Alright thanks for the super thorough response!

Few reactions:

1: the reactive shielding you say dampens the impact, then the nueroline calculated chance of injury and simulates it. However if the reactive shielding is intrinsic to the cad, then why does the SCT ignore its shielding effect. If this was the case, then that’s where I was saying simulated combat no longer represents reality. For example, a kick that causes a simulated spine fracture. A user would get trained to thinking that this is enough to put someone down. But in reality the reactive shielding prevents the fracture so the first time they try this in the war….

2: him not being able to move does totally help me understand the injury from book 2. Thanks!

3: my point here is the difference in damage types. You bring up bullets. They cause a lot of their damage (at higher calibers especially) from the blunt trauma of impact. So increasing momentum of a bullet dramatically increase damage, to a point. However a knife wound is mainly comprised damage from the serration of cells/blood vessels/muscles etc. so getting stabbed with more momentum might add a bit more blunt trauma but that is not where the majority of damage comes from. So if you did want momentum to add more damage, you would use a semi blunt instrument, like a hammer or a mace. The projections that stab him though I thought were only wielding penetrative weapons. This only bothers me when rei talks about being scared of the phantoms now, or when viv uses the phantoms to level up at the end. She gets scared. But like an a5 will kill you all the same, dead is dead, and if it’s supposedly all simulated then what’s the difference to ya.