Why do stormtroopers wear armor if it doesn't work?

Reminds me of Power Rangers and how Rita always sends putties after the rangers. Thing is those putties have to be the most useless fodder I’ve ever seen.

Because the guys have zero fashion sense, the armour conceals their shit clothes.

Just as a person in a bulletproof vest who gets shot will get a few broken ribs, stormtrooper armor does prevent the trooper from actually getting killed, though a blaster shot will take them out of the fight. Read more about the armor and you’ll see that it doesn’t keep them in the fight, it merely keeps them from being killed. Or, since you probably won’t follow that link,

“Although standard armor lacked the durability to make the wearer immune to cannon fire, it could partially deflect or disperse energy from low, medium, and high-energy blaster bolts; though the wearer may be incapacitated, survival would allow the trooper to receive advanced medical treatment that may return him to service. It also deflected stun beams, and served as excellent protection against explosions and shrapnel, thereby drastically reducing the effective casualty radius of fragmentation weapons used against troops wearing such armor. It was almost impossible to kill a stormtrooper with a slugthrower unless the bullet was abnormally large, specifically armor piercing, or if it hit the body glove or visor lenses.”

or

“Stormtrooper armor as portrayed in the films is highly ineffective as combat protection and is generally hindering to the wearer. It largely contributes to the now infamous stormtrooper effect and has given rise to much fan speculation and outright mockery. However, this is countered by numerous role-playing, and other such sources, wherein stormtrooper armor is, on average, the best available armor, for protection versus weight/mobility restriction, and advantages, only being limited by its illegality to purchase, thus commanding exorbitant prices on the black market. ”

As for physical protection, knocking a person out is a matter of spinning someone’s head fast enough for their brain to hit the inside of their skull. Short of a neck brace that would severely limit the trooper’s field of vision, there is no protecting against that sort of thing. The helmet may keep your skull from breaking when your speeder bike hits a tree at high speed, but no physical armor protects against G-forces.

Also bear in mind that most conflicts a stormtrooper sees are against normal citizens who are less heavily armed and far less trained than the elite people of The Rebel Alliance. Riot police have a better chance against civilians throwing rocks than they would against SEAL Team Six.

Oh, let us not forget that Han Solo used to be a stormtrooper and thus would know the weaknesses of both the armor and the hand-to-hand training of Imperial troops.

Possibly story convenience. The same reason why, early in the original movie, Obi-Wan makes the comment “only Imperial Stormtroopers are this precise”, yet when you actually see them in action they can’t hit the broadside of a barn.

@Darth_Algar That is a whole other thing. You could look at this for more details, but the TL:DR version is that their misses were intentional. Remember when Han and friends “fought” their way off of the Death Star… with a tracking device to lead the Empire to the Rebel base on Hoth?

It’s called dramatic license.

@jerv

In other words: story convenience. A more believable scenario would have been to let the rebels pass through without much of even a pretense of a fight as, let’s face it, firefights in such cramped spaces would run the high risk of some casualties even if you’re trying to miss.

@Darth_Algar Spoken as someone who has never been a large naval vessel. If it were a civilian place like a mall then you might well be right, but we are talking a military installation full of trained personnel. But given what I know of shipboard security after spending a few years on a boat, I find that the “no pretense of a fight” scenario is less believable than monkeys flying out of my ass.

Cramped? Not really. While there were over a million people on the Death Star, it was large enough that the only areas that would have a terribly high risk of casualties would be berthing areas, mess halls, or sickbay. For the most part, your odds of firing down a passageway and hitting someone are lower than you’d expect, at least on anything much over about 200 feet long.

No, they would run into Imperial military personnel. If they didn’t or those people did not trigger a security alert as per S.O.P. or there was no pretense of a fight then that would’ve raised enough red flags that even Han (an former Imperial Lieutenant) would’ve shared Leia’s “paranoia”. I use the quotes as it isn’t really paranoia if they are out to get you. So the Imperials had to put of at least the appearance of resistance.

And who is to say that they weren’t doing the blaster equivalent of firing blanks? The E-11 Blaster Rifle does have variable power settings. Even if they were firing live shots, firing a full-power weapon aboard a ship or space station would cause issues. The marine detachment responsible for internal security on my last boat used shotguns and handguns that lacked the power to penetrate bulkheads for that reason.

That plus the fact that there are protocols that non-security shipboard forces enact during a security alert reduce the odds of non-combatants even being present in the sector anyways. So unless the stormtroopers went Polish firing squad the odds of accidental casualties are pretty damn low.

@jerv

A vessel/base/installation/space station can be incredibly large and still have small, cramped spaces, yes? There are scenes in that film where our heroes and Stormtroopers are firing at each other with not many feet distance between them, and not much space to move around in. In such scenarios you’re bound to run a high risk of hitting at least some of the people you’re supposed to let escape. I said nothing about hitting random bystanders.

No offense man, but, honestly, I think you’re going a long way trying to polish up Lucas’ crappy writing.

@Darth_Algar Only berthing compartments between taps and reveille, mess halls during mealtime and the bridge. Aside from those places at those times, the only other time see more than a dozen people in the same compartment at once is in large spaces like the hangar bay.

As for accidentally hitting the people you’re suppose to let escape, not if you are a highly trained marksman.

“Only Imperial Stormtroopers are this precise”

I’d say that expertly-feigned incompetence is the only explanation that fits Occam’s Razor. If the stormtroopers truly were incompetent, then one of the Rebels would have been at risk of catching a blaster bolt despite the other factors.
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The mere existence of Jar-Jar Binks proves what a crappy writer Lucas really is, as if the “remastering” of the original trilogy or most of the prequels weren’t proof enough already, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

smiling I think @jerv and @Darth_Algar have reached new levels of nerd-dom and deserve extra special lurve for this exchange. <3 :)