In the future of space...

Tha t's a woman(man)?

user, if history of arms taught me anything, armour NEVER develops sufficiently.
Besides, what's the point of armour, if you can, say, desintegrate your target completely?

>Being this tier retarded
Try leaving your basement more often

watch less anime
go outside

Fragmentation. It kills more soldiers than direct fire does irl.

Even a mortar that fails to detonate sprays the inside of the building it hits with lethal fragmentation. Wooden ships were notorious for killing crews with splinters.

Most armor made today is only made to protect against certain things. Helmets are mainly for shrapnel and blasts, body armor is also for the same thing and the inserted plates are what actually "stops" bullets.

>user, if history of arms taught me anything, armour NEVER develops sufficiently.
Late medieval/renaissance plate armor could protect you from pretty much anything except repeated blunt trauma and being deliberately stabbed in weak points

It was just so expensive and difficult to make nobody except very wealthy nobles and kings could wear it

>user, if history of arms taught me anything, armour NEVER develops sufficiently.
And if studying the history of warfare taught me anything, it's that thinking of armor as a waste of resources is foolish to say the least and just plain wrong to say the most, this kind of thinking lead to armies issuing soldiers tin hats because 'what's the point if it wont stop a bullet?'
>Besides, what's the point of armour, if you can, say, desintegrate your target completely?
What's the point of having a desintigrater if you,say, have armor to stop the process of desintigration.

Makes people feel better.
That's why the bomb guys wear those suits!

>It was just so expensive and difficult to make nobody except very wealthy nobles and kings could wear it
And they decided they'd rather stay in court so most soldiers were issued partial pieces.

>Why do you think weapon technology will advance that much but armor technology will not?
There is no way to say what will happen in the future, but if we look at the back and forth between armor and weapons leading up to today, we see that there have been times when armor was ahead and times when weapons were ahead, but the general trajectory has been that weapons are advancing at a faster rate than armor.

The overall issue is that our ability to harness forces outstrips our ability to protect against said forces. Just look at firearms, ballistic resistant armor has always lagged behind advances in projectiles and propellants. State of the art ceramic and steel armors aren't going to save you from multiple hits from an enemy weilding a BAR, and that weapon is pretty much 100 years old.

>armor exists to protect the wearer from things other than weapons/people
This.
There are plenty of dangers in space, or on a starship that are not hugely powerful weapons. Armor that can protect you from just the vacuum of empty space would be reason enough to wear it, if it we not too restrictive.

If you want more examples, think of things like:
-Burst coolant lines
-Burst plasma conduits
-Spalling and shrapnel
-Falling/shifting objects when the ship undergoes rapid course changes
-Sudden decompression

>And if studying the history of warfare taught me anything, it's that thinking of armor as a waste of resources is foolish to say the least and just plain wrong to say the most
I agree with this, you want the best protection you can get. Assuming you can afford it, and that it does not get in the way of you doing your job. Just because the armor tech is not 100% effective, does not mean there is no value to it.

Because even soldiers today wear some form of armor, and this armor is getting more and more advanced? Look at some proposed future designs for the French and Russian militaries. I think pretty recently some Dutch university even experimented with some sort of 'power arms/backpack' that would greatly reduce the workload on soldiers in terms of carrying capacity. It's not unrealistic to assume development of armor would run parallel to development of weapons. On the contrary: you'd need to come up with a good reason for this not to happen.

>it's easily possible to mass manufacture handheld guns that can blow through pretty much any material short of starship armor
You know how in Star Wars lightsabers can cut through pretty much anything? Well, the expanded universe has multiple lightsaber proof metals.
starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Lightsaber-resistant_materials

>And they decided they'd rather stay in court
Especially lower nobilities were often expected to participate in war and/or lead armies though. Kings usually remained in their courts but even there we have exceptions (think of Francis I and Charles V).

...

because there's still a possibility that your opponent didn't have a mass manufacture handheld guns that can blow through pretty much any material short of starship armor.

that's not ballistic armor, it's a suit that projects a personal force field

Because you run into the same problem as magic having infinite ability. A gun that can shoot anything/kill anything vs. Armor that can stop everything

Even if armor doesn't protect you from a direct hit it can save your life from secondary effects like shrapnel, ricochets etc.

>but the general trajectory has been that weapons are advancing at a faster rate than armor.

Yet after two hundred thousand years of human history armor still works.

Man, neolithic battles must have taken ages.

>High-performance fabric
>Bulletproof knee pads.
>Bone vibrator headband.

