Ballistics, it it useful?

[Bruno]

The Ballistics feat give carrier vests +3 mechanical damage threshold when you craft something.
Specialization (3pts) add +1 mech dam threshold per points so you can have maximum +6.

Carrier vests make the following armors:

-Tactical Vest
-Riot Gear
-Metal Armor

Is +3/+6 mechanical damage threshold worth a feat?
For vests and riot gear, that threshold is further multiplied against bullets/melee, but still, it is only mechanical damage reduction.
Against bullets, it does not help much against snipers, and heavy shotgun pellets and W2C bullets also penetrate threshold easily.

[cypherusuh]

On easy and normal, yes
On hard, probably
On Dom, nope

The thing about DT is, end-game enemies usually has much higher damage potential, that DR plays bigger role. It's "useful" pre-DC and early exploration, but it falls off later on.
Like most crafting feat, it's usable, but there's usually better feat to pick

[HulkOSaurus]

+6 Threshold on Super Steel Heavy Armour would be dope.

[harperfan7]

It's not worth a feat.

[Maliel]

Nope, not worth spending feat points in, but it would be nice if you could get it from a quest or something else

[tyrtix]

i've used it on a single-shot AR build that uses stealth too and riot gear: with a good ql ss sheet and spec points i got a 24 treshold riot, wich gives enough protection that most basic attacks just jump off it, except obviously snipers and x-bows, but since you can overcome those with just energy shield or metal armor, heh, it's something. On a riot armor it gives, with spec points, basically a +12 treshold on both melee and bullets, with a kevlar on it i can stand most bullet damages and get nearly zero damage, so...for me, it works.

[cypherusuh]

The biggest usage for ballistics is to make you immune to Stalkers a bit earlier before you find some big b0is plates w/ riot gear
_{(feat advertised is not guaranteed)}

[TheAverageGortsby]

It only really has two compelling use cases.  Used in Kevlar-enhanced Tac Vests, you can get 10+ extra bullet threshold with the feat, or 20+ extra with feat + specialization.  That then makes you basically immune to enemy bursts.  Since Tac Vests generally have poor DR any ability to crank up the DT significantly expands their useful range.  Used in Riot Gear, Ballistics has broader application, but is so watered down that really all it'll do is make you mostly knife-immune.

As others have said, it's really not worth it.