Rules Clarification: Does TL10 Cloth Armor Stack with a TL12 Vacc Suit?

Behind the Claw, pg 108
Palique Tailored Vacc Suit and Palique Accessory Pack
The armor of the hard suit add-on is cumulative with the vacc suit, giving a combined rating similar to averaging a TL11 and TL12 Boarding vacc suit (CSC 33).
 
Oh yeah, I forgot.

Going to school, you can buy a kevlar backpack, and slip in ceramic bullet proof plates.

Pretty heavy, but, you can't get backstabbed, and during a shooting, hide behind them.

Should work with a vacuum suit, as well.
 
Behind the Claw, pg 108
Palique Tailored Vacc Suit and Palique Accessory Pack
The armor of the hard suit add-on is cumulative with the vacc suit, giving a combined rating similar to averaging a TL11 and TL12 Boarding vacc suit (CSC 33).
Yeah, that scans. Good find.

But trying to wear a stock vacc suit and a stock cloth suit at the same time... not so much. You end up like trying to wear two helmets at the same time...
 
As a referee, I would definitely discourage trying to wear anything under a Vacc Suit, although if the question is "can I?", I would say that if you wear a Vacc Suit X sizes too big for you (depending on how thick the armour is), you can probably make it fit.

The disadvantages will be

1. heat regulation (this is kind of important - in an atmosphere things will get warm, which might be bad or not depending on the ambient temperature, but whatever built in heat regulation the Vacc Suit has won't work any more. In a vacuum, things will get very ugly very quickly - heat regulation prevents the user from being cooked)
2. Make Vacc Suit rolls to do stuff (I make players wearing Vacc Suits take these depending on the situation and their Vacc Suit skill level - take a minus if you Vacc Suit is not the right size, or overstuffed)
3. Functionality of the suit will be limited - peeing and pooping won't be pretty if you don't have the suit's pluming attached. There is interference with biometrics, since various attachments can't be attached. I assume that high tech vacc suits permit Medic rolls on the wearer without removing the entire suit since diagnoses and maybe some medical functions can be performed by the suit: not if there is armour underneath. Accessories might not be usable because there is clothing in the way.

In general, if an armour could be cheaply made more effective without penalties for other functions, it would already be built in. It isn't so it can't - at least not without causing other problems.
Here is the real question that will bake Geir's brain.

One humanoid robot with max armor. Puts on a set of Battledress designed for use by the robot. Is it doable by the rules? What happens? Armor rating? Movement? STR? etc? So, it is basically a robot inside a robot. Since Battledress is basically an armored, wearable robot. (or at least uses the Robot rules for many things)
 
Here is the real question that will bake Geir's brain.

One humanoid robot with max armor. Puts on a set of Battledress designed for use by the robot. Is it doable by the rules? What happens? Armor rating? Movement? STR? etc? So, it is basically a robot inside a robot. Since Battledress is basically an armored, wearable robot. (or at least uses the Robot rules for many things)
Why stop there? The robot inside the robotic battledress is the avatar of a smaller robot inside the first robot which is inside the robotic battledress. ;)
 
Inside an armoured vehicle inside an armoured ships boat inside an armoured warship.
In my game, some slavers escaped the PCs (and justice) by doing almost exactly that - armoured slavers hiding behind an armour bulkhead in an armoured vehicle in a hold, inside their soon to be overrun ship. They exploded a missile warhead in the ship taking out a couple hundred low-berthed slaves and a couple of the players' NPC crew (and nearly did in some of the PCs) which looked like a suicide and take our attackers with us type ploy - but actually just blew them out of the ship's hold into space pretending to be floating debris to be rescued later by nearby compatriots. This left the players mystified as to what could have happened, but they failed a Sensor roll to detect something odd in the debris, and then spectacularly failed their Investigate when analysing the ship, denying me the opportunity to reveal how they got away.
 
Fortunately thanks to the author of HG2022 getting bay weapon TLs competently wrong there is a simple solution.

The TL11 50t meson bay...

