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[Orkel]

It can't even block animal bites as it is now, let alone the worst copper short swords. It's as if the game handles leather armor as just another layer of skin, instead of armor.

Leather armor needs some justice!

[Evaris]

Juuust going to insert this before we have people say leather shouldn't be effective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuEVjxLrc9k

(by which I mean, watch the video.)

[Astrid]

Well it all depends on how the leather is produced.

That kind of leather in this vid i dare to say is a bit more difficult to produce than yer average leather.
Even mroe so if it indeed was made using machine presses with a pressur eof several tons.

Doubtful that Dwarfen tech can get that far easily. *shrugs*

[Kuschelflummi]

That's easy... build a leather stockpile and let the whole mountain cave in. Tatda! Pressed Leather! After digging it out again.

More realistic would it be, to reinforce the leather. As fas as I know it was common to reinforce the leather with stronger material. Also there is to consider, that more layers of leather also strengthen it.

[PFunk]

Well it all depends on how the leather is produced.

That kind of leather in this vid i dare to say is a bit more difficult to produce than yer average leather.
Even mroe so if it indeed was made using machine presses with a pressur eof several tons.

Doubtful that Dwarfen tech can get that far easily. *shrugs*

Granted we're assuming the Dwarves will one day be given fake alchemy and currently have pre-industrial revolution mechanics its a bit arbitrary to nail down whats implausible. Ultimately a lot of the gremlins in the combat system are going to be what produces the effectiveness of the armour I think.

Btw, to the guy who posted the video. You should burn in hell, I just lost 4 hours of my life chasing related videos. Jerk.

[arphen]

Btw, to the guy who posted the video. You should burn in hell, I just lost 4 hours of my life chasing related videos. Jerk.

I lost them reading the comments.

[NedeN]

Is leather armor really that bad? I always have the marksdwarf squads equipped with it, but now i guess its on to iron or whatever metal i have. Also, has leather ALWAYS been that bad or is it 42.+?

[Evaris]

Well it all depends on how the leather is produced.

That kind of leather in this vid i dare to say is a bit more difficult to produce than yer average leather.
Even mroe so if it indeed was made using machine presses with a pressur eof several tons.

Doubtful that Dwarfen tech can get that far easily. *shrugs*

It was vegetable tanned leather.  And given the thickness of the leather, high pressure is unlikely in it's production, so... yeah.  I see no reason for dwarven tech to lack such capability.  I think the question as to leather's effectiveness is more "what animal is this made from."  than "is it leather?"  Since different animals have different thickness skin,  and it seems that common cow hide is resistant to initial sword cuts but fails against stabs, axe hits, or any repeated sword cuts.  Meanwhile thicker hide leather like in that testing can hold up against significantly more.  The difference in thickness is skall's old tests used common 3mm thick leather, and the newer test in that video is with 6mm thick leather.  Or in other words, you should get a similar effect from just... doubling up in layers. 

But one thing that gets me is that in game leather armor should really rather be boiled leather vs flexible standard leather.  For the actual armor version one, at least.

[Orkel]

Wonder if there's a way to buff leather armor via modding? Or is the armor's effectiveness hardcoded to the material?

Edit: In that case, would increasing the [RELATIVE_THICKNESS] of skin from 1 to higher help at all?

[Niddhoger]

Well, one thing I noticed in that video was how the leather was recoiling heavily with each blow.  It was like one of those blow-up clown dolls kids could punch.  The recoil will absorb a large amount of each blows force.  So unless the person is sent flying backwards with each blow, more of each hit will be transferred to the leather.  Also, None of these tests factored in the impact of the blow.  Even if the blade doesn't pierce the leather, it can still bruise the tissue beneath.  Particularly for those axe blows, all the weight of the axe handle/head will be concentrated in a smaller surface.  Heavy plate armor from the high-middle ages wouldn't break under a hammer hit, but the bones beneath it still could. 

From what I understood, the main selling point for leather armor has always been cost.  Leather is obviously a renewable resource that is also a byproduct of the food-industry.  Metal ores and smithing have a much more involved and labor intensive production cycle as well.  The ore has to be mined, smelted, then meticulously hammered over a hot forge for WEEKS to make proper plate armor (or longer, depending on how articulated the joints are).  I don't know the exact times for leather, but its no where near as labor intensive nor expensive to set up. 

