What armor would be the most effective at dealing with a warpick

>>45086230
Adamantium armor.

>>45086230

Plate armor.

>would the impact still be enough to cause damage despite not wound being made?

Unless you get a good hit to the head, it probably won't do much more than cause a flesh wound if you use the spike. Weapons like these were used in conjunction with plate armor as well because you had to get in so damned close.

(>>45086230
Here are my three uneducated guesses:

1) A fictional, hard, flexible material. The armour would buckle stiffly, then pop back out. It would hurt like hell but would provide some protection and would not be wrecked/become disabling and damaging to its wearer by the strike.

2) A fictional, light, dense ablative material. The armour would compress to absorb blows. It's only temporary and it wouldn't be perfect but at least the armour wouldn't buckle inward and become damaging to the wearer immediately.

3) Plate armour. Hammers may be more effective against it than not but it's still the best armour you can get.

4) Fictional ninja speed and evasion and no encumbering armour at all. This is the fudge non-answer; I might as well list "forward planning" as the best armour against a warpick or hammer. It's technically true!

>>45086230
That's a warhammer

Basically the hammer (plus the mace and maul) came into vogue around the time plate armours where reaching their apex by being hardened, tempered, folded, gusseted and reinforced masterpieces which where all but invulnerable to sword and axe strikes, bounced most types of arrows and could take immense amounts of abuse.
Essentially they batter things into unconsciousness and will stave in plates, turning armoured combatants into a bludgeoning match where he with the most skill and cardio, will probably win as the other guy is unable to breath, might take a belt to the head and will be unable to function. The spike on most hammers and to some extent, the flanged mace, will put a hole through damn near anything able to be worn as armour- if the strike hits true.

A lot of armours where deliberately shaped to move the force of the blow away, deflecting that energy away from the main mass and thus, the strike would slide off and be unable to deal as much damage, both to the armour and the wearer. That's where the skill comes in as you have to hit specific areas on a moving target that is still capable of defending themselves, plus on top of it you've got about 2.5-3kg of metal on the end of about 1-2kg of wood and iron stick and expected to keep swinging that motherfucker around until the other guy gets beaten down- cardio, very important thing! :)

Course, if you can ram 2-3 inches of that spike into someone, they're liable to become very fucked up.
Also note on the head of warhammers they have sort of 'chisel' indentations around the edges of the hammer, that is so the hammer will catch into the armour (shaped as I mentioned earlier) so as to deliver the maximum amount of energy without sliding off.

> not using a longbow

>>45086230
>>45086230
Is this bait? This weapon is especially designed to penetred armour. The best defence against this weapon is, not having armour and just dodging it for it has to be swung in an arche to be active and that is kind of ok to avoid.
But if you REALLY want to counter it with something to wear:
A gambason so thick, that you look like the michelin man.

>>45086265
>Unless you get a good hit to the head, it probably won't do much more than cause a flesh wound if you use the spike.
Nah brah, the point of the spike is to punch through the armor and get you good.
>>45086431
>The armour would buckle stiffly, then pop back out.
I think you misunderstand which side of the warhammer people typically attack with.

Strangely enough you would want to wear something soft and very padded.

War hammers, picks and maces were designed explicitly to penetrate and crush metal armour.

>>45086230
It is literally a weapon designed to ruin armour and fuck up whatever is inside it.

Fuck off, OP, unless you want us to tell you to wear a jacket made from four dozen pillows.

>>45087359
This is /tg/. Home to armorspergs who think full plate makes you invulnerable.

>>45086230
>What armor would be the most effective at dealing with a warpick or strike from a similar kind of weapon?
Same thing that's effective against almost every other melee weapon.
Have a shield. Know how to block, dodge, and parry. Know how to fight well enough that you're not relying on your armor to absorb the attack.

>>45087411
>But anon! By the time the warhammer became widely used, the shield was being phased out by knights!
They still knew how to block, dodge, and parry senpai.

>>45086230
Even weapons like crows beak style pole hammers didn't really penetrate armor. They were designed to grip the armor and apply the most amount of force possible. I don't know if you would want a solid "point" for dealing with armor, it seems like it would glance the plate and not use the weight transferred effectively.

The idea was to transfer concussive force.

>>45087385
>who think full plate makes you invulnerable.

Are we talking about 99% of all hand held piercing/slashing weapons? Because good fucking luck cutting through hardened steel plates. You're essentially trying to cut through steel made from the same steel that your sword is made out of except its literally designed to disperse the edge of your blade to uselessness. By the later stages of plate armor there was very few weaknesses left in a suit of plate.

>>45087359
>This weapon is especially designed to penetred armour
Not penetrating but more destroying it in long term.
This is why knight for once go full Samurai and forbid the use of blunt weapons.

>>45086230
This was recently posted over at myarmoury, and I think it highlights an issue with the perception of armor in popular culture. There were of course instances where most troops would be well armored, but the overrall point is very relevant to the discussion.

" Works that have a lot of armored characters also tend to "cheapen" armor--rather than it being a somewhat rare item that offers great protection, these works make it common and weak, so that people die when characters hit them with a weapon. I can't think of too many works that have our hero struggle to kill the villain's henchmen because they're all armored. Instead, the baddies (and goodies) are often all wearing armor that protects them very little. By making armor common and ineffective, these works of fiction have basically transformed it into heavy clothing, so that the characters now have a boring choice between cheap, light, mobile clothing, and heavy, slow, useless armor. Realism is more original, fun, and believable, in my opinion."

