Fallout 4 Nonsense - Leather Armors energy resistance.

[Mebantiza]

Fallout 4 is full of things that are either wrong, make no sense, or are just plain stupid. Sometimes, this is intentional and is meant to fit into the lore. Like, it being 200 years after the Great War, but buildings, skeletons, and artifacts that would have been long looted or decayed, look like the War happened 20 years ago, at most.

 

The load screen with the message: Leather Armor offers additional protection against energy damage. flashed by for me and this one has long bugged me. Well didn't flash by as load times are ridiculous in this game even after you try and optimize it.

 

Anyhow. Leather and Energy weapons. Im not sure where DEV got this one from, but this is not a property of leather. Leather is...a cloth, cured animal hide basically. It would provide some modest protect v energy weapons, compared to say, a T-shirt or bare skin, but that is not saying much. Any laser would burn through leather w/o much difficulty. There is no technical or scientific basis for this notion at all, so why it was made a feature of the armor, is another head-scratcher. Metal is much more effective in this regard than leather, but, of course, you'd pay an increased weight penalty. In this game? Metal offers DECREASED protection v energy. In reality, an energy weapon would require far more energy to burn through metal than cured animal hide, but in F4, it it the exact opposite. Go figure.

 

Here is what leather and cloth even, IF properly constructed and augmented, would be good at:

 

Physical Damage.

Leather\Cloth Armors would provide surprisingly good protection against PHYSICAL attacks, ie knives, swords, clubs, even arrows, if made properly. The key word being , properly-made. I am not talking about Leather Jackets and pants you can buy in stores today.

 

Not so good.

Kinetic weapons, ie bullets. Would have to be pretty heavy\layered etc, to slow down a bullet, YMMV.

 

Not at all

Energy weapons. Would basically burn through leather. IoW, leather is not the first thing anyone thinks of when it comes to laser-ablative material. Unless you work at Bethesda as a dev.

 

Given the state of the Fallout 4 world, Leather should be very commonplace and possibly offer slightly better protection than default, to reflect societies experience in improvising effective cloth-type armors, but it really does need its energy resistance nerfed, a lot. Maybe someone has made a mod....

Edited November 6, 2018 by Mebantiza

[CiderMuffin]

Counterpoint, it's a video game. It's also consistent with Fallout lore in general as leather armor since Fallout one has had 20 DR for Laser weapons for a long time. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Leather_armor

[Undeadbob666]

Leather is more flame resistant than a gambeson, however a gambeson is much better at resistance to swords and arrows. Alls a gambeson is made of is layered pieces of linen, however it is far superior to leather in many ways except fire resistance. So media makes no sense in general when talking about armor, according to most media a gut stab while in mail is sufficient to kill a foe. In all reality Power Armor should just be able to wade through gunfire, with the only real thing that penetrates it being tank cannons or artillery. Why wear all that armor if a pipe pistol could kill you?

[Moraelin]

Well, true, but as Muffin said, leather is kinda canon in Fallout. IIRC, in Fallout 1 the very first armour (and I'm using that term loosely) that you found was a leather jacket. So it's not easy for Beth to change that. For every user who'd think "finally, they got rid of the unrealistic DR for leather", there would probably be a dozen getting annoyed at Beth going against Fallout lore. Keeping it is the lesser of two evils, basically.

 

That said, I suppose someone could rename and retexture it, if there's enough demand for it to be called anything else. I mean, old military flak vests are mentioned in the Silver Shroud quest, and ballistic fibers are used by the RR and in items like the ammo pouches, so I guess it would be lore friendly enough to have kevlar armour instead or in addition to leather.

[Mebantiza]

I have started preliminary work on a file to re-tune this problem in the lower-tier armors since there is not much in the way of general overhauls to armor. Plenty of mods that overhaul, say, Power Armor, but not much for vanilla armor. Less of an over-haul, but it will fix this problem. Leather and raider energy resists, will get a nerf, and metal will get a slight buff, along with a few other minor tweaks. I feel most of the high-tech armors are more of less ok as they are, its the just lower and mid-tier my file will look at. The engine is more than flexible enough to more accurately model various materials properties than some of what we see now. At least in cases where they deviate strongly from, well, reality.

[Moraelin]

Well, the idea does have merit, but IMHO be careful to not end up making it useless. It already has to compete against such silliness as the rag cap that has 10 energy resistance.

 

Plus, a large part of the balance is in terms of damage or DR per pound. Leather is already losing in that aspect against stuff like the Silver Shroud suit, so unless it also becomes a lot lighter, it might just become pointless.

[Undeadbob666]

Leather is pointless, even early "bullet-proof" vests are made out of linens. Its heavy and does not provide, in the real world, enough resistances for that weight thats why they typically went with lighter & more effective armors. However for the sake of fairness, and less of a headache, you could assume leather has 1 DR and just scale the armors from that point.

[Moraelin]

I didn't say it was realistic or anything, as you've probably noticed. Just that making a good half of the armours in the game (by felt number of NPCs wearing it) pointless and useless isn't exactly good game design. I could see a point of replacing it with kevlar or such, mind you, but just crapping all over a huge chunk of content without replacing it with anything isn't really all that great an idea IMHO.

 

 

That said, if we're discussing history and realism now, actually leather has been used historically, even in the age of firearms. Even a king like Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden actually wore a buffcoat into battle. In fact, at the time, wearing a very thick buffcoat (made of leather, in case it wasn't clear) into battle was incredibly common.

