You'd think good chain armor would stop a bullet.

Guns are the reason Chain and plate armor is dead.

What if it were full plate armor made with modern materials? Titanium alloys, kevlar laminates, etc.

there's already something like that, usually in the form of a vest with kevlar, vectran based materials with pockets for hard plates of either treated ballistic steel or more likely ceramic which are often called trauma plates. Funny thing is you can get such armor for around 400-500 bucks or so that's level 3 or 3a rated

Well, not like they had those materials back then. And in modern times, we have modern materials used for body armor, but we also have modern guns to get around that modern material!

Depleted Uranium rounds or Tungsten perpetrators.

Coming soon Hyper Velocity rounds. Miles per second not feet per second.

physics requires me to say that the recoil on something like that would limit it to only massive fixed emplacements.

Also, add too that the massive pressures required to get something like that up to that velocity in a reasonable length of barrel, then factor in the massive drag that something moving at that speed would incur. There's a reason nobody really does much at over 4,000 fps in conventional arms.

There's always the right hand sword with left hand gun option.

Or one could try customizing a sword-like bayonet. They better know the science before they try though.

Sword Bayonets were a thing favored by most armies in WW1 as well as the British and the Japanese in WW2

Left claw north right claw south?

I'm sorry but I see three possible meanings to your sentence. Which one are you using?

Lobster sticks to magnet.

I know, right?

They hadn't invented energy dissipating laminated ceramic yet.

If I remember correctly they had to make armor thicker and heavier to block bullets, but that made it too difficult to move so they only armored the vitals, which led to armor such as the kind you saw in the Renaissance (Armor only covering the torso, head, and thighs). But as guns got more advanced and mobility and masses of gunners became more and more needed, armies could not continue to supply more and more higher quality armor to protect their increasing number of troops, causing armor to slowly get phased out over time until you get to the Imperialistic time periods of the pre-industrial ages. It also became impractical to spend all the resources on armor when it was cheaper to simply conscript simple citizens or have unskilled soldiers, as most any idiot could use a musket but using melee weapons effectively required a fair amount of training and skill. Its easier to have 100 dumb cheap unarmored soldiers with muskets then it was to have one highly trained, highly armored knight for the same price. Not to mention actual Knights generally required land, lots of peasants, favor in the courts, and ransoms if they were ever captured. Who the hell needs a night when they can just have all the men of that land given muskets and sent onto the field of battle to trample a much smaller armored force.

Granted this is all just quick summery of very complicated events.

:b

Also, good example of benefits of being a gun night in this video (just skip to 0:33 in the video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY895PWDiuQ

Illustrated, the evolution of warfare.

The actual reason armor was abandoned wasn't that it wouldn't stop bullets...

It was that if your horse was shot out from under you, provided you survived the fall....You now had to walk without a horse, in full armor, proofed against musket fire for whatever distance it took to leave the battlefield.
Add the cost to a good set of full plate, (About equivalent to a modern Ferrari sports car... A lot to throw away as useless encumbrance without a horse!) And its not hard to see why armor fell out of favor.

And armor took a LONG time to disappear completely.

There were still cuiraissers in breastplates and helmets in the Napoleonic wars of the 1800s- more than 100 years after full armor stopped being generally used on the battlefield.

Modern troops wear armor again today as well- Its just not shiny suits of polished steel.


-Badger-

Ceremonial remnants of armor were in battlefield use up to ww2. The wehrmact military police had a small breastplate as part of their regular uniform. 17th century armor would also be found with a proof mark. The dent where the smith would shoot it with a gun to prove it was bulletproof.

Indeed.

The French had cuiraissers until I think 1916 or 1918.
(Now that you reminded me, I have seen motion picture footage of them from the first world war.)

They still have ceremonial cuiraissers, though I am not sure they still wear the breastplates.
The British Royal army still has theirs as well, guarding the Queen.

The proofing mark was originally made with a crossbow, and later switched to a pistol or arquebus to do the job.

However, unscrupulous armourers often used a chisel to punch the mark instead.


-Badger-

I was lucky. Near where I live was the Higgins armory museum. They had the largest collection o# old arms and armor outside of europe. Visited there many times and had friends working on staff. Unfortunately they went bankrupt and the collection went to the worcester art museum, where very little remains on display in a side area.

if you git gud, you can make one of these in FFT

Im getting a dark-tower vibe here XD

They actually have some exhibits regarding that topic in my citys museum. its interesting

the new body armor is looking like knights of old

Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.

Gilbert and Sullivan wrote:This tight-fitting cuirass
Is but a useless mass,
It's made of steel,
And weighs a deal,
This tight-fitting cuirass
Is but a useless mass,
A man is but an ass
Who fights in a cuirass,
So off, so off goes that cuirass.-- Gilbert and Sullivan
Princess Ida

Some battles in the 18th century showed that medieval knight armour was impervious to most of 18th century guns. But armour didn't make a comeback because too few people had it and could wear it. A single knight can't fight a regiment.

In the WW2 USSR tried steel cuirasses for infantry. They provided reasonable protection against rifles and smaller machine guns, but only about 2000 soldiers wore them.

Next rigid plate will be graphene, sapphire fractal foam, and plant gel. Add in stubble, and you have something that can handle directed energy weapons, blast cloaking as well as basic and standard AP rounds.

50 cal solid rounds would barely count even in momentum. theres already visors that can take a direct hit.

Hey I remember this. yep in my sketch book and thank you again for the drawing buddy! And I would say the knights are still around just not the clunky full plate anymore. Now we have kevlar vests and bullet guards.

I hate to say it, but I think the guns are still here because of not effectiveness alone... but laziness. Who has time to don all that armor and learn to ride a horse and build muscle to swing a sword, when any mook from the backwoods can point and squeeze a trigger and do the same general damage as a knight?

Rank and all aside, when it comes to killing, shooting people is just easier, and so took the place of knights quickly simply because anyone could get a gun and learn just enough to kill someone they wanted dead at range with a lot less risk.

Fnah hah hah XD

In this age of smokeless powder and burgeoning energy weapons, a machete is a better choice compared to a sword.