I would also add that many people appear to be falling into the trap of thinking that because picks, maces and the like are more effective against plate than say a sword cut, therefore plate was useless.

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A giant turban to absorb the shock.

would you guys say a flat-damage reduction-based armor system is superior? i would add a weapon vs armor stability system to prevent thin , ultrasharp armor slicing swords

how should i go about impact? flat , percentual (capped) or both?

>>45086230
>What armor would be the most effective at dealing with a warpick or strike from a similar kind of weapon?

Plate.

this current fad of claiming that warhammers and maces go through plate simply by looking at them is complete and utter nonsense.

a hammer will punch through plate easier than a sword.... that does not mean it WILL go through. the vast majority of impacts will be deflected, just as with all other weapons.

place armour is absurdly effective.

>>45088923
It would never really punch through it. At best it would creat a small dent that the hammer could "catch" onto so it wouldn't slide off as the blow landed. "Catching" is important because it allows the hammer to transfer all of its momentum and KE to the target.

Slamming a hammer into someones helmet is ideal, rock the head hard enough and you can knock people out, cause concussions, snap necks, and crack skulls.

Hammer blows to other locations would at best injure, allowing you to set up the headshot more easily.

>>45088923
but heavy , tiresome to wear on LONG journeys

maybe add stamina depletion the heavier the armor

and it is bad in situation where dodging is the only option

what systems do have rules for armored fighting fatigue?

> Home to armorspergs who think full plate makes you invulnerable.

Well-made plate armour is a fucking biomechanical exoskeleton, produced from hardened plates expressly designed to deflect blows. It was developed over the course of nearly 300 years, through hundreds of battles and thousands of combats, by people who were putting their life at risk. It does not make you invulnerable, but its terrifyingly effective.

and while they continued to use it all the way through to the 17th century, they did not universally adopt the mace, or warhammer.

this is empirical evidence that the impact weapons are not some sort of "counter".

The idea that the spike caused death by penetration is ridiculous. Maybe if the spike hit a thin or poorly designed visor it could penetrate and crush someones face, but in general death is caused by blunt force flattening, not penetration.

Hit someones head and snap the neck. If you get them on the floor, you might be able to crush them with a headshot or chest shot because of the spike allowing the blow to not "bounce" off the rounded armor, and the floor sandwiching the body stops it from simply moving with the blow, which would make the impulse far longer and therefor much less lethal.

This is why boxers move away from punches and not into them.

>>45089009
>but heavy , tiresome to wear on LONG journeys

which is why its worn for battles, not for travel.
that's hardly rocket science.

>maybe add stamina depletion the heavier the armor

Reality does not have a stamina bar.
generally speaking, it can be worn quite comfortably for relatively long periods of time - 4, 5 6 hours. If you have sabatons and greaves, it can be tiring to run/march/jog in. Remove those, so you have cuisses and poleyn, and its significantly more comfortable to walk several miles in.

>and it is bad in situation where dodging is the only option
And here, you get into the complete bullshit that gamers have spouted again and again, that they would "dodge" attacks etc. Its fantasy. complete and utterly devoid from the reality - that plate deflects impacts spectacularly well, and is a far more effective defence than "dodging" - which is why they used it, because they werent stupid, and they knew fine well both how effective it is, and how much more fucked you were without.

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>>45089070
>The idea that the spike caused death by penetration is ridiculous.

.....

>>45089167
1.point
imagine taking that shit off because you wont want to spend 4 days marching in armor/sit on horseback with it
then bandits come in an unexpected moment - you lack the time to put your armor on in that chaos
2.point
armor does increase your stamina consuption , even in real life.
with more weight , every move tires you more , it gets hot and sweaty rather easily. how to present it in a game? add stamina costs for actions , especially walking
3.point
we are talking about situation where you are literally better off dodging shit.
like burning oil , being tossed over (into water for example)
and in fantasy , with dragons and shit , you can still die from a monsters punch.
being able to dodge is in some situations better if wearing armor would not provide enough protection to save your life .
still against knights and other humans and such , armor would be better

>>45086702
Interesting video which sort of backs up a lot thats been said so far-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCfAuuG92g

>>45086230
see ivan , when use reactionary armor

enemy will not be strike of you
because enemy is of fear being explode

Plate armor is still the best form of defense. Blunt force trauma or an extremely stout point are not an automatic counter to armor. It isn't rock paper scissors. Blunt force trauma or a punching action are simply less protected against than cuts or sword thrusts. A Warhammer isn't guaranteed to kill a guy in plate armor, and the shape of the armor helps create glancing blows that don't transmit their full force.

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>>45089430

>>45089430
Sergei saying that reactionary is being of benefit, hoping that Commissar and NKVD are not of hearing.

>>45089182
HOLY SHIT A HOLE IN A SKULL.

This is completely anecdotal and I'm surprised you even bothered you fucking retard.

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>>45089364
>imagine taking that shit off because you wont want to spend 4 days marching in armor/sit on horseback with it then bandits come in an unexpected moment - you lack the time to put your armor on in that chaos

Then wear different, lighter, more comfortable armour whilst travelling if you're that paranoid.

>>45089912
You need to fuck right off.

>>45086230
>what armor will do well against the weapon that was specifically made to penetrate the last viable form of melee armor invented?

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>>45089912
oh there's a retard here alright

>>45090222
thats my point

plate armor is not always usable (for example in the given situation) lighter armor is better if you want to stay mobile , whilst heavier equipment needs to be taken off on more occassions

>>45086230
Silk lined armor.