(in prior editions of canon TL11 is the spinal meson, the 100t bay meson gun becomes available a couple of TLs later, until at TL15 the 50t bay becomes possible with miniaturisation, and the battlefield meson gun. Now the meson battlefield should start at TL11, 50t meson bay weapons could be mounted in TL11 gunships)
 
Some armour does stack. Period. But not all armour. A robot in battle dress? Sure. Biological and android robots are more limited in armour, though. Anything else would need a custom battle dress suit. How about a person with +5 subdermal armor inside a suit? Perfectly fine to stack that.

I could swear one version of the rules (was it in Striker??) made stacked armour with depreciating effectiveness (maybe by making steel equivalent armour ratings increase more geometrically than linearly?). Probably a hallucination.

But... a simpler method would be to make each layer only half as effective, rounding down. And make it DEX-1 for each layer (but again Subdermal Man shouldn't get the DEX mod, so it would get exception prone).

A blanket half for the second strongest layer, a quarter for the third strongest layer, etc. With a full encumbrance load (versus the 1/4 mass) for all the additional layers. That might be simple enough.

If not Matryoshka Man becomes potentially ridiculous. And a Referee should always be looking at a stack as either a 'Not possible for that combination' or a 'Yes, but here are the penalties'.
 
Some armour does stack. Period. But not all armour. A robot in battle dress? Sure. Biological and android robots are more limited in armour, though. Anything else would need a custom battle dress suit. How about a person with +5 subdermal armor inside a suit? Perfectly fine to stack that.

I could swear one version of the rules (was it in Striker??) made stacked armour with depreciating effectiveness (maybe by making steel equivalent armour ratings increase more geometrically than linearly?). Probably a hallucination.

But... a simpler method would be to make each layer only half as effective, rounding down. And make it DEX-1 for each layer (but again Subdermal Man shouldn't get the DEX mod, so it would get exception prone).

A blanket half for the second strongest layer, a quarter for the third strongest layer, etc. With a full encumbrance load (versus the 1/4 mass) for all the additional layers. That might be simple enough.

If not Matryoshka Man becomes potentially ridiculous. And a Referee should always be looking at a stack as either a 'Not possible for that combination' or a 'Yes, but here are the penalties'.
Yeah. Agreed. Full Plate Armor is shorthand for a layered armor type. You could wear the "underarmors" such as the gambeson and a chain hauberk without the metal plate on top, but I wouldn't recommend wearing the metal plate without the gambeson and/or hauberk. Ouch! lol.

So, for the most part, layered armor types are already included in Traveller. They are just listed as one armor instead of separating out the different parts.
 
I thing the point of the last few posts boils down to "armour can stack if it's designed to stack".

An armoured robot designed to fit inside battledress? Check.
Human shaped armour on a human with subdermal armour? Check.
Special up-armoring shell designed to fit over a normal vacc suit? Check.

Vacc suit over cloth armour? Nope.
Vacc suit OR cloth armour over full ballgown and fabulous beehive coiffure? Nope.

(As a point though, yes you can wear plate armour's under layers and get some protection, but the thing about wearing full plate over a full chain suit is fantasy. There might be some pieces of mail to cover gaps, but that's it. You do see it with partial plate, though; a coat of plates or a breastplate worn over mail body armour. And a great helm is designed to be worn over a smaller helm... in all those cases the outer layer is designed as an upgrade and not usable on its own)
 
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I thing the point of the last few posts boils down to "armour can stack if it's designed to stack".

An armoured robot designed to fit inside battledress? Check.
Human shaped armour on a human with subdermal armour? Check.
Special up-armoring shell designed to fit over a normal vacc suit? Check.

Vacc suit over cloth armour? Nope.
Vacc suit OR cloth armour over full ballgown and fabulous beehive coiffure? Nope.
What is the armor rating of a full ballgown, and for heaven's sake, what is it for that fabulous beehive coiffure? It may not need extra protection.
 
20 pts ablative social armour, while it stays fashionable (ablates at 1D6 points per function with an extra 1D6 if worn to consecutive ones)
 
Crinoline - personal space bubble.


crinoline-historical-photos%2B%25281%2529.jpg
 
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