Who in the fuck is designing this. Half the shit isn't even practical. It's just a bunch of techno-wizard shit.

You've never used a bone conduction headset?

They work great. You can hear everything fine while still having your ears clear and making no outside noise.

You're a fucking idiot. Look at tank armor development over the past 100 years. It has gone from riveted playes, to rolled steel, to rolled steel with a slope for deflection, to greater thicknesses on chassis that can support it, to chobham, and then some. A modern battle tank, M1A1, Leopard 2, Challenger 2, or even a T-90, can take a hit from a WW2 Jagdtiger and will very likely survive. The crew might be rattled, but there will be no spalling (thanks to spall liners), and the shell won't make it through the multiple layers of armor that combine to be greater than an equivalent thickness of steel.

PoGs/Fobbits.

Man, tanks are really neat, arent they.

>Why do people then still wear armor?
Why indeed?

You are a fucking retard.

For most of human history, armour completely defeated any kind of weapon.

The only problem was the cost of such armour was beyond what a typical soldier could pay for.

yes this is why no-one in armor has ever died in the history of war. LITERALLY NO-ONE!

>>War were declared
>>Arms race of man-portable starship cannons ensues

The Guyver manga, OVA and anime series have people just casually throwing around man-portable ground-to-orbit anti-spaceship lasers.

Your chances of survival in heavy armour increase so much, that plate armoured knights could charge right into longbowmen, crossbowmen and handgunners in full confidence that the only time they'd be at risk of being mortally wounded was when they got in a melee.

It's also why history is full of accounts of knights who have been dismounted in the middle of an enemy formation and are literally attacked from all sides, and still survive until their allies break through to rescue them.

Holy shit op did you think???

Why do modern soldiers wear elbow protection? There is no elbow traps in use by the enemy...

when your enemy has to stab you 20 times with a halberd for you to finally die, I'd say the armor has done a pretty good job.

Normally, only one stab is enough.

>In the future of space, it's easily possible to mass manufacture handheld guns that can blow through pretty much any material short of starship armor. Why do people then still wear armor?

We build the armor out of starship armor stuff.

Duh.

nah, they got shot with guns which is why guns are still around and metal Armour isn't

which is also the case in the hundreds of Rasputin like stories of people being turned into pin-cushions and using retard strength to carry their unarmored bodies back to safety

...

Because it's actually a force field array.

Isn't shrapnel the main reason why soldiers wear body protection today?

Just look at this:

>youtube.com/watch?v=l4LTdD3GcKk

I have hard time beliving helmet would stop a bullet, unless the bullet comes form funny angle.

That's cool as fuck.

Metal armor is still useful... It requires Spall coating and it's heavy as fuck, but it'll do the job.

Shrapnel and glancing shots, yes. A direct shot from an assault rifle is going to fucking HURT, even if you have full kevlar. Like take you out of the fight for at least a few minutes, even assuming no penetration.

Do they?

>good kneepads
>impractical

If you get shot in the knees there's a good chance that you'll never walk right again. Knee protection is an absolute essential for anyone doing any kind of heavy legwork.

In all fairness Starfleet is not a military force. They're an exploratory and diplomatic fleet at best. They should still at least give their security team some armor though.

From what I understand, modern military helmets don't really protect against direct bullet-hits as they do protect from shit like shrapnel and falling debris.

Can't find a war if you trip and fracture your skull on a rock.

Helmets are also nice for things like concussions

/k/ here, yes. historically speaking, the meta of weapons vs armor [in the WW2 through modern era] is that unarmored troops will be slaughtered by glancing hits from general weapons. Armor is for mitigating this so that they need direct hits from a specialized weapon to take out.

The newest modern helmets can stop some rifles, but the point of helmets (and old, vietnam era kevlar armor) is stopping shrapnel, including the dust, pebbles, and rocks kicked up from the ground by explosions.

Those are the main threat - only 15% or so of casualties are from bullets. Everything else is from explosions, and the killing area of a blast effect is small - shrapnel boosts the killing radius about 5x and wounding radius over 10x.

If future space dudes have super guns and they aren't magical phasers, the meta is liable to persist as energy discharge from missed shots hits the terrain and wrecks everyone unarmored, while armored people only die if they are hit directly.

No, arming 100 quickly trained peasant soldiers costing less and taking less time to train than 1 fully armed and armored warrior caste member is what killed most armor development.

Quantity of combatants beat out quality of combatants.

Armor going away (due to loss of effectiveness, due to increasing weight to stop guns) is what made quantity feasible.

because the armor is tougher than a planet obviously

No.