Plate armor IS the lightest form of metal armor you clowns.

Lamellar, brigantine, and jack-of-plates all overlap. Partial overlapping means more weight without really adding more protection, unless a blow just happens to hit in the part where two scales overlap. Not to mention the extra weight the backing adds.

I'm a hobbyist armorer, I own a Lamellar cuirass, a mostly complete brigantine, and I'm working on my first plate harness. The plate is by far the lightest.

The only exception is maille, because it consists of a lot of empty space, but it's a huge pain in the ass to make properly and the level of protection is way worse.

>>45092168
An addendum to this: most plate armor, historically, was made to stop bullets, and was therefore pretty thick.

Jacks of plate weren't, and many were made of thinner metal and therefore lighter. But with the same metal thickness plate is definitely lighter.

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>>45086230
>Whats the best armour to deal with a weapon specifically made to defeat armour?

Except for magic metals, the only IRL defense is a shield or not being hit.

>would the impact still be enough to cause damage despite not wound being made?

Blows to the limbs can deform and jam the articulations of the armour. Blows the shoulder and clavicle can break them, even through the plate and padding. A shot to the knee area will blow it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Qh9KOt1x8

plate and arguably scale mail

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OP here

Well despite a bit of arguing I got the answers I was looking for, thank you very much /tg/. Now let's go to the next question I had, if you don't mind, since we're already talking about armor.

How did Lamellar and Scale armor compare to each other, and how did either compare to mail in effectiveness/cost/use/insert-argument-point-here?

And why did some cultures, like the Byzantines, utilize Lamellar and/or scale?

>>45093056
Scale armor consists of metal plates sewn onto a cloth or leather backing.
Lamellar consists of metal plates that are sewn to each other.

Generally speaking as far as armor goes, the larger the components are, the better protection it is likely to provide. Lamellar "lames" are usually larger and more rigidly affixed than scales, and provide a better level of protection but are also much less flexible.

Also, scales, unlike lamellar, are generally attached to their backing on only one side, which allows a sword or knife to be thrusted between them.

Maille provides less protection than lamellar, but may provide better protection from thrusts than scale and is somewhat lighter than either. Also, it is somewhat more flexible than scale and substantially more so than lamellar. However, due to this flexibility, maille provides less protection from blunt force trauma than either scale or lamellar.

>>45093453
>Maille provides less protection than lamellar,

This is a common misconception. Until the advent of plate technology in the 14thC, maille was the most effective body armour availible in Europe.

>>45093056
The simple answer is that lamellar was simpler and cheaper to produce. Maille is labour-intensive and requires skilled craftsmen working with high-quality iron to draw wire in order to make the links. Lamellar takes less time, is less difficult and can use lower quality (and thus cheaper) metal.

These are qualities that make it an attractive when equipping relatively large standing forces such as the Byzantine army. However while the common footsoldier of the 11thC wears a lamellar klivanion, it is telling that Cataphracts instead wore lorikons of maille.

In cultures that used both lamellar and maille, the basic pattern repeated over and over again is that the heaviest troops with access to the best equipment choose maille. Not only did the Byzantine Cataphracts favour maille, but the Alexiad gives a glowing description of the maille hauberks used by the Normans in Italy.

Lamellar has a good rep these days, as it looks exotic and surely little plates must be more advanced than rings. However during the medieval period to those with exposure to lamellar knew it to be the cheap and cheerful armour.

This is the go-to introduction to maille, and includes a comparison to other forms of protection. http://myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html

Myarmoury also has a slew of threads comparing maille and lamellar. Usually in a viking context with people trying desperately argue that those bearded scandiwegians obviously used lamellar in the face of all the evidence to contrary.

Amusingly, if you do a search for "myarmoury lorikon", one of the results is an archive of a /tg/ post I made in November. One day this myth will die, but it is not this day.

>>45086230
This is the latest video in a rather excellent series on 14th century armour, that is pretty apt for this discussion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5Qbi-fCvnc

>>45093453
>>45094213
The simple answer is "It depends". There are a whole lot of ways to assemble lamellar armour and a lot of ways to produce scale armour as well.

The problem with lamellar is apparently that it's maintainance-intensive. Those cords rot or get worn through according to translations of near eastern manuals I've seen. But apparently production is easy enough as you don't even need to have somebody who can draw wire.

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Reminder that lorica segmentata is best armour

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>>45096070
Those are very pretty arms you have there.

Don't get hit.

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>>45096370

>>45094355
From what I've read they switched to riveting the lames in after awhile, probably for that exact reason.

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>>45096425

>>45089182
>Posting a muslim skull hit by a square bullet

>>45088888
The problem with damage reduction based armor is:
1. Its grossly unrealistic
2. Its random and unbalanced
3. It makes you impervious against enemies who were barely a threat while being garbage against enemies who are

If you want realism, you probably want to keep in mind that armor primarily deflects blows, and its goal is to deflect strong blows, not to protect you from getting banged around by weak hits -- and you will get banged around. Armor works as the opposite of DR.

>>45086230
Nothing beyond 5 inches of layering of anything, but that would be nothing less than completely stupid and inconvenient.

>>45089364

>and in fantasy , with dragons and shit , you can still die from a monsters punch.

Obviously you can't meaningfully dodge a dragon unless you're in heavy cover, and if anything, armor would improve your chance to dodge, as you gain more economy of movement -- slight motions (absolutely all you can do in combat) combined with deflective surfaces would make it easier to dodge.

