This particular piece of armor has me stumped. Most of the other gear seems to be pretty well balanced between cost, obviousness and effectiveness, except for the jumpsuit.

Why does it have such good stats for a relatively low cost? What on earth kind of helmet are they talking about?

I guess I just can't imagine how something like this would look or function.

Just think "Biker clothing".

The heavy, armored jumpsuits you might find useful when riding a racing bike. Now, the Urban Explorer is more or less that - not as rigid in movement due to improvements in material (you're not frozen in sitting-on-bike-position any more ), and with all the build in goodies you could feel necessary.

They're pretty cheap because they are not really designed for combat but for high-risk sports & travel, and thus mass produced. That they protect against bullets and fists, too, is just a nice byproduct ... that increases sales even more

Ok...

Something like http://www.sinisalo.com/tmp/pbank/motocros...ss/56112185.jpg this you mean?

But it looks rediculous. And why is it bulletproof? High risk sports and travel don't generally require more balistic armor than a leather jacket.

Right now I'm leaning on pointing out that anyone who wears one looks like they're about to step into the arena of an urban brawl match. Sort of like how a football player would look, walking around a stuffer shack with a bag full of laundry detergent, in full gear.

I guess I could let them earn some spare change by letting sponsors put ads on their outfit, NASCAR style. :eyeroll:

When I say high risk sports and travel, I mean things that normal humans/metahumans would actually do. You don't mass produce something for a tiny percentage of the population.

I cannot imagine that the number of people who plan to engage in seriously life threatening activities involving small, high velocity projectiles, who _also_ wouldn't just wear regular bullet proof armor is very high.

Urban Brawl, you'd wear real military grade armor, not something for inner city bike messengers. Which is what the descrition in the book says that they're made for.

Combat biking... Maybe, but again, how big of a population is going to be engaging in such a sport at the level where they would be fearing for their life?

Yes, excactly something like that.
Yes, they are obvious as hell.


Why are they armored ? They are build so you have a chance to survive falling of your bike at high speed. That means they have to be sturdy as hell not to burn through with the friction ... so they are made out of heavy synthetic or leather with heavy Kevlar plates (enough for half an armored vest) on all vulnerable areas ... and they are pretty heavy and not very comfy when not on a bike.

The 2070 version is a little better suited to movement as the material is lighter and less stiff, and they are used in many of the more 'body-oriented' sports (Urban Brawl, Combat Bike, ...) and with lots of the less organized disciplines (Train Surfing, Highway Jousting, ...) - in fact they are a pretty common sight ...
Not to mention fassion - those things are hot for Slumming.

Aside the more obvious reasons to where them - like driving a bike, courier work or as light security armour.

Oh, and there's usually NO reason at all to let security anywhere wear anything worse - add a corporate logo and use as basic uniform.

remember this is shadowrun if your not out in an a to aaa security zone walking around may not be safe.

Even if you are in an a to aaa security zone you may not be totaly safe those areas just come with faster security response times lol.

So yes the population of shadowrun tends to wear armor like the jumpsuit as for it's appearance that can be modified easy enough in 2070.

Remeber, this is the world where armored formalwear is commonplace. The average businessman goes to work wearing a bulletresistant three-piece suit. This is the world where things like the Insurance Wars can happen. You never know when some goon is going to shoot you because your bike is insured by the wrong company.

So, unless you need to look really nice, there's really no reason to wear anything else?

The armored vest takes almost a 50% hit to impact armor, and all you get for it is something like 200 and concealability.

Welcome to Shadowrun, where the old lady walking down the street with a cane has smartgunlink eyeglasses and a Fichetti Security loaded with Flechette in her purse.

Those Raid vests are ridiculous!

As for the Urban Explorer jumpsuit I imagine that if it was actually used for Urban Exploring (where you tresspass into cool looking, condemned buildings, old sewers and under-city caverns) then there would be versions that are black or camoflaged.

Yeah, the Urban explorer jumpsuit is better than the armor vest. Probably because it covers your entire body. There isn't a really good reason you wouldn't wear it if you had the choice between that and the armored vest.
That helmet probably looks more like a cyclist helmet than a motorcyclist helmet.

Raid vests make an important fashion statement. That statement is "I want to be shot in the face."

When I read the description, I pictured something closer to a bicycle messenger's outfit. Brightly colored to help motorists see you, and with lots of padding incase they don't.

