Not to be confused with powered armor despite the fact that it is used in conjunction with it. Body armor is a vital part of someone loadout, being one of the things that stands between life and death. Men have donned armor to protect themselves from things that would've meant injury or their demise for ages. The modern age is no different. The only difference is, the sort of opponents that roam the modern battlefield.

Metahumans, mutants, aliens with advanced weaponry, men with advanced weaponry, demons, magical entities and much, much more. All possessing a plethora of abilities and weapons to make the fight more dangerous then it ever was before. Fists strike with tremendous amount of force, shrapnel and debris fly about as always, blastwaves ripple through the air, the ground quakes, structures come down, blades cut through men as they would air, bullets whir and your ally has just been turned into a toad.

Needless to say, the best tactic is to simply avoid the damage altogether or not place yourself in such a situation where such damage or attacks can be used against you, it is inevitable that indeed, damage may occur. The objective of armor be it body armor, vehicle armor or materials used to reinforced structures, is to mitigate or negate damage as much as possible.

As such. A wide variety of properties are needed. Combinations of Tensile Strength, Toughness, Hardness, Thermal stability and other exotic properties are what one uses to determine the type of armor they wish to make.

Maverick Armor

The basis of Maverick's armor, of course, comes from what most of their technology is based off of, advancing already conventional methods, as opposed to simply abandoning them and creating/inventing one's own methods. This allows them to have some advantages over some of their enemies, many of which at times lack even the concept of some of their weapons and technology, despite said technology being more "Advanced."

One such technique is to not only pay attention to the materials but to the structure of the material(s). Very rarely will Maverick make an armor that is composed of simply one material.. Modern armor is often a composite of kevlar and ceramic or metal plates. Flak Jackets

Of course however, material do matter. A hurdle for Maverick overcome is the complete lack of anything magical, having no vibranium whatsoever and having adamantium in the most minute of amounts. However, this hasn't stopped them from using other available materials to their benefit to allow them to defend against the varying degrees of damage with surprising success. The combination of body and vehicle armor allows generally, any person who dons it to survive things that would have otherwise severely injured them, removed limbs, reduced them to paste or turned them into swiss cheese.

It is not uncommon for Maverick Armor to sustain magazines of close range Assault rifle gunfire and can take substantial effort and ammunition to pierce, or for them to simply walk through lasers and plasma showing little signs of being harmed or impeded. They can distribute this armor at lower prices and in great number to each and every soldier. The greatest of their armor enables them to walk through gunfire, blades, plasma, lasers and particle weapons alike.

Arachnoweave

A composite armor and material constructed of primarily spider silk, nanocellulose and peptide nanospheres. A common, inexpensive yet highly effective armor that is able to be given to a large majority of Maverick's Troops. The weave is very adept at absorbing kinetic impacts and is simultaneously more widely available.

Flash Banite Steel

A strong and lighter nanostructured steel, it boasts a strength of over 2.5 GPA, making it stronger pound for pound than most conventional steels due to it's alloying technique, while simulaniously more ductile. Making it useful for armor and construction of simultaneously lighter and stronger vehicles.

Kryon

A aluminium copper alloy reinforced by Carbon Nanotubes. Plates of the material have been acclaimed to halt .50 caliber bullets where other steel plates would have failed. This alloy has proven to be much stronger than most any steel and has found extensive use in vehicle armor and body armor.

Transparent Aluminium

A metal material composed of Aluminium oxide, capable of stopping a .50 caliber round at thicknesses that would would tear through an equal amount of bulletproof glass. Thus, the material is used extensively by Maverick to Armor often vulnerable visors, windows of buildings and vehicles, and the like.

Carbon Nanotubes

An extremely versatile material with the second greatest theoretical tensile strength of any convetnional material and a superior toughness than most. I can be combined with materials to reinforce them, from Titanium to Kevlar.

Notably, Maverick employs this armor are on their special forces in very high grade and amounts, often used to make extra-ordinarily durable armor, notably among ENCUs. With a tensile strength of over 50 GPa, armors can take literally a few thousand tons of force to rip apart.

Graphene

The greatest theoretical conventional tensile strength material on the entire planet, it is said that it would take an elephant balancing itself on a pencil to pierce a sheet as thin as Seran wrap. At it's greatest theoretical maximum, it can sport a tensile strength of 330 GPA

Ablative

Ablative armor is an armor which defend through ablation, often being destroyed upon being struck. It made to defend against lasers, other electromagnetic weaponry, plasma and other heat based attacks. It offers excellent protection against these kinds of attacks, making it a common weapon of choice against enemies who have come to rely completely on directed energy weapons. but it offers poor ballistic protection by itself. It is often used on spacecraft to survive reentry.

Nano-Ceramic

Highly advanced ceramic composites of well structured materials, such silicon carbide have become popular for their toughness, hardness and their lack of metals, their high resistance to heat based weaponry such as plasma and their type-III balistic protection capability alone. Thisallows

Reinforced Carbon Carbon

Used on the nose of Space shuttles to survive re-entry, this material is used to very effectively defend against plasma, plasma cutters encountering difficulty in marring the weapon. However, it is useless against firearms.

