lets talk about armors!

well, armor definitely needs to be rebalanced imo.  Researching paper doll locations seems silly though.

Research definitely ramps up too damn quick in terms of equipment...hehe.

There's also a disparity in cost efficiency between different pieces of armor. This is fine, except that I end up using leather greaves as my basic cheapo spam armor in the early game rather than leather chest armor. Dunno, just struck me as off.

The numbers are really still off at this point. Even just the type of armors, being light, medium and heavy within each tier. Needs more diversity. 

The stages of armor should also use something like this. And each tier of armor should also have a masterwork version. With a special name and so on.

Cloth: Cloth armor, Padded armor, Mage armor. 

Leather: Light Leather, Studded Light, Leather, Studded Leather, Heavy Leather, Studded Heavy Leather.

Hide: Light Hide, Studded Light Hide, Hide, Studded Hide, Heavy Hide, Studded Heavy Hide.

Chain: Light Chainmail, Chainmail, Heavy Chainmail

Scalemail: Light Scalemail, Scale Mail, Heavy Scalemail

Chain and Plate: Light Chain & Plate, Chain and Plate, Heavy Chain and Plate

Full Platemail: Light Platemail, Platemail, Heavy Platemail,

Warmail: Light Warmail, Warmail, Heavy Warmail.

(Warmail is something more akin to that traditional fantasy armor, exaggerated pieces, thicker, spiked, with edges.. etcetera.)

And so on.. and then for each tier there could be different types of Masterwork armor. (I would say check out 4th edition D&D for a list of their masterwork armors.)

And this way those armors could really be interesting, but it would also allow for different style weapons, light versions, heavy versions, maybe even styles like Paridan, and Magnar.. etcetera..

thats all rather excessive when the only variables are cost and defense value.

Heavier equipment also affects your combat speed.

Oh right. Still.  Whats going to be the difference between light scalemail and heavy chainmail?  There's such a thing as too much customization. 

Adding more visual variety would be nice as well. But in tiers, I woould go for these:

Cloth - Nothing unless magical

Hide - 1 Def

Leather - 1 or 2 Def

Chain - 2 or 3 Def -0.05CS

Brigandine - 3 or 4 Def -0.10 CS

Plate - 4 or 5 Def -0.25 CS

Warmail - 6 Def -0.50 CS

Dividing these would be excessive imo. But each might have different appearances would be nice. Scalemail might be on a level equal to Brigandine yet look different and more often be magical. Remember also that greaves/gauntlets/cloak are separate. DIfferent materials might also lead to different results.

I'd find myself building units to exacting speed numbers.  The only time I would use plate is in the rare case when Plate doesn't cross a speed threshhold and Warmail does. (and generally, plate refers to the heaviest armor you're going to find...but that's less important).

Truth is, I would just try to squeeze the heaviest armor I could at 0 all-around quality penalty.  If you make plate units have a 1-move limit (2 after horse) and things might get more interesting.  Make light armored units have a 3-move limit (4 after horse) and throw out everything else.  There's very little use for "medium armor" in a game like this.  Either you want high maneuverability or high armor.

You can make a case for medium type armors if the costs are good, that is you can crank out more guys with it for the same cost. But with how powerful combat speed is right now, I'd tend to avoid anything with a CS penalty either unless I'm deliberately trying to make "heavy" units, in which case I'd go for the strongest defense I can get.

You could do more here if movement and attacks are split into different things, because then medium armor could carry a movement speed penalty but not a combat speed (attacks) penalty. At that point it's more competitive.

I'm not sure heavy armor should have a combat penalty if it has a movement penalty.  A trained knight should be almost as effective in full plate as unarmored.

For the rest, perhaps that's exactly what we need.  Heavy units and everyone else.  Lightest armor can carry no penalty except perhaps to magic (so there's no reason not to have light armor).  Heavy armor just slows you the heck down.

Sounds fair to me.

but combat speed is OP in UNITS

+1 is great

-1 is very bad

-0 .1 is just irrelevant

but well i know all numbers on those are temporary so nothinig to be worried

lol?

you have any idea how it was using a plate?

knights couldnt even WEAR team they had a team just to use it

Walking around, even putting on platemail, isn't the same as fighting in it.

Generally, gaps in the armor in the arm area limited slowdown to the arms for swinging.  Charging on the back of a horse, the negative effect is reduced to zero (even a positive).

I've worn half plate.  Just once.  Won't say it was a pleasant experience.  Too damn heavy.  But assuming I were strong enough to swing a sword in combat, I don't think the effect on my arms really would've been that much... However the weight on my whole body certainly removed my ability to run.

It would be nice to get some real #'s though to chew on before it gets locked.

The reason I'd want to keep the paper doll for armor is for magic items like gloves, boots, etc.