Certainly it matters little, and its probably better to send unarmored people with pikes and crossbows or whatever versus dragons than wasting knights, who the dragon can probably just ignore.

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>>45096070
Hamata > Segmentata
Linothorax best

>>45097390
The first is bullshit, the second is not

>>45097082
That, anon, is one of the best responses I've seen in all the years I've spent on this site.
Have a free Internet.

>>45086230
The war pick was invented as a response to plate armour. It uses either blunt force of the hammer face to traumatize the body beneath the armour or the concentrated piercing potential of the pick to punch through the armour.

Basically, the ideal armour is whatever lets you get out of the way fast enough, because getting hit with either face of the war pick will ruin your day.

>>45086230
something you can dodge in.

>>45089182
Could a square-cross-sectioned pick put a hole that clean into a skull? I'd think the bone would fracture in a less predictable fashion.

>>45098486
Given the evidence, yes it could.

>>45094213
Maille provides better coverage than lamellar.
A maille hauberk might provide better protection than a lamellar breastplate.

But there is absolutely no way you can argue that a square foot of maille is better protection than a square foot of lamellar of similar quality metal.

>>45099003
People in the period sure seemed to think it was.

>>45099003
Presumably you could wear both? Also armoring the limbs seems rather unimportant if you're using a full body shield like the Byzantines liked to do, since you'd only expose them when you attack and taking a blow to the arm even with mail on it would probably suck.

I always saw medieval armor as a layered defensive with mail being the go-to for most layers when you don't have something specific in mind

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>>45087693
samurai forbid the what now?

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>>45087359
>not having armour
Wow.

Fucking wow.

I'd have to TRY to find a bigger retard than you on /tg/, and that's quite the feat. You know what happens when you get struck by a warhammer and you're not wearing plate armor? You get a fucking broken bone, that's what. You know what happens when you get struck by a warhammer in plate armor? You get a nasty bruise and possibly a hairline fracture, but you can still move your arm without screaming in pain. The idea that plate armor somehow makes you WEAKER than plate armor simply demonstrates a complete lack of understanding when it comes to physical laws. Plate as a single rigid piece absorbs and distributes kinetic energy, preventing shit from fucking up internal organs and your skeleton unlike if it had struck naked flesh.

Also wearing a gambeson isn't special, because you're ALREADY wearing a gambeson/arming doublet under plate armor.


Just... please don't post here anymore.

>>45091305
Actually he has a point, because we don't know if he was wearing a helmet, or the context of the wound.

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>>45086230
I don't know, here, have this webm.

>>45102469
Man that was a shitty and unrealistic movie.

>>45102541
It had its moments.

>>45100786
>whether or not something was popular is more accurate than empirical tests

ok

>>45087374

>Nah brah, the point of the spike is to punch through the armor and get you good.

Far easier said than done, since the sharp end of a warhammer is a sharp point that can be easily redirected by the angle of plate armor on a swing that is not ideal (ideal being aimed perfectly at a perpendicular angle to the surface it is striking), which becomes much harder when both fighters are constantly moving around and you have to worry about taking a hit from your opponent. You would use the blunt end of the warhammer to knock someone wearing plate around until they're dazed and sluggish if not completely knocked out, and then you'd hit them with the sharp end in a vulnerable spot to finish them off.

>>45087381

You always wore a layer of padding under plate for very obvious reasons. You'd be no better off without the plate armor against such weapons.

>>45087381

>all of this retardation

Protip champ, strapping fifty pillows over your body isn't going to make getting hit with a warhammer any less deadly. You're better off wearing anything remotely hard and resistant to impacts.

>>45100786
I feel like we're trying to argue different things. I'm not trying to argue that lamellar or maille armor is better (I actually own lamellar and don't much like it, but that's besides the point). I'm saying that, from a strictly materials standpoint, lamellar is tougher. It's more resistant to deformation from blunt force and it's harder to pierce. I don't own any maille but there's quite a few videos of people breaking rings both with arrows and hand weapons. There aren't as many videos for lamellar but it sure as shit is a lot harder to stab through.

As far as "which armor is more effective," that's a more complicated question the answer to which varies based on the design of an individual harness.

>>45102762
Nah brah, metallurgist conducted several test on it. Warpick's can punch through the the best medieval plates. The drawback of it is that most of the time its really hard to pull it out, so the user usually abandons it in the heat of battle.

How effective were throwing hammers and the like, or a thrown mace?

>>45089009
>what systems do have rules for armored fighting fatigue?
i really need to say it? GURPS

>>45103606
"Throwing" hammers and maces aren't really all that common when you get up to the point of decently developed armor technology like plate. I'm actually not sure I've seen a picture of a real-life throwing hammer from Europe.
You tend to get things like javelins and throwing axes (like the famous francisca) and other "hurling" sorts of weapons when lighter armor is more common and prevelant (such as gambeson padding) and maille is the strongest armor around and only found on well-equipped groups.
Not to say that said weapons aren't effective, it's just that their range versus their penetrating power and the weight you deal with when you carry more then one makes them somewhat less then practical as time goes on.

For awhile though (Migration and Early Middle Ages) you'd find lots of infantry units wearing lighter armor such as gambeson and having large shields and swords or axes often carrying a throwing weapon that they'd release just before a charge to higher the impact.