Aerogel

An acclaimed ultra-light material, with decent strength, though lacking in the department of protection against bullets, it offers outstanding protection against plasma and heat, offering unparalell insulation properties.

Starlite

Under tests, Starlite was claimed to be able to withstand attack by a laser beam that could produce a temperature of 10,000 degrees Celsius (Starlite may have reflected part of the beam, however, which would have lowered the temperature). Live demonstrations on Tomorrow's World and BBC Radio 4 showed that Starlite could keep an egg (coated in the material) raw, and cold enough to be picked up with a bare hand, even after five minutes of blowtorch attack. It would also prevent a blowtorch from damaging a human hand

Yet another one of Maverick's "wonder" materials, it is actually very cheap and inexpensive. It has extreme heat resistant properties as well as blast resistant properties, having been exposed to lasers that can generate temperatures found well into the surface of the sun near small yield nuclear bombs. As one can imagine, the material is one of the greatest materials Maverick has access to whenit comes to resisting heat, plasma and lasers, making the user seem all but "laser proof" to all but the most powerful of lasers when thin.

Otherwise, this material has been used to shield against close range nuclear attack with moderate damage towards it, depending on how it is structured.

Reactive Armor

A concept devised by military that has been possessed for years, reactive armor is an armor that essentially "Reacts" to an attack with another attack. Ideally, an explosive. However, more advanced armors can use much more, such as PASS based armors or even electric reactive armor. This decreases the penetration. The Armor is also well capable of protecting against plasma and distorting/weakening lasers to some extent.

It is also popular for repelling attacks from people with blades of extreme or supernatural sharpness. This is the armor of choice to defend against those wielding adamantium or vibranium. It can be overcome, through sufficient force and can be man portable. However, it can blow users who don't have a way to anchor themselves or brace themselves as easily as it can the user.

It is also useful when combined with certain systems such as a computer and radar to combat speedsters (particularly with the PASS variation) allowing users to generally be difficult for many close combat oriented opponents to fight.

Metaflex

The material utilizes the same technology as Maverick's own cloaking devices, the armor is capable of shifting itself at a molecular level to form a variety of metamaterials, though it doesn't have "shapeshifting capabilities" and has essentially no ballistic protection, it is lightweight and is one of Maverick's greatest materials for protecting against lasers and weapons that project electromagnetic radiation.

In essence, it is capable of actiing differently depending on how it is actually arranged. It can absorb or deflect such weapons almost completely, much like how a mirror reflects light. It requires constant adjust to counter differing frequencies, however, mulitlayering the material with each counting different frequencies.

The metamaterial can be worn as body armor or even used in buildings. It is potent enough enough that building covered in it can deflect a strike that would otherwise, slice the building completely in two. This can also be applied to body armor to make a troop "laser proof" as is described. However, some materials require atoms with larger nuclei in order to be deflected (namely, gold.)

Negative Compression

A type ot meta-material that expands and compresses the opposite of a conventional material. This gives it ideal properties that enable to protect against vibrations and impacts. This makes the material actually not too far of a cry from vibranium where protection is concerned. While not as durable and still capable of taking damage, it offers a layer protection not capable of being found in most natural materials. It's properties come from it;s structure, meaning it can be made from a wide variety of rubber like materials (very often using metal rubber and CNT rubber composites. The composition varying the degrees of temperature resistance between 1800 F for Carbon Nanotube composite rubbers and 6000 F for metal rubber based material.

Liquid Armor

An armor that is by default, less dense and liquid form, but hardens upon impact. It comes in variations of shear thickening fluid, such as D30 gel and in MR Fluid. It can be used to armor the joints, particularly when combined with carbon nanotubes, allowing flexible armor to be capable of also becoming rigid in areas and be adept at protecting joints.

Inorganic Nanofullerene

A very strong material composed of either titanium or tungsten (ideally, titanium) it is capable of withstanding up to 250 tons of force per square centimeter. While hardly any soldier is going to walk around with armor that thick, it is mostly immune to ordinary small arms period, with only explosively formed penetrators, large explosions, some high caliber anti-vehicle ammunition and other such weapons capable of penetrating it.

However, it has a low temperature resistance of 1250 F.Meaning that it would be best to use against kinetic weapons and impacts. It also does little to protect one from acceleration forces on it's own. The armor might be able to withstand an impact but a person on the other hand may require extra-durability, padding or other ways to compensate for said impact if sufficiently potent.

Aggregate Diamond Nanofullerenes

A carbon based t is constructed with a high degree of toughness, strength and is the hardest conventional material on earth. Able to dent diamond and sport a high resistance to pressure, it is obscenely difficult to cut and crush. Able to withstand kilotons or even megatons of pressure depending on it's thickness. It is made to be able to withstand some hits from even atomically sharp Adamantium and Vibranium weapons, while having an immunity to metals.

Cold Iron

Literally, this is pure, cold-worked iron. Certain varieties of magical enemies have shown to be vulnerable to iron, such as various types of Fair Folk, some demons and Asgardian Dark Elves. It is by no means garenteed to work on every magic user, but simple iron can be used if the situation calls for, as well as other materials and counters to the supernatural.