Quote Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
Watchman, you may or may not be right about javalins, someone told me they'd been hurling them at steel car doors and punching holes.
Good plate had a habit of deflecting couched lances in full-tilt heavy cavalry clashes, which is yet another reason shields were ditched. Javelins could as well not bother trying.
In fact you can sometimes see the legionaries tunic through the gaps at the back.
That'd no longer be segmentata, but one coming apart. Badly.
Mail has greater flexability and by and large one size fits all, though fitted is better.
Flexibility isn't terrinly important in hip-lenght corselets anyway - you can do damn cartwheels wearing full plate, and I can quarantee that breastplate doesn't flex one bit. Most kinds of heavier body armours worn over the millenia barely flexed at all, and worked perfectly fine regardless - where the cloth-like suppleness of mail becomes useful is in the joints.
Regarding the longbow I will only say it was the AK-47 of it's age and I think Watchamn would probably agree with me.
Probably wouldn't. Besides the katana that one has to be the most over-hyped premodern military weapon - and most of the enthusiasts are quite unaware a bow not much short of the Welsh longbow was a required part of a militiaman's kit (atop a shield, spear, sword or axe and some armour) in medieval Scandinavia.
Lorica Segmentata has been said to weigh "as little as 5.5kg" mail is generally quite a bit heavier. Additionally you are wrong to say mail can be "easily torn" Lorica Segmentata has lots of nice gaps and edges to hook a falx onto.
I understand mail shirts of coverage comparable to the segmentata corselet tend to weigh in at the 10-15 kg range, depending on specific design details. One does recall the lorica hamata is very commonly described as being rather heavy anyway.

Personally I rather fail to perceive where there would be a true eak point in the segmentata, save perhaps for the closure. Iron lames overlapping downwards don't seem to offer a very good "bite" for most weapons by what I know of it, and the shoulders for their part are reinforced against blows from above.