>>45086230
I dunno why, but I keep thinking that an armor with so many spikes would be able to stop it

>>45104830
I don't think it would have any appreciable affect actually.
Spikes in armor don't change the material, just the aesthetics of the armor.

Only way to deal with it that I can think of would be to wear padding thick enough that when fully compressed it would still be thicker than the spike is long.
The padding would dissipate the blunt force, and the thickness would mean that the spike would never be able to reach you.

Of course, you'd look ridiculous and would be unable to move properly, much less fight effectively...

>>45103033
> I don't own any maille but there's quite a few videos of people breaking rings both with arrows and hand weapons
How do you know the people in those videos are using proper maille?

> There aren't as many videos for lamellar but it sure as shit is a lot harder to stab through
How can you be so sure when there isn't that much of a sample size?

>>45105049
Actually plate could stop a warhammer's spike; it wouldn't completely stop a heavy blow from it of course, but the spike would "catch" on the metal if it was well-made and thus not penetrate as deeply, though I'n guessing it's still hurt like a motherfucker from the impact. It also would damage the armor; the impact from the spike even if it didn't completely punch through would deform it, which would hamper mobility if it hit your limbs (to say nothing of possible trauma to the shoulder) or make it hard to breathe on the chest.
That said, being hit on the head would still ruin your day; even a minor penetration of a helmet would quiet likely lead to serious cranial injuries or a broken neck if it hit you on the side. Even a non-fatal warhammer impact on the head would probably fuck you up something fierce.

>>45096070
It's very tacticool. As in:shoddy and wtf were they thinking?!

>>45105815
mass production i imagine?

>>45105815
It was actually a fairly decent armour for its time and was in use for about 350years, a laminate of iron on the inside and case hardened steel on the outer providing better protection than mail or scaled armours that where also in use at the time.
But it was also expensive, apparently maintenance intensive and required a fairly high level of craftsmanship so mail replaced it for most of their troops around 4AD

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>>45101222
Good thing warhammers were not made to deal specifically with well-armored enemies then.

How would a modern-material gel armor behave against a blunt object?

>>45086230
What tech level are we talking about here? A tank would offer pretty good protection.

Assuming a lower tech level, a nice set of plate amour combined with thick padding is the best. Plate was really advanced stuff, only losing relevance in the 1650s.

>>45104999
I meant that the amount of spikes is so huge that the armor looks "fuzzy", but yeah I agree with you

>>45106097
I don't think it was used for that long, maybe 100-200 years, it appears a couple of times at the beginning of the Empire and not for long.

Anyway, the romans never stopped using mail armor, they had it from at least the Republic to the end of the Empire, the segmentata never replaced it entirely.

>>45106204
They were, but the idea that you are better off not wearing armor is clinically retarded. Plate is the single best defense there is for melee weapons. Wearing anything less will simply increase the lethality of injuries suffered, especially concussive weapons which will break fucking bones outright unless you have a solid, rigid material to absorb and distribute the energy of the blow.

>Le plate armor is worthless against warhammers

Is a meme that needs to fucking die in a fire. It's less effective at distributing the energy of the blow and preventing any damage compared to cuts or thrusts, but the only thing that results from wearing less armor is a more severe injury. If you're the samefag as the nonsense I quoted earlier, your should remove yourself from the genepool for the good of us all by testing out your theory. We'll wait to hear about your ER bill/death after getting a cracked collarbone from wearing just a gambeson to defend against a warhammer strike.

>>45106322
But what about dodging?

I know it's a shit show, but... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN30YMzja6Y

>>45106346
Nigga you don't dodge, you parry. Or hell just walk backwards, because a one-handed warhammer has shit for reach.

>>45106390
No, I mean dodging someone in full plate. He must be pretty clunky and his movement restricted: if you're faster than him you could potentially run circles around him while bashing his head in with the warhammer, no? That way plate armor loses against light armor+warhammer combo.

>>45106429
Full plate is not as "clunky" as video games would have you believe.

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>>45106429
>No, I mean dodging someone in full plate. He must be pretty clunky and his movement restricted

Plate armor doesn't restrict armor at all unless you're wearing a suit fitted for another man. Good plate, especially the later stuff, can bend more than you can, and is basically a second skin. You're not that much slower either because the weight is largely distributed across your hips- it just adds to your overall mass and gives additional momentum. You will not be running circles around anybody in plate armor, they're slower, but not enough for you to seize advantage of.

Dudes in light armor was the literal fodder that dismounted knights chewed through. Especially if he's got something like a poleaxe or claymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTwBQniLSc

>>45106530
fuck I mean movement. Plate armor doesn't restrict movement at all. It's just an exoskeleton of plates tied to the body.

>>45103209
>Warpick's can punch through the the best medieval plates.
How deeply would they punch through? Because you'd need decent depth to get through an arming doublet and if you don't get enough penetration to deal an immediately disablling injury then you'll be gutted the second after your pick is lodged in your opponents plate.

>>45106543
Also depending on the era, it may have to go through maill and a gambeson/doublet. It really depends on the time, as metallurgy was always getting better, as was the stuff under the plates.

>>45106346
>>45106429
Warhammer had shit reach, let's say you take a bec de corbin / pollaxe or something, you would be still fucked against someone with the same weapons and a plate armor, because at the slightest mistake, you're done for, whether with an armor, it's still possible to not being squished instantly.
Besides, even in plate armor, it's not hard to simply turn around, running around in circles would probably tire you faster than the armored guy you're facing.

