"Is Stormtrooper Armor Useless?" Topic

Is there ever a time in the original three movies (IV-VI) that a rebel hits a stormtrooper without taking out the trooper, the armor absorbing the hit? I honestly cannot remember this ever happening. If true, would have major implications for SW miniature gaming, with armor being nifty looking but useless.

Also, I think the only time a rebel "hero" gets shot is during Jedi when Han is grazed on Endor, a scene I always thought was in response to criticism about Stormtroopers unable to hit a wompa at 10 paces. Right?

Ah, ya, it's worthless, but looks really cool, so we'll keep it.

Even teddy bears with sharp sticks can over come stormtrooper armor.

I think you just have to accept that it's a movie. A lot of action is crammed into a few minutes of screen time.

On Endor it was Leia who was hit.

I want to remember that a Stormtrooper takes a hit while storming the Rebel Cruiser in the beginning of the first (IV) movie. A lot of them drop, but one or two take hits and keep going. Or at least that's how I picture it in my head. I use Space Marines as my templates for Stormtroopers in miniature battles (Tou 3, Sv 3+).

I do believe in the WEG RPG Source book it says that stormtrooper armor can protect the wearer from a vacuum for up to a minute. Maybe it was somewhere else that I read it.
Does that give it any sort of practical battlefield value? No not really. But the RPG also gave the wearer a nice armor value, but blasters could do loads of damage anyways.
It always seemed to be that the armor protected from glancing type shots, but good solid hits killed pretty much all the time.
Oh and stormtroopers had horrible blaster skills when compared to even moderate experianced characters.

When the blaster fire starts flying…a little armor in D6 system helps. Not everyone carries a heavy weapon.

"nifty looking but useless"

Without stormtrooper armor, the entire Nice'n Shiny Armor Wax industry collapses. That armor doesn't get clean all by itself, you know…. ;-)

Well we're not sure of the true effect of the armor though. They could all be wounded and not dead. Blasters are powerful weapons so maybe they get hit, they hurt, they fall down. Then if they can get recovered at the end of the battle they get to a medical station and after treatment put back into there units. Heroes never really stick around for us to see the effects of after the battle. Scene change and we're moving on.

Armor hardly ever works in the movies, and never for minions.

I always remind myself that the Stormtroopers did win in the boarding action at the beginning of the first (IV) movie. The unarmored guys got overwhelmed.

Personally I like the idea that the original trilogy are Rebel propaganda films – for gaming I'd make both Storm Troopers and Tie Fighters pretty resilient.

The armour is vital. It helps the troopers move more slowly and restricts their vision so they can't shoot for damn.

Otherwise the rebels would have been toast by reel 3.

Personally I like the idea that the original trilogy are Rebel propaganda films – for gaming I'd make both Storm Troopers and Tie Fighters pretty resilient.

No need for boosting the TIE fighters; the point of them is that the Empire fields a lot of them. If you note, the Rebels field fighters with superior shielding, but have a lot fewer of them. The Empire takes the approach of the Red China army circa 1951— just keep sending troops, no matter how many die. We'll just conscript more. So the fact that TIE fighters are weakly armored is just a factor of that mentality.

The Stormtrooper armor, though, has always seemed to be more about appearance than function.

(A minute in full vacuum? That's all? Heck, a human can survive almost that long in full vacuum in just street clothes! There must be more to the armor than that.
Maybe it just protects the wearer until the plot says otherwise. I note that Luke and Han were pretty quick to shed it once they had escaped the garbage masher…)

Like tabletopwarrior suggested, the armor is second-chance armor. It may not stop a direct shot from a blaster dropping a stormtrooper; but it keeps him alive so he can be shot in a future battle.

I was troubled by this too, awhile back.

Personally, I think it should protect against 1/2 to 2/3 of all hits by regular infantry weapons against it, but that's not the way it works in the movies.

stormtrooper armor = red shirt

Works like crap and so do the blasters

Very true, despite Obi-Wan's conviction that Stormtrooper blaster fire is very precise…..

I remember reading that TIE fighters dont have shields to improve the piloting (ie you wont rely on shields protecting you, you rely on your skills). Maybe the Stormtrooper armour is designed to do the same thing.

Also it must have an intimidation factor…

Mick

Perhaps Stormtrooper armour should be thought of as riot-control level body armour? No good if the freedom-loving scum you're beating down suddenly whips out something that goes "KA-Choom!" but you can take a swag of beating in a street melee, and come up grinning. Also, given that the 'Troopers wore full armour on Tatooine, and a variation on Hoth, I'd guess the armour provides a wide choice of hostile environment survival options.

