[@BrokenPromise]

[quote]So I'm pretty sure everyone who knows anything about armor knows that as soon as plate came around, everyone more or less abandoned scale mail. Scale mail is heavier and, while easier to make, it is more time consuming. Why make all those little scales fit together when you can just bend a full plate? Something that no one ever really addresses though is which one actually protected better. Does anyone know if the lapped steel on scale mail was harder or easier to pierce than plate?[/quote]

This is a more complex question than it may appear and it makes some assumptions that I cannot endorse. Nonetheless I will try to answer your question in an informative way, though I make need to make some assumptions about what you mean. Let me know if I misinterpret your meaning [b]:-)[/b]

I suspect that you are referring specifically to the type of plate that emerged in 14th century Europe rather than the many types of plate that existed before this period. At the end of the 13th century a knight would be covered in mail from neck to feet and by the end of the 14th century they were nearly entirely covered by plates. Plate didn't replace scale in this case, it replaced and augmented mail (they were often used in conjunction). 

Did the 14th century transitional harness and then the 15th century white plate offer superior performance to scale? Yes, across every metric. By the 14th century the lance and the polearm (of which there was a great variety) were considered a fundamental part of the knight's arsenal. Scale armor of any type will not protect you from a lance and it will not provide very much protection against the polehammer either. Scale was no longer suitable for the battlefield in Europe. Metallurgy had rendered it obsolete. 

That said, I can't recall a single instance in which scale was replaced by plate. In every case I can recall scale had already been replaced by lamellar or mail before the arrival of plate. Do you have a specific example in mind?