The Roman units...

[MatrixStorm]

The Roman units in RTR are nice, but the shields are a but strange...
Didn't they have tower shields?

[AqD]

no the tower shields came after the end of republic, and disappeared very soon - along with lorica segmentata? (both are bad in real battles I bet )

[florin80]

The shields of the rtrpe roman units as far as I remember them reflect the republican legionaries as they`re pictured on the altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus.

[Templar Knight]

why would lorica segmentata be bad in a real battle? it is plate armor after all

[AqD]

@Templar Knight: the early greek bronze breastplates are also plate armour. It's less flexible than chain mail, more difficult to repair, and the belts that hold plates together seems to be problematic from what I have read somewhere (on allempires?). I couldn't think of any reason for them to adopt it over lorica hamata and lorica squamata, except for financial difficulties to raise new legions.

[MatrixStorm]

The lorica segmentata was better than te chainmail.
If an arrow was hitting you with a chainmail, you had no chanse to survive and the chainmail was heavier than the lorica segmentata.

The lorica segmentata was lighter, and the iron versions even stronger.
An arruw would penetrate the lorica, but not even the whole point of it would stick in it...
So the soldier would still be able to fight...


And why are the lorica's dissapeared?

[AqD]

It depends on how close the arrow is shot and how strong it is. Most of time it may break just one ring and bounce off (from some modern test - not reliable ), and you can easily repair it.

Lorica segmentata was primarily used in places where bows were not the primary weapon at all - in east the scale armour still dominates. Also the iron or the quality of metal/forge is not an issue, as it can be applied to any type of armors as well; It's the design that matters. The design seems to be similar to that of persian arm guards "cheires", which were replaced by mail later.

[florin80]

An arruw would penetrate the lorica, but not even the whole point of it would stick in it...

From what I`ve seen in a reenactors` experiment the whole point about the arrow you`re making is incomplete and so only partially true. The effect of the arrow would depend on the way its head is made. It needs to be short iirc to penetrate effectively the plates of the segmentata or else it bends and diverts from it. The long arrow heads(again iirc) would be the ones effective against chain mail. So yes, of course that armour could be penetrated by arrows only that different factors are involved.

The reason that armour is not in rtr is because it`s not representative of rtr`s timeframe. So in this respect there`s no point in discussing which is better. Unless someone finds a lorica segmentata and dates it half a century before the current earliest find. But that would not change the aspect of the rtr 6/rtrpe legionaries for the simple reason that it is a completed mod. Nobody is working at it now and nobody had done so for some 4 years(when the graphics are concerned at least).