But this does beg the question of this apparent divergence of Imperial military philosophy – cheap, easily killed starfighters, yet the rank-and-file groundpounders have personal armour with airconditioning, etc., presumably to improve their survivability.

Perhaps the Imperial Army and Navy are not so unified as we might think? Different contractors providing products designed to conflicting philosophies…

It does help reduce trauma when stormtroopers bang their heads on blast doors though!

The point of Stormtrooper armour is to make sure they die as soon as they get hit…

Just watch what happens when a Stormtrooper is unexpectedly injured!
YouTube link

The SW films are films. Very similar to the way Jack Bauer can take out whole roomfuls of full auto wielding baddies with just his pistol.

In the games (some of them anyway), armour makes a big difference.

That was funny Lovejoy :)

A while ago I read a priceless suggestion for Deadliest warriors: SW Stormtrooper vs ST Redshirt

The One Who Always Misses vs The One Who Always Dies….

Have you ever seen a Stormtrooper without his armor?

Maybe they are like Daleks, they need the armor to live.

Tim

Stop thinking about the armor as armor and more like a uniform.

SS uniforms didn't stop any bullets, but they sure were intimidating. (Are we the baddies?)

Besides, Star Wars was never meant to be hard science fiction. It's a good old fashioned space romp and morality play. Take it for what it is and be happy.

ST armor might be more akin to previous generation body armor used by the US military, etc. Not designed to resist a full-on shot to the center-of-mass, but to protect the wearer vs fragments, lower powered weapons, and the like, as well as providing a level of protection that prevents a wound from being fatal…

Damon.

Only useful to identify the bad guys.
-Kle.

Bear in mind that the characters in Star Wars are waving around firearms that can explode big chunks of concrete from dock walls (when the Millennium Falcon leaves Tatooine). The fact that any of the stormtroopers hit by Han's gun have a torso left is proof that the armour is doing something.

As for TIE Fighters and their lack of shields, where was that first mentioned? In the movies, the Rebel fighters don't appear to be much more resilient than the Imperial ones.

"On Endor it was Leia who was hit."

And she survived. It goes to the same old sci-fi / fantasy rule that women who wear less survive better in combat.

Just imagine how well she would have faired if she was still wearing that slave girl outfit from Jabba's Palace.

I shudder to think how far Han would have gone on Endor if Leia had been in the slave outfit.

YouTube link

stormtrooper armor = red shirt

Exactly.
Stormtrooper armor was built for drama not protection.

I've been reading the Republic Commando series, and it states that Palpatine secretly setup a clone facility on the moon of Coruscant to produce clones in secret. These clones were not made using the Kamino method (which was regarded as a slower but higher quality method) but a very rapid method to build up troops in secret, using Spaarti Tanks (thus fitting in well with the cloning methods mentioned in Zahn's Heir to the Empire trilogy). The offical story was that these filled the ranks of the Republic forces which were already stretched thin and were supposed to be the hammer in which the Republic was to break the Seperatists back (when they made an all-out assault on Coruscant). However Palpatine's secret plan was it was also used to build up a new army to eventually take on the Jedi.

Interestingly, another source I read stated that by the time of Episode III, the Republic was filling the ranks with clones from other humans (not just the Jango Fett template).

Furthermore, these clones were not trained by any Mandolorian mercenaries and had little to no exposure to Jedi. The original clone veterans noted that the new replacements seemed to be not so well trained and a bit sloppy (which probably supports why Imperial Stormtroopers were such bad shots compared to Republic Clone Troopers). Also when Order 66 came down, the majority of the clone army really didn't have an issue shooting their Jedi Generals as they really didn't have much exposure to them. Some of the original veterans were torn when the order came down, others had a deep resentment either due to their Mando influence or from just being treated badly by the high and mighty (and not very good generals) Jedi.

I've just started reading 501st, where some of the surviving Republic Commandos have been absorbed into the 501st Stormtrooper Legion. They were already commenting that the new armor just didn't seem as good as the old stuff that they had. However, the Republic Commando armor was superior to the standard Clone issue stuff. They might have been commenting on that instead. In fact in the books the Commando Katarn Armor did absorb hits from blaster fire and protected the commando much better.

However throughout the books they mention some veteran clones who were gravely wounded. Some even had artificial prosthesis. So there's some evidence that these armored soldiers don't always get killed when hit.

What if the "armor" really was just an environment suit?

The rebels probably could have tried to flush the Storm Troopers out an airlock in the opening scene. Additionally StormTroopers headed out to seize Jawa contraband in the desert could use a little protection from the elements.

