"Movement rate and armor" Topic

How much does weight of armor/equipment effect movement speed? I'm specifically thinking about on the battlefield, as opposed to strategic movement.

I would think that the leader of a unit might have better (ie, heavier) armor, but when it came time to charge, his lads wouldn't charge and leave him behind, and that he would strain to keep up with them. I recently read a set of rules that had light infantry (guys with only a shield) moving at one speed, while heavy infantry moved at half that rate, and medium infantry (partially armored) figures had a movement rate midway between the other two.

Does anyone have any good sources to point to or even re-enactor examples?

Grelber

Depending on where and when your battle are set it may not be a relevant issue. In some medieval societies there really was n't such a thing as 'Light infantry', except perhaps archers wearing less protection than spearmen or billmen, and even that may be somewhat open to question. FWIW, wearing armour certainly tires you out more quickly, but I'm not convinced it 's much of an issue in a lot of contexts; unarmoured spearmen would n't sip around the battlefield any more than armoured ones…there again, the unarmoured raft of untrained peasant levy dear to the hearts of figure-designers and rule-writers is a bit hard to identify in medieval record or narrative – and where it is found at all (and I can only bring narrative source examples to mind right now)may be a gloss on the part of the writer who, more often than not, never saw a battle in his life but may well have been aware of social stereotypes that he wanted to include.

"Walking" is the same for all troops. But when they "double" or run that is when armor makes the difference, or perhaps it is more accurate to say "encumbrance" makes the difference. An unarmored man with a sixteen foot pike is going to be as "encumbered" weight-wise as a man wearing a mail shirt, at least. If the pikes start moving out quickly and the pikes are extended to c. forty-five degrees, then lowered, they become increasingly encumbering as they start to bounce. At this stage, armor probably becomes less a factor in movement than the weapons!

Cavalry: I've never been convinced that armor made the kind of difference we usually see in movement rules. It seems to me that endurance is what is affected, not raw speed over a tactical distance. Acceleration is what changes, but that would only be slight. A "cataphract" is going to move from a trot to a gallop/charge at a slower rate than an unarmored horseman is capable of. But top end speed, for the short term, is not going to be different for any cavalry.

(Yet in "my" game, I still retain speed differences for the armor classes, there are three speeds, light/unarmored, medium, and heavy/cataphract, with two inches difference between each. I've decided this a sequential way of representing relative mobility, rather than "top end", so, a game mechanism and not a literal statement of reality….)

A friend of mine has a party every summer solstice with a bunch of weird sporting events, one is the hoplitodromos, an ancient Greek event which is basically a foot race wearing helmet, greaves and a shield which adds up to about 40-50 pounds. People move pretty fast for the first 100 yards, but definitely slow to a crawl by 200-300. So if your fellows are sprinting around a large battlefield, then I'd say the ones in heavy armor would definitely be slower. If they are moving across a smaller area, there probably wouldn't be much of a noticeable difference.
I imagine any sort of obstacles would also severely slow someone in armor compared to an unarmored person.

link
This was done using the full time interpreter when my father was still working at the Armouries, to the people were not unused to the armour or just weekend warriors.

Look for movement rate test for modern militaries where those tested 40-80lbs of battle kit