Besides, we're assuming this is a retarded one on one scenario. In fact, when plate was put up, it was mainly for battles, and in battles you have arrows coming at you, multiple people attacking you at close range and then you can't just "dodge".

>>45106306
Just hit the books, from what I've got it was used around 30-40AD to about 300AD in any numbers with some slight modifications to the way it hinged and buckled together around 75-80AD
It was used after 300AD in lesser numbers, there wasn't really any 'planned obsolescence' as we sort of know it with military technology today, so it lingered around until a little bit before 400AD and then disappears from the records.

Mail they used from about 300BC onwards and all the way through, along with some Samnite-Corinithian inspired chest-plates, bronze breastplates that wouldn't have been out of place in Greece, scale from the east and headgear from a fair variety of sources.
If anything they where great at appropriating technology/tactics from those they met along the way and conquered

>>45106543
>then you'll be gutted
Assuming you were wearing armor that allowed that sort of thing I suppose, but men hauling around warhammers were usually knights or heavy infantry and thus equally as armored as their foes. They weren't lightly armored guys engaging against heavily armored enemies, that's just something you don't do unless you don't have any heavy infantry of your own.

The large increase in survivability armor net you actually meant a lot of heavily armed foes like knights were more likely to be knocked down, injured, but captured alive rather then actually killed outright at lot of the time.
In many was this was fairly desirable; the ransom market during these periods was fantastic, and by knocking down and capturing a few knights and selling them back to your enemy after defeating them on the battle and taking a little bit of their territory pretty much helped the entire battle pay for itself during some periods.

>>45086230

Still plate armor.

Just because you have a weapon that's more effective than others against firm metal armors, this doesn't make the armor inferior to the other options. You still need to overcome that the metal and padding beneath it will spread and absorb a great deal of the impact, if the angled plates don't deflect the blow outright, especially on a trained user.

It's been shown that even heavy armor is flexible enough to move around in just fine. There's no inherent "speed advantage" to just discarding it. The real challenge is keeping your stamina up under its weight. But that's a small price to pay if it avoids getting your your limbs crushed, which will exhaust you a lot faster.

>>45106612
Honestly, personal mobility and fancy footwork is pretty useless on the battlefield in a general sense, which is probably why most fencing schools teach in the format of a duel rather then the format of a battle.

One of the only books I've seen that ever brought up is the...I think third Witcher novel, where Geralt is forced due to circumstance to aid in an infantry charge; he's a very skilled fencer with great agility and truly superhuman reflexes, but he quickly discovers that it's just not very useful with the press and crush of men smashing into each other and his extensive training in combat isn't particularly helpful because he didn't know battle drills.

>>45106617
>If anything they where great at appropriating technology/tactics from those they met along the way and conquered

I imagine this was as much out of necessity as anything else half of the time, but it's probablyone of the reason why Romans were so damn good at conquering people in so many different areas I imagine; willingness to adapt and adopt tactics.

>>45106647
Actually mortality rates for Knights were at their lowest during the 13th Century IIRC. War was more chivalrous back then and people took ransom more often. In the 15th Century, they'd just kill you.

>>45106747
Probably due to changing tactics, or just as likely the increase in usage of irregular troops as they needed more warm bodies to fill out their increasingly large armies; men who are hired by pay are probably a bit less likely to follow the rules of warfare since they don't get to be ransomed and most are planning on getting paid by doing some looting if they win anyway.
Shit like that is what turned the 30 Years War into the horrific fuckfest it ended up turning into.

>>45106771
There's also weapons too. A poleaxe is capable of splitting a sallet helm, as such was how Richard III died. Weapons in the 13th century were considerably less effective at penetrating armor, especially the early coats of plate (which could tank lance strikes or crossbows) until weapons advanced again.

>>45100978
I meant Japanese have absolute no sense for progression of their weaponry.
I don't know why. Because tradition? Because they thought you can't get any more advanced?
They did in fact use technology of the Dutch and Portuguese but they never wanted to change. I guess guess you don't have to become better, when everyone plays after the same rules.

>>45103209
>>45106543
Couple of things here.
Plate armour isn't a massive construction like say plough shares or lumps of boiler plate, generally its about 0.8mm up to about 2-3mm thick. It gets its strength and protective properties from the way its creased, gusseted, assembled and tempered-hardened. The blows are taken and then slide the energy away to where it can't do any damage to the material or the wearer.
So once you've deformed sections of the armour by beating on it like the motherfucker owes you money- its protective value is compromised and you're at risk of something going through.

People are relatively delicate animals when it comes to being stabbed, that spike going through even just 1cm into someone's skull is going to cause (at best) a concussive injury, some blood loss and cognitive impairment- the target is no longer combat effective. If you manage to get it 2-3cm deep into their head, there's going to be unconsciousness in most cases pretty quickly due to the brain getting rattled around, the skull being opened and even if they're not unconscious, they're likely to be a bit 'out of it' and more than likely, just that bit dumber for the experience!

Being belted somewhere vital like the spine/neck, they're almost immediately down and in a lot of cases depending where the blow hits- dead.
Chest area, only has to go in about 6-8cm and you're hitting the heart (dead), 4-5cm and you're into someone's lungs and they'll quickly be very much out of the fight.
Limbs, lot of arteries, hit one of them and most are 2-8cm under the skin and depending which one= blood loss and unconsciousness quickly
Severely broken bones, compound fractures, dislocations = combat ineffective and you win

Pain thresholds and the ability to function (cardio) is also a factor, combat is extremely fatiguing activity, so the more someone is battered, forced to run around, swinging big lumps of metal around, they just overheat and fall over eventually = win!