I think, though, for just basic, everyday armor it should really just take up a torso slot.

EDIT: You know, I still like having the choice of different greaves, gauntlets etc. so I take that back.

This is why I'm in favor of a combat system with four variables rather than two.

Defense = Avoidance skill

Attack = Accuracy skill

Damage = ....

Armor = Damage reduction

cloth/leather has higher defense and lower reduction, plate does the opposite in addition to slowing movement (without a mount)

Example using fake numbers:

Unit has 16 dexterity this provides a bonus of 16-10=6    let's pretend that 1 defense provides you with a 3% chance of avoiding an attack altogether. So naked, this agile unit has an 18% chance to avoid the attack of somebody with an equal attack bonus.

Now leather armor provides a 30% increase to your dexterity defense bonus, we'll round it to keep calculations simple. Now the unit has a defense of 8 or 24% chance to avoid equal skilled attack.

Leather armor also provides a meager damage reduction of two against slashing and bludgeoning, one against piercing.

Now take the same unit in plate. Full platemail will reduce your dexterity bonus to defense by 50% this unit has only a 9% chance of evading an equally skilled attacker.

It also cuts battlefield movement (dismounted) by 50%, to a minimum of 1.

The damage reduction on plate is 10 against slashing, 7 against bludgeoning and  6 against piercing.

Attacker has 16 strength, this gives him an attack skill of 6, and a damage bonus of 3.

He's using a broadsword which has a listed damage of 7 and gets a bonus of 3 from strength. So 10 possible damage.

He swings at the person wearing leather. With an attack skill of 6 and a defense skill of 6 the defender has a 24% chance to avoid the hit altogether, if that fails he will take 8 damage.

He swings at the person wearing plate, attack skill of 6 vs a defense skill of 3. 0% chance to dodge, because of the disparity created in the two skills a further damage bonus is applied since the attacker can more easily focus the assault in weakened areas or strike with more strength in the right locations. So the % disparity in attack vs defense skill, in this case 100%, is applied to the Str bonus, this provides +6 damage from str on top of the 7 the broadsword has baseline. 13 damage, 10 of which is absorbed. 3 damage total.

Obviously the numbers and such can be tweaked, but this gives a general idea of what I had in mind. Thoughts?

I just had a brainwave and thought i'd drop it here to see if it has any worth.

What about an ongoing, research based increase for all armor/weapon types in a similar fashion to the resource upgrades (the better resource production percentages).

All armor types start out with relatively equal values then you can choose to improve one type per research breakthrough. As you improve that type it gets a stat increase and it's next tier becomes harder to research (the chance of it appearing in the breakthrough list drops). The better the type of equipment you choose, the faster it's chance to appear drops but the greater it's values increase versus a lesser item.

EDIT: This way you can still throw out most of the initial sets early but still have things to aim for as the game continues.

Platemail, or any heavier raiment, weighs a lot. But depending on quality of the metal, so that some weigh marginably less, while others weigh a lot. It might on average weigh just above 20kg. And the wieght is spread all over the body, so that it seems to weigh even less. You can walk long lengths in it, and even run short distances. But you still carry an extra mass of 1/3 of your body weight. Jumping and climbing will be hard. Therefore it might be hard to climb on to a horse in the heavier platemail, yet still possible to run.

this is quite interesting

Armor needs to be done right. I actually do want all of the armors listed by gorstagg simply because it matchs the fantasy feel And gives us customization. Throw in magical enchantment and we got ourselves good armor. Also i am in favor of

slainangel52's stat system. Combine the two and we're good to go.

My only bit to throw in is that heavier armor should provide a moral boost. The Average peasant/soldier will always feel safer and stronger when their wearing platemail particularly if their surrounded by 10-20 other guys whom are as well.

And here's the other aspect to having a really deep list of various armors. It allows the designers more depth to customize various stats. Such as combat speed, defense values, physical movement modifiers, and and a variety that can vary per game.. for what is relearned. But also, since the idea of researching down an armor tree, to get access to ones with better benefits, may pay off so the difference in heavy chainmail where it reduces slashing damage, and has a high defense value, but not as stiff a movement penalty as say early stages of scale mail.. 

Basically a larger pool to work with would besides allowing for greater visual deviations, but a broader range of equipment that can be learned. Including that you could in theory go deep down a armor tech tree to get to masterwork versions that provide special ability related benefits or that also when combined with certain enchantments that could be learned, they provided special bonuses or some such. Endless variety and mixing and matching. 

I could not agree more!

They could make it so that the Torso is in one tier, and the limbs come in the following tier. That would make it so that first you would have no armor, then you would get the Leather Cuirass, then after that you would get the Chainmail Shirt and Light Plate Cuirass along with the Leather limb parts, and so on.