What good is a stormtroopers armour?

This is the future! They should have a layer of optically reflective, ballistic Aerogel. Some DoD project will invent it in 2180.

The “armour” is made of plastic, as a cost saving measure, because the empire blew almost all of their military budget on 2 death stars.
But they are not telling that to anyone, including the stormtroopers.
Not that it matters, because the empire does not even have the money to give the stormtroopers marksmanship training.

@ragingloli I’ve noticed the lack of marksmanship training, too. Jeez. How hard is it to aim a laser?! If the shot is to the left swing your weapon a little to the right. There’s no kick! A 2 year old knows how to aim a flashlight!

Who cleans up all those dead stormtroopers? Don’t they begin to stink after a day or two?

I get the feeling that Stormtrooper armor isn’t really about protecting the wearer, but more about de-individualizing him/her.

Because they look cool, plain and simple. Action movies like Star Wars are more about dramatic visual effects than logic. It’s called “suspending disbelief.”

And now I have an urge to jump back into Star Wars: Battlefront.

Mr Vader was very clear in specifying the kind of armour he required. It had to be white and shiny and cost no more that £8.90. It offers no protection against blasters, hand guns, sharp objects or mishandling by children.

@flutherother

Lord Vader needs a lot of Neosporin. That money has to come from somewhere and if a few Stormtroopers get then short end of the stick well then who’s going to argue with Lord Vader? Certainly not I.

What good is a stormtrooper?

It sees that with all their gear, they are carrying way too much weight to be effective.

If their weaponry is so light and versatile, why is their armor to heavy and overdesigned? It would seem to me that if a civilization can design and manufacture light and powerful offensive weapons, they should do the same with defensive capabilities.

Worst was it not protecting against rocks and so on tossed by Ewoks.

Practically, it probably would protect against many minor attacks, especially physical ones. And, there might be many commonly-available civilian weapons that would be stopped by it, requiring people to use rarer, more expensive, heavier weapons against them. It might also reduce the severity of injuries from getting blasted, perhaps not enough to keep them from getting knocked out by a military blaster, but enough that more of them might survive, especially if it has built in something that douses the wound in something that stabilizes it until medical help can arrive. So you’d have less men killed, even if it didn’t help in the fight.

It’s probably also proof against pressure waves, fragments and flaming bits from explosions and near misses, and it might deflect some glancing hits.

The armor could also have other features. It clearly has some doodads, probably ammo, and it has communications gear. The eye filters might give increased visibility through smoke and in dim light, and probably has air filtering to defeat gas attacks.

And, yeah, the effects on the uniform of dehumanization, intimidation, and immediately knowing who’s part of your army. Interestingly, some modern riot police seem to think that this sort of style is a good (?) idea, too.

It’s good at total uniformity, if perfection is so wanted.

It just looks cool, other than that I’d call it useless as teats on a boar hog. But it’s only science fiction, at any rate.

I think it works just fine.

The unforeseen issue is that, due to the anonymity offered by the uniform, and the general incompetence of the empire, soldiers have taken to faking their own death. When the smoke clears, some of them manage to sneak away, and ones that can’t pull it off just sneak back in to the ranks to avoid punishment.

“Didn’t you die back there?”
“No. I’m TK421, you’re thinking of TP241.”
“My bad, dude”
“NP, bro. Could happen to anyone”
“I’m a lady”
“Oh yeah. I knew that.”