In the future of space, it's easily possible to mass manufacture

>>50818037
Because:

It looks cool
Can house tech
Like life support
And heating
Can boost physical attributes
You might not fight that kind of insane gun, maybe just regular shit
It's part of your job's regulations
You got it from your eccentric 24th century grandad

Etc

Why do you think weapon technology will advance that much but armor technology will not?

Because in the future of space, it's easily possible to mass manufacture personal armour that can stop pretty much any ballistic or energy projectile short of a starship cannon.

>>50818037
armor exists to protect the wearer from things other than weapons/people

environment, fauna, etc

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>>50818114
>War were declared
>Arms race of man-portable starship cannons ensues

So I can poop standing up while talking to people and my armor can use my piss and shit as fuel

Shrapnel from said hella-guns will still be dangerous even if the primary shot misses. Think of it as a helmet for the whole body.

>>50818037
Why not make a future where armor actually works?

>>50818037
1)It's a sealable spacesuit and it needs to be durable enough to shrug off micro impacts.
2)IF your guns are THAT powerful, using them INSIDE the ship is pretty suicidal, so non-insane people will be using lower caliber stuff and armor can help with those.
3)Futuristic armor often includes medical features that seal the wounds or administer anesthetics and other drugs to keep you alive even if can't prevent you from being wounded.

>>50818203

Tha t's a woman(man)?

>>50818078
Anon, 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?

>>50819053
>Being this tier retarded
Try leaving your basement more often

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>>50819053
watch less anime
go outside

>>50818037
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.

>>50818037
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.

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>>50819078
>Anon, 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

>>50819078
>Anon, 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!

>>50819249
>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.

>>50818078
>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.

>>50818174
>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

>>50819263
>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.

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>>50818037
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.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Lightsaber-resistant_materials

>>50819272
>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).

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>>50818203

>>50818037
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

>>50818037

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.

>>50819345
>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.

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>>50820356
>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.

>>50823109
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.

>>50819078
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.

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>>50823109
PoGs/Fobbits.

>>50823495
Man, tanks are really neat, arent they.

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>>50818037
>Why do people then still wear armor?
Why indeed?

>>50819078
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.

>>50824296
yes this is why no-one in armor has ever died in the history of war. LITERALLY NO-ONE!

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>>50818203
>>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.

>>50824359
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.

>>50824359
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.

>>50818037

Holy shit op did you think???

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

>>50824359
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.

>>50818037
>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.

>>50824389
nah, they got shot with guns which is why guns are still around and metal Armour isn't

>>50824430
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

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>>50824414

>>50818037
Because it's actually a force field array.

>>50818816
Isn't shrapnel the main reason why soldiers wear body protection today?

Just look at this:

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4LTdD3GcKk

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

>>50824414
That's cool as fuck.

>>50824633
Metal armor is still useful... It requires Spall coating and it's heavy as fuck, but it'll do the job.

>>50827947
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.

>>50818037
Do they?

>>50823109
>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.

>>50824047
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.

>>50827947
Helmets are also nice for things like concussions

>>50828229
/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.

>>50824633
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.

>>50828530
Armor going away (due to loss of effectiveness, due to increasing weight to stop guns) is what made quantity feasible.

>>50818037
because the armor is tougher than a planet obviously

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>>50819078
No.

>>50819345
>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.

>>50828763
>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.

>>50828821
Fair enough, I just felt that could use some specifying.

>>50828011
nice try Troy Hurtubise, but you won't fool me into buying your armor.

>>50819089
>>50819110
>Triggered waifu-fags

>>50828821

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.

>>50828572
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.

>>50828763
>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.

>>50818037
>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?

>>50824047
Who needs armor when you have red shirts to block any danger?

>>50824633
Metal armour was around until the '50s.

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

>>50818037
Because It's made with the same materials used to make starship armour.
Duh.

>>50828373
>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?

>>50820356
I'm the boner vibrator headband.
yes i know it's probably some fancy voice transmitter, but still

>>50818037
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.

>>50828974
>Canada has its own, real-life Tony Stark
>He's basically a drunken redneck

>>50833073
As opposed to normal drunken Stark?

>>50818037

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.

>>50836176
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.

>>50827947
>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.

>>50829058
>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.

>>50830870
Go watch Rogue One.

>>50842002
And the Abrams tank isn't even the toughest one. The Challenger 2 has just stupendous armour, it is just silly.

>>50823109
>He doesn't wear high-performance fabric
I bet you don't even activate your almonds.

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>>50843960
>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.

>>50842002
>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.

>>50845737
>>50843960
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.

>>50818037
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?

>>50846651
>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.

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>>50818037
The armor is a self repairing life support system that contains a powerful recharging force field capable of stopping shots from said guns

>>50818037

Force fields.

>>50847449
>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.

>>50847449
>https://www.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.

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>>50848408
I'm so glad the helmet there didn't just have a full glass visor like you see in 75% of fictional armors.

>>50819236

This.

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

>>50824697
THAT IS BUT A THIMBLE

>>50848654
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.

>>50818037
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.

>>50843960
I would like to point out that this is no longer WWII and engagement ranges have been inching upwards slowly since the 1970s. Placing shots into small target areas is harder for that reasons.

Then you get into that fact that armor accessories have greatly improved. The current issue helmet can stop a 7N13 ( a 7.62x53mmR AP load) at 560 m.

>>50818037
>in the far Future it is easy to mass produce body shields that repell any object going faster than a Football
>melee weapons and body armor become increasingly more important in warfare

Welcome to dune

>>50818037

Because radiation and micrometeoroids aren't guns.

Or rather, guns aren't the only danger to defend against, idiot.

>>50857391
>develop anti shield weaponry
>destroys the shield
>also sets off a chain reaction that leads to everything within half a mile being vaporized
Dune was cool.

>>50820356
FELIN isn't a future design, they have tens of thousands of them fielding today, and are making huge orders for them, which in just a few years will be equipping every last rifleman in the french army.

>>50818037
>>50818037
>what is shrapnel

>>50848328
This.

The problem isn't that we can't design armor that's practically invulnerable, it's that we can't get Joe Smith 11b to fucking carry that shit with him on patrol because it weighs more than him and all his kit put together and he's already got 80 pounds of kit. The reason power exo-suits are being pushed so hard isn't so we can make space marines it so we can carry more shit because we're already at the physical max of what can be expected.

>>50818037
Easy, body armor is made of starship armor.

>>50848328
Dragonskin is actually conceptually awesome. The problems were a combination of cost and cheap adhesives used in construction on something that should have individual plate replacement. It just needed more time to develop.

And since you brought up fluid armor, a concept that has been in functional prototype stage for years, it's another thing that future armor developments will likely not be a single solution. As modern military armor often has a combination soft/hard armor concept, layered "scale" hard plates with quick-swap capabilities and impact reactive fluid soft armor (i.e., the force is distributed through the entire piece of soft armor so that the residual trauma on the wearer is also minimized) then you have something interesting.

Though, in the context of the thread, deflector fields/energy shielding is likely the only answer, sadly.