>>45106793
There was quite a lot of evolution in the spear and naginata department though. Different blade forms, blade types, lenght of the handle and of the blade.

Then again, when you're a isolationist island, you don't really need weapon improvment. But from the early feudal era up to the 16th century, weapons did evolved and there were some new ones made too.

The geopolitical situation of japan though, was much less precarious than all of the european nation : besides checking out China, it was fairly calm, plus the sea and massive hurricanes to protect you.

>>45086230
>Gambeson and Plate

This the protective combination that gives every medieval weapon nightmares.

Only a blow to the head would really disorient you. Otherwise, you can shrug off most other blows, unless they aim for your shins or something.

>>45103033
>there's quite a few videos of people breaking rings both with arrows and hand weapons

The problem is that 99% of the time, the best you can say about the maille used is that it is not entirely unlike historical maille.

This is a fairly well documented area, so I'll just paste the obligatory myarmoury post: https://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=19189

* The thickness of the wire is generally too light for the diameter of the link, making it lighter but less capable of resisting a weapon.
* Holes are made with a punch rather than a drift. This leaves a lot less metal around the rivet to help secure it.
* Rivet holes are either too large or not centred. Both will leave too little material on one or both sides and the link will tear too easily.
* The links are hammered way too thin (probably to make them easier to punch), but this greatly reduces the strength of the link
* Rivets are incorrectly set. If a rivet is not peened tightly, the link will pull apart too easily
* There isn't enough overlap in the lapped section of the link to create a decent join
* Wrong shape rivet hole. Indian mail has rectangular holes. Historical wedge-riveted mail has ovoid holes. Rectangular holes tear very easily at the corners. Circular or ovoid holes are much stronger
* Incorrect metallurgy. Mild steel (or even so-called modern "iron") is not as ductile as bloomery iron and it is more likely to snap upon impact instead of stretching/bending

The upshot of all this is the maille being tested on youtube or even on "documentries" is in no way a fair sample of historical armour. And all of the actual evidence points to maille offering superior protection compared with lamellar, and I do mean all of the evidence.

>>45106793
>Because tradition?
The vaunted Japanese respect for "tradition" is mostly complete horseshit; every culture respects tradition, and Japan only became obsessive about it after a century and a half of national isolation and cultural stagnation.
>Because they thought you can't get any more advanced?
No, because actually they kept open at least one port to let foreign trade trickle in to keep it abreast of technological developments abroad.

What it comes down to was that the era you're speaking of when their tactics and weaponry fell into stagnation was basically that they had been at a state of enforced nation peace for around 150 consecutive years (which is a crazy amount of time in historical terms) while remaining for the most part in a state of enforced cultural isolation, all of which was mandated by the Bakufu, the military government of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which is easily one of the most paranoid governments in the entire history of them.
The steps the Tokugawa took to ensure peace and absolute security to their rule were insane by the standards of the time; initially they traded heavily with the Dutch and Portuguese, but after the Shimabara Rebellion (where a huge militant Christian uprising happened and was extremely brutally put down by the Shogunate) happened they basically decided too much foreign influence was a negative thing and to get any foreign...well, anything at all you needed special government permission, which was not easy to get for most people and daimyo during the period,
They also did things like send legions metsuke (disguised spies) across the country to report on the daily lives of civilians and ongoings of every single region, enforced a system where each daimyo actually had to spend every other year AWAY from his province and at Tokyo instead which both kept the daimyo constantly moving back and forth which made it impossible for them to get organized long enough to rebel and also made it easier to keep tabs on them

>>45107065
In addition they also did things like deliberately discourage things like research and development into things like bridge construction (people had to be carried by hand in special litters or simply on the shoulders of porters in the shallows of rivers) because that meant it was harder to invade Tokyo and other critical regions as the bridges capable of holding armies and where they were capable of being built was low.
They also limited gun development and research to literally one single grouping of families that was loyal to them so that nobody EXCEPT the government could make new firearms, and thus their technology never improved because they never needed to innovate at any point.
If the Tokugawa Shogunate had the technology available it would've set up a crazy Orwellian police state, and actually did not a half bad job of doing that ANYWAY even with it's early modern period technology it had access to.
Near the end of it's reign when those dissatisfied with it (which was pretty much everyone) were closing in they created their famous Shinsegumi, a group of skilled samurai (a rarity during this time period when most samurai didn't even need to fight anymore) who were more or less a government-sanctioned public hit squad who went around with legal authority to hunt down and kill anyone they thought were rebels or hiding rebellious dissent among their ranks with zero legal backlash.

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what is the best example of armor systems you guys have seen in gaming (vidya or traditional) so far?

i am currently homebrewing , and i wang to make something reality-oriented yet quick enough to use effectively

i am for flat reduction so far (damage -set amount of resistance) , anything else to add?

So, why did people stop using plate if it was so effective?

>>45107125
Song of Swords. GURPS.

>>45107217
We didn't. Plate still popped up throughout history intermittently as the breastplate- the Napoleonic Wars, WWI, and now in the modern day as the modern steel ballistic vest.

But for full plate armor? Guns invalidated melee combat.

>>45106747
>Actually mortality rates for Knights were at their lowest during the 13th Century IIRC

Late12th and at least the first half of the 13th Century are indeed pretty notable for very low casualties among men-at-arms for a couple of factors.

