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[Ulfgard]

As someone who's no stranger to hardware malfunctions or how frustrating and disheartening they can be (especially if they should cause you to lose any significant advancement in your work), I'm sorry to hear of your troubles and especially grateful that you're keeping at it, Stal.

Best of luck to you.

[Stalhansch]

Due to future plans for expanding on my armoury packs I've decided to move my stone-age mod over to this thread.

[Stalhansch]

Alright, first update to Armoury in a while. At this point I think Armoury is about done. I've run dry on how else I could improve it without taking it in a different direction entirely. I'll probably be leaving it alone unless someone finds some flaws or provides feedback as to what else I could do to improve it further.

I'll be looking into a new era/culture to start a pack for since the stone-age idea spiraled into something much larger than I originally intended for it to be.

[cyberTripping]

How nicely would this mod play with Jake's Black Powder Firearms, would you know?

[Stalhansch]

How nicely would this mod play with Jake's Black Powder Firearms, would you know?

I have no prior experience with the mod, but having looked at its files I can tell you that the guns have incredibly high stats and my armours would do absolutely nothing to protect from them.

Other than that there should be no file conflicts, save for having to manually edit the entity file.

[Stalhansch]

Updated to 43.05 with an array of changes accumulated over the last year. Fun times.

Fortress mode hasn't been extensively tested, but I can't imagine there being any major issues present.

[Immortal-D]

Awesome!   Your armory pack is amongst the handful of of mods that I know I can just drop into my vanilla game without incident.  Amazing how a little variety in armaments adds so much.  Plus in all my time playing, the mod just feels balanced, moreso than any other similar addition.

[PuddingDeity]

I've noticed an odd tendency for swords to only cause bruising through gambesons during some arena testing. Originally I thought it might have been because I'd been tweaking the balance a bit to get something closer to my own personal preferences but I loaded up the arena with a totally vanilla install of the mod as well and sure enough, all I seem to be doing against a target wearing a gambeson is bruising them. My testing isn't particularly extensive though, so I can't say exactly what all weapons it applies to or if it applies to all soft garments. I can specifically say it does not apply to tunics though.

To be more specific I tested using a single human using a long steel arming sword that was adept in all skills against a single human wearing a cotton gambeson that was an adept armor user. After a number of strikes (Which I didn't think to count) I saw no damage more significant than bruising. I then conducted a test which was identical except that the unarmed combatant was wearing a cotton tunic and saw consistently severe damage including an instant death blow.

[Splint]

I've noticed an odd tendency for swords to only cause bruising through gambesons during some arena testing. Originally I thought it might have been because I'd been tweaking the balance a bit to get something closer to my own personal preferences but I loaded up the arena with a totally vanilla install of the mod as well and sure enough, all I seem to be doing against a target wearing a gambeson is bruising them. My testing isn't particularly extensive though, so I can't say exactly what all weapons it applies to or if it applies to all soft garments. I can specifically say it does not apply to tunics though.

To be more specific I tested using a single human using a long steel arming sword that was adept in all skills against a single human wearing a cotton gambeson that was an adept armor user. After a number of strikes (Which I didn't think to count) I saw no damage more significant than bruising. I then conducted a test which was identical except that the unarmed combatant was wearing a cotton tunic and saw consistently severe damage including an instant death blow.

Gambesons are a sort of semi-rigid cloth armor, and in historic contexts, was likely the armor of choice for the common foot soldier and poorer men-at-arms/mercenaries. It probably needed frequent replacement, as it was made from substantially cheaper cloth, but it was also specifically designed to turn aside blows and absorb some of the impact of incoming weapons (some were also designed to have small lengths of metal included on the outside of the arms to further protect them, as well as places to attach wooden, leather, or metal disks to protect the elbows and shoulders a little better.)

And, since the casualty rates of common footmen from what can be gathered was much lower than would be suspected given thier supposed lack of protection, we can assume it was more than sufficient in most cases, and probably better to use in places experiencing abnormally warm weather (easier to strip down after a patrol compared to a knight's stereotypical plate armor, and  likely breathed a little better than, y'know, metal.)

As such, it seems Stalhansche has modeled its effectiveness pretty well in my book.

[PuddingDeity]

I am aware that Gambesons were a rigid form of armor and thus might have been more effective than I was aware of, I checked through the thread before posting to see if anyone else had pointed out the seemingly strange effectiveness of gambesons given their material.

The gambeson is a slightly bulkier variant of cloth armour. They would only be useful against daggers and the like, and even then you would be better off with leather armour.

However statements such as the one above led me to believe that, accurate or not, it was not intended for gambesons to be so effective in the mod and that perhaps something was missed in testing somewhere. If that's not the case then my previous post may simply be ignored because I was in no way suggesting that the intended balance be changed, I simply thought that this was not a part of the intended balance in the first place and my only intention was to call attention to what I assumed was a bug.