>State of the art ceramic and steel armors aren't going to save you from multiple hits from an enemy weilding a BAR

Good level four or equivalent ceramic armor will totally stop multiple 30.06 rounds.

>Good level four or equivalent ceramic armor will totally stop multiple 30.06 rounds.

Of course, but dispersion means that if you are taking enough hits that you need multihit armor (at any range beyond inside the same room), some of them are hitting places you are not armored.

Fair enough, I just felt that could use some specifying.

nice try Troy Hurtubise, but you won't fool me into buying your armor.

>Triggered waifu-fags

But that is entirely the point of ceramic armour, assuming that you are facing your enemy they have to shoot you in the head or neck to kill you. Hits to your arms and legs might cripple you, but the chance of being killed instantly is extremely low.

It wasn't loss of armor effectiveness but cost of armor effectiveness. Increases in costs for the same level of survivablity inflated to the point where the loss in total number of soldiers you could field exceeded the force multiplier you gained by having your soldiers in armor.

Having soldiers that were twice as likely to survive a battle didn't mean very much when the opposition was spending the same amount to field 4 times the soldiers.

As less armor was being used, fewer resources were therefore being used to improve armor which led to even less armor being used. This viscous cycle pretty much halted armor development until WWI when militaries started running into new soldier recruitment limits which made armor force multipliers viable again.

>Good level four or equivalent ceramic armor will totally stop multiple 30.06 rounds.

Main problem is the cost to outfit and maintain groups in that armor.

>Be Space Soldier
>Enemy soldier fires really overpowered gun
>Manage to dodge it and it hits the side of the ship.
>Armor activates life support and grav boots so space doesn't kill me
>Debris and molten metal from the new hole drop on me and are stopped by my armor.
>immediately go up to enemy soldier and snap his gun (and arm) in half with my armor enhanced strength
>Am reminded of that time when the armor stopped primitive cultures and animals from killing me
>Am thankful for my space armor.
And you're trying to tell me it does nothing?

Who needs armor when you have red shirts to block any danger?

Metal armour was around until the '50s.

During the Korean war, special UN forces used aluminium vests.

Because It's made with the same materials used to make starship armour.
Duh.

>If future space dudes have super guns and they aren't magical phasers, the meta is liable to persist as energy discharge from missed shots hits the terrain and wrecks everyone unarmored, while armored people only die if they are hit directly.
Wasn't that the dynamic in the Star Wars OT? Rebels die from blasters hitting walls a meter away from them, stormtroopers take a central-mass shot to put down?

I'm the boner vibrator headband.
yes i know it's probably some fancy voice transmitter, but still

In all of recorded history armor and weapons have always found a way to counter act each other.

I doubt this would just end out of nowhere.

>Canada has its own, real-life Tony Stark
>He's basically a drunken redneck

As opposed to normal drunken Stark?

A billion hazardous environments.
Shrapnel and blast shock-waves.
Exotic weaponry that isn't rapid fire rail-guns.

I prefer
>In the future of space, weapons technology has developed sufficiently that handheld weapons can easily blow up entire galaxies and ship-mounted weaponry can annihilate an entire galactic supercluster
>People still fly around in space with quantum forged super space armor, punching each other because physics is sitting in a corner and entropy ate shit, so there's nothing to fight over but the thrill of the fight

Because they wear starship armor.

Normal Stark isn't a redneck.

Gentle reminder that modern day tanks are indestructable.
Gentle reminder an abrahms got stuck and needed to be scrapped, but withstood repeated direct strikes by anti weaponry for so long they had to bust out the toolkits and cutting torches to decommission it.

>I have hard time beliving helmet would stop a bullet, unless the bullet comes form funny angle.

One of the Army bulls at my ROTC program had his helmet from Somalia with a nice 7.62mm sized dent on it, and it took the bullet full on from the front. He says the slight ringing in his ears every now and again from the sheer force of the impact reminds him every day that he's lucky to be alive.

Then again, the bullet was probably old Soviet surplus, so who knows how high-quality the bullet was.

>Hits to your arms and legs might cripple you,
Ceramic armor isn't 100% bulletproof, because there are areas, however small, that the ceramic plates don't protect. If a bullet hits here, it's full-force, and going to really tear you a new one. This is most commonly the neck, armpits and backs of the knees, which are chock-full of fragile veins and arteries that you REALLY don't want to lacerate or you'll die pretty quick.

Go watch Rogue One.