I also imagined it as the armored jumpsuit that Hiro Protagonist wears in Snowcrash. The one for the Deliverator as well as the one he wears when he's riding the smart bike near the end. His "bad motherfucker" outfit

Just because very similar material is used in both extreme sports equipment and ballistic body armor does not mean that the sports wear will stop bullets. The material is treated different, it's weaved different, and the sportswear has a hell of a lot less of it. You'd have to wear quite a few (I'm guessing 5 or more) kevlar-lined biker jackets on top of each other to stand a chance of getting any sort of NIJ ballistic armor rating, and a 2-digit figure to compare to serious flexible body armor.

Still, when designing protective equipment against blunt threats for extreme sports, some of the properties will overlap with ballistic armor. When you get to the point where you can be safely thrown at a concrete wall at 120mph, the suit will probably provide some protection against handguns.

IIRC the urban explorer jump suit is made with special compounds that harden on impact among other things. Kevlar does not do this and I would suggest that the referral to kevlar is simply to point out that pretty high tech stuff is used in both military armour and extreme sports wear. After all, it is also listed as being used in drum head skins, and I don't think anyone is suggesting using them to protect yourself from bullets!

I'd envisioned the jump suit as being used for Parkour. Obviously some developer decided that in the world of 2070 it was popular enough that protective gear was commonplace. I would even imagine that there are different grades of Urban Explorer Jumpsuit, say a beginner grade that offers a lower degree of protection that will not impede someone with a lower body.

Perhaps the ratings are a little high, but it does come with a helmet (which I envisioned as a full face motorcycle type helmet), and helmets give you +2 to both impact and ballistic with any other armour type, so it would not be unreasonable to consider that without the helmet it only counts as 4/4, about the same as an Actioneer Business Suit.

As for looking out of place, I feel that if you were to wear this kind of thing in the barrens you'd be considered some kind of tourist at best, if you wore it in a corporate 'plex you'd attract some very odd stares, and if you wore it to a trendy club you'd just get laughed at. Consider the modern day analogy of walking around carrying a skateboard while wearing elbow pads, knee pads and a helmet. Doesn't really fit in except among other skaters, and the hardcore skaters would probably look down their noses at you for wussing out adn wearing all the protective gear.

The degree of overlap may vary depending on the compound(s) being inccorporated into the armour though. Still, it'd be easy enough to houserule that the jumpsuit has a higher impact rating than ballistic, if it offends as written.

It does not offend me, I don't play SR4. I'm just saying that it being high tech protective wear doesn't necessarily make it any good vs. ballistic threats. If it's as good at protecting the wearer from bullets as it is from crashing with a bike, then that's most likely a conscious choice by the designer of the suit, and is made at some cost (increased bulk/weight or price).

oh? I've not got my BBB with me at the moment, so I was just going off what I remembered.

I always assumed it looked like a motorcycle suit, like....

This! http://www.rapidracer.com/shsustlesu.html

Garish colors and everything.

It's been stated that the uses for kevlar are different between sports and ballistic equipment. But what if they're using full ballistic kevlar rather than moderndays wimpy sports kevlar. It should provide the wearer the same effects as it would the sports kevlar, and also add in ballistic protection.

It is awefully cheap eitherway.

I would have thought that Y.T.'s skater outfit from Snow Crash (as opposed to Hiro's driverwear) would have been more close to what we're talking about here.

Honestly... it covers your entire body and has some ballistic properties. It protects you about as much as a lined coat with some extra padding.

Take the armored vest, add on arm guards, and you've got an armored jacket. Add leg guards, and you've got full body armor (and you're rolling around at 10/. Some of armor's value comes from how thick and heavy it is, and some of it comes from how much of your body it protects. Obviously, the armored vest is a much heavier-duty piece of armor... it provides the same ballistic rating as a full UEx suit despite only protecting your torso.

As for pricing... anybody here ever actually priced body armor? It's not all that expensive. Stuff like motorcycle armor can easily run more than body armor.

One thing we are all forgetting, this is Shadowrun. Think of all the cool things that a messenger would be delivering, cookies from Grandma, that commlink you ordered off the matrix, incriminating photos, whatever. Then think about all the people who would want to steal these things. Do you think that maybe that is why someone would make a delivery jump suit that offered ballistic protection as well? On top of that, kids being what they are, they are more than likely going to want to wear something like that, something they could get in their "colors" and not get killed as easily in. Those are just my thoughts on it.

Or to their parents, who don't necessarily understand the current fashion trends but are glad that their kids are at least wearing something that might keep them in one piece, knowing the people they hang out with...

Yeah, I can see it now... "Ares announced today that it's subsidiary, Flashwear Fashion, will be dispersed due to the number of recalls they've had in recent months. Reportedly, concerns about excessive backface deformation on Flashwear's latest line of swimsuits were being suppressed by the company's management in an effort to maintain sales."