I know I must be missing something here but I don't see why everybody doesn't purchase padded armor. It has 2 soak, it has 0 encumberance when you wear it (if I'm reading the encumberance rules correctly) and there don't seem to be any other penalties. It's a little pricey but other than that it seems pretty straightforward.
Now I don't mind if all my players use padded armor but I want to make sure that I'm doing it the right way.
Could someone clue me in?
Thanks.
The key phrase in the padded armor description:
"many individuals can wear padded armor without generating too much attention from local law enforcement on frontier worlds".
So on most world's your PCs might be on they probably won't draw too much attention but on a more civilized world the law might not like them.
If the entire group is wearing armor and packing a lot of firepower I could even see law enforcement on frontier world's raising their eyebrows
The game is built to be more narrative, so mechanically you are right. But in the narrative sense padded armor is showy, people will see it, you can't really hide it like you can Heavy Clothing or Adverse Environmental Gear, and you should remind the players of that, give them setback dice if they are wearing padded armor while negotiating with a local noble or with local cops or even just the owner of a shop, because the NPC sees the armor and is a little worried that he is dealing with thugs (after all almost all of Jabba's men in RotJ were wearing padded armor) or other types of miscreants who might kill him if they get angry.
I think JTS is referring to the fact both Padded Armor has 2 soak and so does Laminate Armor and Heavy Battle Armor.
The answer is Hard Points. The ability to upgrade armors is pretty good. You can't give any upgrades to Padded Armor (not even superior), it's stuck as is. Laminate and Heavy Armor both have several Hard Points and Heavy Armor adds a set back dice to attackers' attack roles.
That's exactly what I wanted to know. I wanted to make sure there isn't a mechanical reason for them not to wear armor and it looks like there isn't one. The ideas about the roleplaying impacts are great stuff.
That said, thank you Digiblade for pointing out the Hard Points too. I missed that. Very helpful.
Thank you.
The hard points is/can be an important one; for example, one hard point and the appropriate number of credits, laminate armor can be made superior at which point it's a straight upgrade over over padded armor with three more points left to pile on additional attachments with such as an enhanced optics package.
Basically, if you have a PC who is supposed to be a 'heavy armor' sort of guy, Padded Armor *is* going to be their starting gear of choice, if they have the credits. But anybody who doesn't explicitly have *armor* as part of their schtick description is probably going to pick Heavy Clothing, and get half of that effect at 1/10 of the cost in a game where starting credits are relatively scarce. (If you want *anything else* to go along with that Padded Armor, you're going to have to pick up some extra Obligation.)
The key phrase in the padded armor description:
"many individuals can wear padded armor without generating too much attention from local law enforcement on frontier worlds".
So on most world's your PCs might be on they probably won't draw too much attention but on a more civilized world the law might not like them.
If the entire group is wearing armor and packing a lot of firepower I could even see law enforcement on frontier world's raising their eyebrows
Bingo.
Also, there is no broken concept of padded armor, as mentioned. It's great starting armor, but it's stuck as is. So while all your players might flock to padded armor, the ones who truly want to be tanks will ditch it in favor of more upgradable armor.
And going back to the quote, I'd absolutely made local law enforcement eye them a bit closer with any sort of armor on.
That is what I like about this system, PC's aren't necessarily going to stick with one type of armor for all situations. With the narrative aspect they probably going to run into a situation where military style armor (padded, laminate, battle) would cause problems.