Originally Posted by
CABAL
You all bring Vietnam like every soldier there had easly accessible, effective and lightweight body armor. Flak Jackets available at that moment were heavy, hot and surerly didn't protected against AK bullet, so no wonder infrantry wasn't using it.
As the time goes on, as the technology develops, body armor starts getting lighter and more comfortable to wear while also being more protective. At the point of CM its XXII century, close to the end actually. Purerly from MRP lore standpoint, there is no sense in not wearing any armor. Even CLF makes and wears armor.
While I don't care that marines don't wear armor and whole marine law/SoP can go to hell with restricting, or requiring any type of gear, its the gameplay where the problem lies. For some reason even the most basic bulletproof vest slows a human down a lot, while wedding dress found in chapel on Big Red doesn't.
How to combine gameplay with lore/RP/sense/whatever? Make additional armor variants, one that doesn't slow down at all would be neat. Maybe let them be their own kits. Something like "very light armor kit" to rival mini-medic and reduce its availability a bit, so that you doesn't have to make it totally suck to balance. Give it light and maybe new mechanic of "plastic plates" that give less protection that light armor does, while not slowing down at all, but they break simillary to metal and ceramic plates we now put in uniforms.
Here, problem solved, sonic the hedgehog marines get their light and armor slot, while it doesn't look dumb from the outside perspective where one marine wears super heavy armor and the other wears just a shirt.