[Grimlocke]

Gambesons were fairly decent protection, not actually rigid though. Its layered cloth, sometimes with horsehair in between, and usually made so that it still has flexibility. It will turn aside some cuts, lower velocity projectiles, and sometimes stabs. The padding also helps spread out impact from blunt weapons somewhat.

Wearing only a gambeson for body protection was most common in the high middle ages, where the bulk of armies was made up out of levied peasants, but considerably rarer in the late middle ages when armor was cheaper, and people were richer.

Which was because gambesons and such are not as good as metal armor, be it mail or plate. Gambesons can be cut through with with enough force, and stabbed/shot through even easier. It being invulnerable to swords is not quite right. It is however really kind of a pain to balance properly, as dwarf physics make it either entirely useless against sharp things, or completely invulnerable.

[Splint]

I called it semi-rigid because pictures I've seen give the impression of it having considerably less flexibility away from the joints. After all, it's not like you're wearing a regular long-sleeved shirt. Plus I'd also wager untreated leather armor would be about as effective: Poorly aimed shots with almost anything would bounce right off it essentially, where a normal shirt in-game would likely leave you with a shallow cut at best and deep gashes at worst. Granted, I base that off of adventure mode showing many attacks as not quite able to land solidly in some manner apart from body shots, presumably because of body positioning.

Course, stabbing through I would imagine as actually being, well, painfully easy. Some cloth can catch and turn a blade pretty easy, but I don't think it can quite catch a stabbing so well... Unless of course Urist meant for that spearpoint to be imbedded in his ribs, in which case it did a stellar job.

That being said, it probably needs way more frequent replacement being made of cloth, since leather armors in my experience tend to wear out quickly as well with frequent fighting, be it against people or critters, which could be seen as a balance to it - you may go through a handful of suits of metal armor every decade or two, and burn through leather and cloth armors on a seasonal basis, regardless of how effective either actually is.

I'd definitely say if it isn't in the mod, some kind of treated leather armor would be a good upgrade from gambesons and basic leather armor, since if memory serves stuff like that was pretty highly valued because it was easier to make than metal stuff but more effective than stuff like gambesons.

[Grimlocke]

Not entirely sure what you mean by untreated and treated leather, but regular tanned leather is pretty useless for protection.

The type of 'leather armor' that was actually used was boiled leather, made through a different process than tanning. It was a hard substance, a bit like plastic. It would crack and could be run through but provided some protection from cuts and, due to the rigid form, would mitigate some blunt force. It did not really do anything to cushion blows the way cloth armor did though.
It was made into cuirasses, and possibly limb and head protection (evidence is a bit skimpy on that) and usually worn as an addition to mail armor. Some cultures also made a sort lamellar armor out of it. It seems to have no longer been used around the same time plate armor started to pick up development. I recall there were some indications the boiled leather would easily wear and crack over time which may have made it expensive due to frequent replacement, and would explain why commoners aren't really depicted wearing it.

And from various tests I have read/seen, gambesons did offer some resistance to stabs, especially if its from a broad point or if the thrust does not hit at a dead angle.

Another thing to note is that padded or leather armor that might not always have completely turned a blow, but might still have turned a fatal hit into a survivable one. Medieval medicine was not great, but shallow wounds could be treated whereas organ damage and dismemberment were a lot harder.

For realistic-ish gameplay, you could give the leather armor a higher resistance edged attacks, and cloth some advantage against blunt damage.

[Splint]

I was indeed referring to boiled leather. I was referring to treated and untreated as regular leather in the game vs something that was produced to harden it somewhat against attack, as opposed to being used to make clothes. An upgrade from basic leather if you will.

Base leather: barely any protection besides from training accidents (I've found you need at least leather body and head armor to avoid sparring fatalities due to grapples.)

Gambesons: Better than using base leather to make armor, but still not very good. Good chance to completely stop poorly aimed strikes and wood or silver edged weapons. Possibly include fire-hardened wood for elves as possible counter to this type of armor (making it still risky to use a mass levy with simple "hide" and cloth armor against them.)

Upgraded leather: Maybe copper grade in terms of effectiveness; basically useless against  good and proper metals like iron and bronze, but will provide solid protection from wood or silver edged weapons, teeth, some blunt attacks, and claws. Helmets, body armor, and bracers/shin guards. In the absence of any other usable metals and poor goblinite harvests, this would ensure at least a copper level set of armor available, albeit at an investment in leather and whatever is used to upgrade it (tallow, water barrels, whatever.) In effect, a serviceable stopgap until better gear is available.

At least that's how I'd view its effectiveness for game purposes, or more, how I think it could be done, if that makes sense.

[Kyubee]

Yo Stal, mind if I copy a few of your weapons for my mod? I'll give credit of course, i'm not a monster, theyre just peices of equipment specifically I wanna give some civs in my mod, but I don't wanna have to overwrite the existing vanilla files to keep my own mod modular.