It was never meant to be excellent protection, but it does fair better against blunt attacks than edged ones.  Against edged attacks... it is mostly for downgrading serious cuts into superficial ones, or turning slashes into deflected blows.  Its the "better than nothing" protection cheaply mass produced and given to common soldiers.  It should still protect against dog bites and hte like though... I mean a grizzly bear or some giant savage creature could probably tear through it (giant tigers are x32 the size of an adult dwarf), but dingos and snakes might not be able to. 

DF is... weird though.  A kitten can give the same leather as a hippo- both the same quantity and quality of hide.  Obviously kitten leather wouldn't be enough to make a single glove, yet alone stop a sword thrust.  But cured rhino hide... My point is that in the upside-down world of DF, ore is often far more abundant than leather.  Also, the time to make metal armor can be roughly equivalent to hte time it takes to make leather.  Thus, the main advantages of leather (cheap, abundant, easy to mass produce) are largely wasted.  Instead, leather becomes this low grade armor you probably won't even bother with for a starter set... because what else are you going to make quivers, backpacks, and waterskins out of?

[Orkel]

I think the best choice would be to buff the current leather armor to be as good as copper, for gameplay reasons.

E: This could maybe be done in the material_template_default.txt at [MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:LEATHER_TEMPLATE] ?

E2: Yep, just did it - working in the arena mode. Seems to be an okay temporary solution in making leather armor a little bit useful.

[Evaris]

Well, one thing I noticed in that video was how the leather was recoiling heavily with each blow.  It was like one of those blow-up clown dolls kids could punch.  The recoil will absorb a large amount of each blows force.  So unless the person is sent flying backwards with each blow, more of each hit will be transferred to the leather.  Also, None of these tests factored in the impact of the blow.  Even if the blade doesn't pierce the leather, it can still bruise the tissue beneath.  Particularly for those axe blows, all the weight of the axe handle/head will be concentrated in a smaller surface.  Heavy plate armor from the high-middle ages wouldn't break under a hammer hit, but the bones beneath it still could. 

From what I understood, the main selling point for leather armor has always been cost.  Leather is obviously a renewable resource that is also a byproduct of the food-industry.  Metal ores and smithing have a much more involved and labor intensive production cycle as well.  The ore has to be mined, smelted, then meticulously hammered over a hot forge for WEEKS to make proper plate armor (or longer, depending on how articulated the joints are).  I don't know the exact times for leather, but its no where near as labor intensive nor expensive to set up. 

It was never meant to be excellent protection, but it does fair better against blunt attacks than edged ones.  Against edged attacks... it is mostly for downgrading serious cuts into superficial ones, or turning slashes into deflected blows.  Its the "better than nothing" protection cheaply mass produced and given to common soldiers.  It should still protect against dog bites and hte like though... I mean a grizzly bear or some giant savage creature could probably tear through it (giant tigers are x32 the size of an adult dwarf), but dingos and snakes might not be able to. 

DF is... weird though.  A kitten can give the same leather as a hippo- both the same quantity and quality of hide.  Obviously kitten leather wouldn't be enough to make a single glove, yet alone stop a sword thrust.  But cured rhino hide... My point is that in the upside-down world of DF, ore is often far more abundant than leather.  Also, the time to make metal armor can be roughly equivalent to hte time it takes to make leather.  Thus, the main advantages of leather (cheap, abundant, easy to mass produce) are largely wasted.  Instead, leather becomes this low grade armor you probably won't even bother with for a starter set... because what else are you going to make quivers, backpacks, and waterskins out of?

Yeah.. one of the main problems with DF is it doesn't take into account different thicknesses with armor.  Like that video was basically showing bison vs cow leather for just raw, untreated leather.

He also did a video with a reproduction 300lb crossbow.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=472fNlfSQYU

That said, most "leather armor" historically used was lamellar made from boiled leather, which gives a lot more relative thickness and hardness vs such untreated leather armor, with 2-3 boiled leather plate layers between you and whatever is hitting you. 

[arbarbonif]

There are several mods that enhance leather.  Both making the returns based on the size of the creature and adding better versions of leather and different hides from different creatures.  I believe Masterwork borrowed both from other existing mods. I'm pretty sure Modest mod and Genesis had the as well.

The better leather is basically making shelled and scaled animals produce leather that is basically the same hardness as a metal, and a hardening process to make it into even better versions.  The more hides version basically turns untreated leather into a kind of fat and then adds a tanning reaction to turn that into quantity based leather hides.