That leaves the Death Star, where the HVAC contractors were notoriously slipshod, and they probably kept their armor on to stay warm, as well as for the radio array in the helmet.

Star Wars is full of "Bigger Guns", where blasters and death ray space stations are prevalent over any means of triumphing against them (short of ducking at the right time). Probe Droids explode on contact, Generator shields collapse when an AT-AT breaks wind, and the shield around Druidia opened up at the slightest… Oh, wait.

Anyhow, Star Wars is swathed in weaponry that easily overcomes shielding, therefore the armor probably was either cost effective, or served some other purpose. If you really want to find fault with armor, how about those helmets that the rebels wear in the opening sequence? Did they just get out of the Organa Velodrome bicycle race or something?

Good points.

Maybe its bullet-proof?

Sure its not blaster-proof but I don't remember anyone shooting an ordinary firearm at stormtroopers. Perhaps it comes in handy when they go to oppress 'primitive' worlds that haven't invented the blaster yet?

No ;-)

Didn't we have this discussion last month?

"Precise blast points" = Stormtroopers are trained in stationary fire with two hands on a carbine, while most everyone else hot dogs with one hand on a long pistol. Blaster bolts are lengthy enough to show up as long streaks, so a bit of wiggle by the gun's wielder produces a smear. This almost never occurs with Stormtroopers.

Han Solo is *really* good with a blaster, so people he hits tend to die. The same can be said of Lando.

Luke has the Force to help his aim, as does Leia.

Didn't we have this discussion last month?

probably.

Useless? No, it does offer some protection, but blasters carry a lot of energy. Enough to blast small craters out of walls. Even a modern-day shotgun doesn't carry that much energy, and a shotgun leaves a catastrophic mess of whatever it hits.

Perhaps at point blank, or short range, it provides less protection to the wearer, but more at longer ranges, assuming the energy bolts dissipate a bit in strength in the atmosphere.

I remember a long time ago, having a book called the Star Wars Poster Book. It was a magazine that folded out into a big book, it came out between Episodes IV and V. There was an article all about Stormtrooper armor.

It mentioned the armor plates were made of a material called Impervium. It's reflective surface would help deflect the energy of a blaster shot from an angle. However it provided little protection from a direct hit. It does help explain why the Imperial military is so big on shiny combat armor.

Typical, just typical…. And yet again my fellow TMPers, your reasoning is as wide of the mark as a stormtrooper shooting at a target…

The reason why stormtroopers wear armour that deflects indirect fire is to prevent them accidentally getting shot by one of their buddies, not to
protect them from the withering fire of rebel blasters!

There you have it, the undeniable truth about stormtrooper armour… You know I'm right!

*laughs*

It's just make believe, make the armour count for whatever you want in your gaming.

How about how we look at the detention scene where Han dropped the first Stormtrooper at the hole they made. Now that being a choke point, if the armor was truely useless Han should have been able to stop them from getting in right there. But the fact is they did force Han to retreat down the detention corridor where Leis made an escape right into the trash bin.

So the armor must have some usefulness.
Let's also consider Han likes to fire from cover. This is something that we see the original clones and later ones are never taught to do, must be ingrained into their head that their armor is all they'll ever need.

Doesn't anybody remember the scene from the first movie when the Millineum Falcon was being pulled towards one of the Death Star's bays, past a surface gun turret and two Stormtroopers were standing outside in the foreground watching the ship enter?

I figure it's both an enviroment suit and mild impact armor( protection from bumps, scrapes, etc…).

Yes, I remember seeing them outside the Death Star. But when you consider Star Wars physics allows for Han, Leia and Chewie to get out of the Falcon with nothing more than a face mask, granted maybe the inside of a giant space slug might have had atmospheric pressure.

So the armor must have some usefulness.
Let's also consider Han likes to fire from cover. This is something that we see the original clones and later ones are never taught to do, must be ingrained into their head that their armor is all they'll ever need.

If they made the armor of the same material that they made walls, tables and chairs then it would stop blasters. The blasters only scorch the walls, leaving less than 1/8" hole in them.

Condottierre, I'm not disputing that "EU" material depicts X- and Y-Wings as significantly tougher that Imperial fighters – I remember sitting behind Y-Wings in the TIE Fighter game, plugging away with lasers until the blasted things finally died (usually after torpedoing my carrier). Thing is, in the movies – at least in the first one – that didn't happen. Rebel ships went up after a couple of hits. The difference in survivability seemed to be down to the Imperials getting more glancing shots rather than good solid hits. I suspect the fault lies with West End Games.

That would not be the first time an Army adopted something cause it looked cool. Look at the current US army cammo…
(OK cheap shot and not entirely accurate, but still fnny)