 

Linen is also not really the alpha and omega. The best that can be said about it is that you COULD technically stop a bullet by wearing a gambeson that's about one foot thick, but that's never actually been practical. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, actually practiced.

 

And even before firearms, sure, the NAME linothorax was used in ancient times, but the only archaeological example we have is actually covered in bronze scales. And all pictorial evidence, well, it's really inconclusive whether it was quilted as scaled. It could be either way. And more importantly, either way, it's not JUST the linen that is stopping swords and lances there. The alternative explanation involves using a lot of resin, to make, well, basically a linen fibre composite material to actually explain how it was of any use by itself. It's, if you will, like the difference between fiberglass and just glass.

 

Going by etymology alone to figure out what something was, as many do with the linothorax, is literally like seeing "Women" on a door and being surprised if there's actually a toilet inside :wink:

 

Point in case, going by etymology, the Roman "lorica" also meant "leather coat", but by the time Rome kicks everyone's butt all kinds of lorica were actually made of metal. Or even in later ages, well, "cuirass" is still used as a word, but etymologically it comes from latin and originally meant quite literally "made of leather". Needless to say, that hasn't been the case with most cuirasses in quite some time.

 

 

But to return to quilted armours, if you want some natural fibre that actually is a lot more cut and pierce resistant, personally I'd go with silk instead. There have actually been experiments where several layers of tightly spun and woven silk have been shown to be tougher per pound than kevlar. IIRC you can get the same resistance as a level I or with enough layers even level II kevlar vest at half the weight by using silk instead.

[Undeadbob666]

I never said replace leather or never replace leather, just noted it was a stupid material to use for a post apocalyptic game the only reason it is even used is because Fallout 1 was trying to pay homage to the original Mad Max movies. I also argued that leather is more flame resistant than comparable lighter armors (kevlar, silk or linen).

 

Leather was typically only used in ancient times and then once again, as you note, for buff coats during the age of the musket. In medieval times however, linen or similar cloth was used for armor for a variety of reasons: more resistant if layered, cheaper (you don't need to raise cattle for the sole purpose of its hide) easier repaired and it makes you sweat less than leather.

 

No linen is not the omega, but cloth armors have been used for Bulletproof vests which where originally made in 1888 using Silk. Its from this that kevlar was developed.

 

Lorica can also be translated as body armor, in addition to leather coat/armor (I have seen all three as translations before). In my opinion I think it may have originally been leather, and then adopted as their catch all term for body armor overtime - since you have lorica segmenta which is scale or mail armor I'm guessing.

 

Yeah I'm not sure why I stuck with the linen comment, kept thinking i was on the skyrim forum maybe lol. Silk is a much more realistic and lore friendly option, but kevlar would also be a thing. Silk for the civies and kevlar for the military maybe?

[Moraelin]

Yeah, I know that nerfing it was Mebantiza's idea, not yours. I was just clarifying what I meant in the earlier post, is all.

 

As for the middle ages, well, in modern cutting tests, a good sword can easily cut a nasty gash through a whole 30 layers of linen. Not as deeply as a cut directly against the naked ballistic torso, but still, it cuts right through. And the thrust basically simply goes right through.

 

IMHO the bigger factor in why you see people wearing only gambesons in the early middle ages is likely also because they had big shields in a shield wall as their main defense at the time. (Which were also covered in raw hide. Just the raw wood face like in Skyrim would just split after a few hits.) So personally I don't think they really expected just the arming coat to protect them all that much. It would probably help of some hit glanced off the edge of your shield and grazed you, or such, in which case better your gambeson need sewing than you need a priest :tongue:

 

Basically, realistically speaking, I wouldn't really expect a gambeson to have all that much DR even in Skyrim.

 

So basically, yep, you're right, they did wear that kind of stuff, but IMHO it didn't really do them a whole lot of good without a maille shirt over it.

 

 

I think all armour is really overated in games set in the modern era, though. Even steel would need to be about half an inch thick to actually stop a .308 round, which is really impractically heavy to run around with without a power armour frame. So basically metal armour in Fallout is kinda unrealistic too IMHO. Something you can actually wear, well, the Germans tried the lobster armour in WW1, and the troops resorted to just chucking it away because it didn't actually protect them from a rifle or manchinegun round.

 

 

I think a big reason why people are thinking metal actually helps is because of helmets. They started giving troops metal helmets in WW1, and troops all over the world still wear them, so it has to be good at stopping bullets, right? Actually the big killer in WW1 was artillery, and the problem there was that a large round kicks up a lot of debris like pieces of thick metal from the artillery shell, large rocks, the barbed wire poles, etc. And what goes up must come down. So a lot of people died because a big chunk of stone came down on their head. That was really what the steel helms, or the earlier leather helmets of the Germans, were really supposed to protect people against.

 

Against bullets, well, it might deflect a glancing blow, but if you look at where it needs to hit to actually be deflected, and where your head is inside the helmet, well, that bullet wouldn't have hit you in the head anyway.

 

A documented effect in WW1, though, was that the troops who had just got helmets were more inclined to poke their head out because they thought the helmet would protect them. The number of head injuries rose quite a bit in the first months because of that misconception. The British actually were discussing whether they should recall the helmets because of that sharp rise in people shot in the head. And their shiny new helmets did nothing to protect them from that kind of thing.