And the Abrams tank isn't even the toughest one. The Challenger 2 has just stupendous armour, it is just silly.

>He doesn't wear high-performance fabric
I bet you don't even activate your almonds.

>Ceramic armor isn't 100% bulletproof, because there are areas, however small, that the ceramic plates don't protect.
I don't think you are talking about modern ceramic plate armor, the areas it does not cover are anything but small.
See that darker brown rectangle on the chest of the guy in the picture, that is the ceramic plate in an armor carrier. Lots of squishy bits are left open.

Now that doesn't mean I would rather charge in to battle not wearing the armor. Any protection is better than no protection.

>Gentle reminder that modern day tanks are indestructable.
This is not true at all. They are very resistant to weapon fire, but calling them indestructible is just silly.

Specifically, wearing both front and back plates provides 18% coverage of the body surface.

That sounds small, but it includes the upper spine, heart, trunk arteries, and lungs (which aren't instantly fatal if only 1 is hit, but tend to collapse in a few hours without first aid).

The only other major danger zones are the liver (bleeds out fast and is uniquely vulnerable to tearing from high velocity impacts), kidneys (like the liver, but less so), and of course head and femoral arteries.

Shielding half your instant death or rapid-and-painful-death zones is a good bargain, especially since modern ceramic plates cost about $300 each. Plus a helmet and safety glasses, that's maybe $1000 for 50% lower death chances on a soldier who cost 100,000 to train up.

New armor is created to counter new weapons, new weapons are created to counter new armor, and so on.

How do you think modern ballistics vests came about? Or plate armor? Or, you know, armor as a concept?

>for 50% lower death chances on a soldier who cost 100,000 to train up
Armor is a good bargain, when you look as cost Vs. benefit. Which is why no matter how high tech or destructive weaponry gets, there will still be a place for it, even if that place is only to prevent incidental causalities from near misses or environmental hazards.

Did you know Oysters on a half shell were sushi?

Modern armor does its intended job well, but feels too much like a stopgap measure. If we put anywhere near as much money into developing personal body armor as we did weapons we would probably have something really neat on our hands. Making a ceramic plate and essentially duct taping it to your chest feels lazy and I'm sure we could do better if we tried.

The armor is a self repairing life support system that contains a powerful recharging force field capable of stopping shots from said guns

Force fields.

>If we put anywhere near as much money into developing personal body armor as we did weapons we would probably have something really neat on our hands.
Maybe. The US government spends lots of money on armor research, and I'd think the same is true of many other national governments, not to mention all the private armor companies all trying to strike it rich with the next big breakthrough or snake-oil product *cough*dragonskin*cough*.

>I'm sure we could do better if we tried.
We are trying, but there are some pretty difficult physical limits facing personal armor developers. There is only so much weight a person can carry as armor, before it gets in the way of their main task, same goes for thickness. Then there is the issue of energy transfer to the wearer. If you could build an armor system that could stop a 20mm bullet, but the energy transfer would kill the wearer anyway, there isn't much point.

There are still advances in personal armor systems to come. Armor that is fluid/malleable to preserve user freedom of motion, but solidifies when struck is interesting. Or even just lighter weight materials that perform as well as current armor would be a big improvement.

The lucky thing for us is we can just handwave the advances needed. The real world, not so much.

>youtube.com/watch?v=RKcqHaPhkkM
This gives 60% rifle-proof armor coverage, including most of the face.

Flexible armor recently left the R&D stage, it uses ceramic microspheres cast into a rubber foam, over standard aramid or dyneema backing.

Ceramics dissipate force through lateral microfractures instead of bouncing bullets like steel or catching them like kevlar. That lets them stop hardened-core and high-velocity bullets that zip through anything else.

I'm so glad the helmet there didn't just have a full glass visor like you see in 75% of fictional armors.

This.

If your only hope is that the gun misses, you still have to worry about the splatter from whatever it DID hit.

THAT IS BUT A THIMBLE

Glass/Plastic visor is okay if it is the secondary system with main being a metal helmet visor that can be raised and lowered over it (as in knight helms).

This way you have your protection, can easily confirm identity of user by just making him raise the armored visor and he also can use his eyes if cameras were damaged.

Why did soldiers wear helmets for years when they weren't capable of protecting you from a direct rifle shot?

Because in combat there's loads of shit that can put you out of the fight or kill you that isn't a direct hit.

Just because a direct hit from an enemy gun can kill you doesn't mean that you're suddenly okay with bleeding out thanks to a piece of shrapnel.