Steven H wrote: |
I'm a bit surprised by this. I would think that scale would be preferable because it spreads the force out over a larger area. Though I assume there is a tradeoff that made mail the standard. My guess is that the tradeoff is cost and/or maintenance. That is mail is cheaper than scale armour and/or easier to take care of. |
Mail is far far more expensive to produce than scale. The amount of labour involved just to produce iron wire is significant and the weaving time is much higher than assembling scale armour. Scale is a poor cousin to mail. With the strange exception of China, scale only dominates in cultures that don't have a substantial iron working industry.