On 21Dec2020 0348, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml
list) wrote:

 > Which TL scale are you using?

 > I think it's possible that TL6 in CT could potentially make such a
'materials' breakthru.

 > And, even if not, TL6 still might be able to produce the item.

According to Book 3, TL6 gets you auto rifles, light machineguns, cloth
armour, television, submersibles, and helicopters.

TL7 brings body pistols, mesh armour and flak jackets, grenade
launchers, spaceship pulse lasers, hand calculators, and hovercraft. TL5
is carbines, rifles, pistols, SMGs, mortars, steel plate armour, radio,
ground cars, and fixed wing aircraft.

Aside from the air/rafts, and perhaps the pulse lasers, this is all 20th
century stuff and the TL6 gear is 1950s tech.

Now, in CT that's okay because 'cloth', while vastly superior to not
wearing armour (especially vs guns and swords), hardly renders one
immune to attack.

The problem arises in MT because the designers took the weapon
penetration and armour values from Striker, but changed the penetration
and damage rules. In Striker armour had to have a rating nine points
higher than a weapon's penetration before it made the wearer immune to
that weapon. Cloth vs an assault rifle would prevent death and make
about 1/3rd of hits 'no effect', but is hardly made you immune. In MT it
makes you only take damage from exceptional hits.

So in CT it's a basic ballistic cloth garment, possibly not even
full-body. In MT it becomes a heavy full-body suit that at TL6 is able
to stop anything short of and elephant gun, gauss rifle, or 10mm+ HEAP
rounds. MT consider TL6 to be "circa 1950".

The problem goes away in TNE, where ballistic cloth is TL7 (and
ballistic weave/mesh is TL8), and while it will stop most pistol rounds,
BC/BW will not stop rifle rounds at short to medium ranges (and lasers
ignore flexible armour like this completely).

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>