The short version is that due to a combination of excellent armour (full body maille coverage), relatively fewer weapons specifically designed to reduce the effectiveness of armour, and Chivalry it's fairly uncommon for men-at-arms to die in battle in this period.

Surrendering was an honourable way to end the fight, with little stigma attached if you gave a decent go of it before throwing in the towel. And most people would accept a surrender both because of the ideal of knightly behaviour that permeates popular culture (the craze for Arthurian legend is in full swing at this stage), and the huge monetary benefits of collecting a ransom.

There is also the factor that armies in this period were fairly small even for the era (Barons turning up with 1/8th of the knights they owed was not uncommon during the early 13thC), and that a high proportion of the soldiers, though not all of course, were knights or other heavily armoured troops.

The Battle of the Standard (1138) is an extreme example, but is a large pitched battle that is indicative of this trend. An English force of 10k inflicts a crushing defeat against a Scottish army of 16k. Most of the English soldiers were knights or armoured mercenaries, the Scots almost entirely unarmoured save for a small force of lowland Knights in the centre.

Upto 12k Scots were either killed or deserted and did not rejoin the campaign. Two (2) English knights are recorded to have died, though we do not know how many lesser men were killed other than it was very few.

Medieval chronicles are of course prone to exageration to put it lightly, but when pitched battles between large forces consistently produce very few casualities among the armoured men a pattern emerges.

>>45106543
still means the guy is fucked. he is bleeding out of a hole that he cant access. the armor is also dented he might not be able to take it off easily. if its a hit to the head and the spike penetrates he is gone for anyway.

>>45107217
Artillery began to be more developped and this is the kind of stuff that wrecks plate armor (artillery, not muskets). The pike development made the armor less important, since hiding behind 17ft long weapons was enough for protection.
And overall, the development of more professional armies, meaning less knight-like noble figures to invest into crazy expensive plate armor roaming around the battlefield. Sure, you had curassiers and the likes up until the 17th century, but they are less and less important as artillery shows up consistantly.

So artillery, bigger use of mass formations of pikemen, better individual firearms overall helped too.
Basically, they realised that more pikes and more guns was better than spending money into plate armor and "elite units" to roam in them. The class of people that used plate armor in the Middle-Ages started to get less and less into direct action too.

>>45107125

Either GURPS or Song of Swords.

>>45107271
I wouldn't say pikes invalidated plate, you still wanted plate armor throughout the era of shot and pike, simply because you don't have a shield to protect you from crossbows or arqubuses. What killed plate was guns turning into legitimately good, lethal weapons that made crossbows look useless and reduced the time needed to raise a lethal, professional army. You Gendarme takes years and years of training and thousands of dollars in modern day money to kit. Meanwhile I can raise probably ten or twenty men for that single Gendarme, and have them trained and kitted in MONTHS.

>>45107238
>>45107271
How does full plate stack up against modern firearms? I remember seeing a demonstration once where a breastplate withstood being shot multiple times with a flintlock but was penetrated by blunderbuss shrapnel.

>>45107293
About pikes, I'd say it's rather that you had more pikemen than before and those people usually had a breastplate and a helmet, but not consistently anything else, then, offense is the best defense, this the opponent can never really reach you. So the amount of people wearing plate was lessened by new types of soldiers.
But yeah, artillery and firearms in general is what killed plate, both because it could defeat it but also and very importantly because armies were more about them that the people in full plate.
The japanese did this as well, the proportional amount of armored people declines steadily during the second half of the 16th century as the number of musketeers rises up to 80% in some armies.

>>45107298
Pretty miserably, even something like 5.56mm FMJ will go through 3mm of steel at 5-600m
(see- >>45106807 on armour thickness)
9mm will rip through it fairly well at most combat ranges as well, modern firearms are extremely effective at armour penetration and its only really been in the last 20-30 or so years that the "armour plate" as we know it has been effective at stopping rifle rounds. I've been hit with 7.62x39 in a plate and it put me on my arse like someone had coat-hangered me... but its better than no plate, because with no plate I'd be dead.

>>45107387
>I've been hit with 7.62x39 in a plate
Wait, you mean wearing plate or wearing trauma plates?
Because I can understand the latter (I too have had the dubious pleasure of being shot) but otherwise I'm curious what the hell were you doing where you wore a cuirass and were shot with a Kalashnikov-pattern rifle bullet.

>>45107387
I see almost immediately after posting here >>45107473 that you meant ballistic inserts.

>>45107473
>trauma plates
Ballistic armour plate

As old and anachronistic as I am, they probably wouldn't have let me out of the base running around with a sword and shiny armour :)

>>45086230
Distance.

>>45102824
Depends on the size of the pillows and where they're strapped.

>>45107012
http://www.currentmiddleages.org/artsci/docs/Champ_Bane_Archery-Testing.pdf

I don't know, this is the best historical test I could find and like most others it indicates that solid plates perform better against penetration than rings.

As an aside, it's nice to talk to someone who's also interested in this kind of thing without a ton of shitposting. I'm learning a lot and I think I'm going to get started on making the tools for my own wedge riveted maille today.

>>45107271
This desu.
Change in military tactics. Guns absoluting armour is a myth. Large levied armies/units with cheapish equipment instead of smaller heavily armoured elite troops. "Knights" didn't die out, they just switched into the role of officers, where armour wasn't always needed and after artillery became more accurate could even be a liability.

>>45086230
a shield