Gearing up and survivability

[chili1496 10]

Does the type of gear you wear, play apart in the game mechanics of how well you survive? for example would i last longer in a fight if i wore a ballistic helmet as opposed to a beanie hat?

[Mookie (original) 799]

It certainly used to, but what follows may (post 0.63, or post 1.0) be out of date:

• A ballistic helmet will protect from some measure of bullet damage, just as a motorcycle helmet will protect from melee hits to the head
• A plate vest will offer significant protection against ballistic damage, while stab and press vests will offer drastically less (something like 20% for the plate and 5% for the stab I think...)
• Different clothing types have different statistics for heat/cold (quilted jacket warmer than t-shirt etc), and some (raincoat, Gorka jackets) used to give some measure of water resistance. It certainly used to be the case that you could run around all day in the rain in a Gorka jacket, but in 1.0 I still get cold in the rain in one, at least on the modded servers I usually play on now.
• Where things get really esoteric is in the amount of protection (especially ballistic) offered by the number, types and locations of items inside your clothing. I'm pretty sure it used to be the case that if you had lots of stuff inside, they could offer greater protection. There was also a time where people claimed that hicap vests seemed to offer protection, but if that was every true I doubt it now. 

There will be other elements to this that I've forgotten, and hopefully someone can give you a more up to date version. 

We used to have a chap named Wobo who tested these things pretty rigorously, but I haven't seen his YT videos for ages.

[fuzzy_chimera 25]

Wobo's videos are good, but I don't think he is doing them as actively anymore. Do miss alot of the more active members of our community.

I'm sure you, can find the answer here somewhere or just use some common sense to figure out the best choice for your playstyle.