RPGs. Still, thanks to the Prime Directive, there might be times when armor is useful in an RPG session. Like when the away team is on a low tech planet.

I once ran a game where some researcher went off the deep end, thought he was Merlin, and tried to create Arthurian Britain on an alien world. Genetically coded power sword, nanites in the scabbard. The Starfleet characters had to get armored up to blend in with the native upper classes.