Editing Field Emitter Panoply

'''Wearing the FEP'''

I'd say it's faintly visible when active, and really obvious when something pings off of it. When it's inactive...hmm. It's mildly encumbering, about equivalent to a bullet resistant vest or similar. What I'm going to say is that it consists of a belt, two bracelets, two anklets, and a kind of heavy necklace. It's substantially harder to conceal than an armored undersuit, but if nobody was scanning you, they didn't know what to look for, and you dressed correctly, you could conceal it when it's inactive.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?734598-Stars-Without-Number-Volume-IV-Big-Trouble-on-Planet-Pleasantville&p=18444101#post18444101

I alluded to this before, and it's an issue unique to my campaign. Force-field based protection is superior in most respects, but it has one flaw. The "oven mitt" problem. For technical reasons, sustained pressure by something that is extremely hot will let heat through the field faster than it will penetrate a hardsuit. This is almost never an issue, until you have to carry something really hot and heavy, like a glowing-red, twenty kilo part of what used to be the engine's plasma manifold. Then you wish you had a hardsuit.

The flipside is that field-based protection is totally immune to corrosives, which hardsuits are not. Fields are also ludicrously easy to decontaminate from biological, chemical, or radioactive hazards.