Different Armours protect against different damage types.
Wearing a lot of protective gear can make certain actions challenging. Each set of armour has an Enc penalty above which increases Agility-based skill checks.
Each additional layer of armour increases Agility-based difficulties by +1 as well as that layers std Enc penalty.
A character cannot wear two suits of the same type, though he could combine some types. This listing indicates what armour may be worn with what, and the kind of bonus it can provide.
Of course, layering armour assumes that the two pieces fit together; a character couldn’t wear two helmets, even if they were made of different materials. For protective gear not listed here, use the type that the armour in question most closely resembles to determine what it can be combined with.
Except armor providing less than a full die of protection, any allowed combination offers the character the complete armor bonus for both layers, up to a maximums of 6D.
Hides and Fur; Bone and Hide: May be worn over any other type of armor. May not be worn under anything.
Soft Leather, Canvas, Heavy Khaki, Syntheleather: May be worn over or under any other type of armor.
Padded Leather/Flying Jacket, Syntheleather Mesh, Woven Metal Fabric: May be worn under any type of armor or over soft leather, canvas, heavy khaki, syntheleather, chain mail, plastovar, syntheleather mesh, padded, or metal fabric (though two armors of the same type may not be combined).
Chain Mail: May be worn over or under any other type of armor.
Reflec: A reflective material layered on a thin plastic base, this may be worn over any other armor or over or under clothes.
Plastovar: May be worn under soft leather, canvas, heavy khaki, syntheleather, or syntheleather mesh, or over padded, syntheleather mesh, or woven metal fabric.
Plasteel: May be worn over soft leather, canvas, heavy khaki, padded, or syntheleather, or under syntheleather mesh or woven metal fabric.
Plate Mail, Bulletproof Vest, Flak Jacket, Light Kevlar, Heavy Kevlar, Ceramic Armor: May not be worn under anything. May be worn over soft leather, canvas, heavy khaki, metallic woven fabric, or chain mail.
Powered armour is a wearable combat platform; a servo-assisted exoskeleton that amplifies the wearer's strength, endurance, and survivability. It runs on a PSU, it takes a trained operative to use, and it turns a squishy biological into something that shrugs off small-arms fire. The military calls them Hardsuits. Everyone else calls them "the reason we brought a bigger gun."
Hardness: Powered armour has a Hardness rating in addition to its standard DR values. Hardness represents the armour's rigid structural plating; damage that doesn't exceed the Hardness value is completely ignored. Abilities that bypass Hardness (such as Fortification Buster) treat powered armour the same as a fortified wall.