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[aDwarfNamedUrist]

Clothes and armor should have certain levels of comfort, silk being the most comfortable, plate armor the least comfortable, and so on. Civilian dwarves should factor comfort into their choice of clothing. Nobles could also have a comfort requirement for their clothes(or you could designate their clothes and give those useless elf-brains your least-comfortable clothes). Dwarves who work manual labor jobs should choose durable clothes. Clothes worn more should become more comfortable over time. Comfortable clothes should give happy thoughts, and uncomfortable clothes should give bad thoughts.

[cdru]

Another reason for the fortress leader to kill nobles: Whining about uncomfortable clothing

[Egan_BW]

"You will wear your chainmail with no underclothes and you will like it, Urist!"

[Migrant]

Most of this can be thought of as being covered by the value of materials. Generally comfortable materials (eg silk) is worth more then less comfortable ones (leather) and I think good clothing already gives happy thoughts. I like the idea of dwarves paying more mind to what they're wearing though. In freezing biomes wool would be preferable to silk.

[aDwarfNamedUrist]

Most of this can be thought of as being covered by the value of materials. Generally comfortable materials (eg silk) is worth more then less comfortable ones (leather) and I think good clothing already gives happy thoughts. I like the idea of dwarves paying more mind to what they're wearing though. In freezing biomes wool would be preferable to silk.

Perhaps clothes should have an insulation value besd on the material's specific heat and coverage.

[Taffer]

Clothes and armor should have certain levels of comfort, silk being the most comfortable, plate armor the least comfortable, and so on. Civilian dwarves should factor comfort into their choice of clothing. Nobles could also have a comfort requirement for their clothes(or you could designate their clothes and give those useless elf-brains your least-comfortable clothes). Dwarves who work manual labor jobs should choose durable clothes. Clothes worn more should become more comfortable over time. Comfortable clothes should give happy thoughts, and uncomfortable clothes should give bad thoughts.

Not sure how much sense this makes for armour. Chainmail and plate were both worn with cloth underneath, so any notion of "discomfort" wouldn't make any sense: nobody's naked directly underneath their metal armour. By all accounts armour is surprisingly light and comfortable to wear. It's worth noting that DF's leather armour would be very hard to the touch as it's boiled if it's actually going to be protecting anything, so it would probably need some clothing underneath as well. I really like the idea of unhappy thoughts if armour isn't paired with clothing, but if anything this behaviour shouldn't occur to begin with.

I like your idea for clothing, although "comfort" is still a subjective term. I actually prefer simple wool clothing to silk clothing.

Just my two cents! Take it for what it's worth.

[SixOfSpades]

By all accounts armour is surprisingly light and comfortable to wear.

I agree with most of the thread--except for this. Yes, armor can indeed be "surprisingly" light, IF you were expecting to be weighted to near-immobility while wearing it. But modern folks find it noticeably more difficult to walk around in a 70-pound suit of armor, than to carry that same suit of armor in a backpack--because the equipped armor weighs down parts of their body that aren't used to the weight, and also because moving their arms & legs is the equivalent of repeatedly lifting that weight & setting it down again. When carrying a heavy backpack, all you're doing is holding it at a constant elevation, and your bones do most of that for you. There's a reason why "Armor User" is a DF skill.

Anyway, on clothes.
Dwarves with more "rugged" professions (those that train Strength, Endurance, etc.) should value clothing primarily on its resistance to wear. Comfort is a consideration as well, but to a lesser degree.
For dwarves with lighter jobs, comfort is the primary concern.
Nobles, meanwhile, place cost at a premium, and will choose an expensive garment over a comfortable one every time.
It seems logical to impose a class-based garment code (e.g., the lower castes are forbidden to wear silk, fur, or anything purple, etc.), but this would be more appropriately implemented as a fortress-level (or civ-level) law than a sweeping hardcoded rule for all of DF.

Clothes + armor:
Historically, all forms of armor were worn over clothes, but there's one important type of armor that so far has been overlooked by DF: Quilted armor. The most common (and most important) variety was called the gambeson, and was worn both as protection in its own right (the padding was good at absorbing blunt attacks) and as an intermediate layer underneath mail or plate. Not only did it prevent the chafing that the armor would otherwise cause (even if you were wearing regular clothes under it), but it rounded out the outer armor's relative weakness against blunt weapons.

[Taffer]

I agree with most of the thread--except for this. Yes, armor can indeed be "surprisingly" light, IF you were expecting to be weighted to near-immobility while wearing it. But modern folks find it noticeably more difficult to walk around in a 70-pound suit of armor, than to carry that same suit of armor in a backpack--because the equipped armor weighs down parts of their body that aren't used to the weight, and also because moving their arms & legs is the equivalent of repeatedly lifting that weight & setting it down again. When carrying a heavy backpack, all you're doing is holding it at a constant elevation, and your bones do most of that for you. There's a reason why "Armor User" is a DF skill.

Wasn't sure if I should respond as it's starting to derail the thread, but I thought to respond once as I do think this is on topic. I actually disagree that armor use is a skill, as it's designed to be worn easily. Lindybeige does a video on it here that argues the point far better than I could. Not sure about the 70 pounds either, most sources seem to place it lighter than that: that's on the high end. (1) (2). There's also this video, which discusses how much more modern soldiers have to wear and how he finds wearing plate. I spent years in the military and did a fair amount of walking with full kit, and it weighed more than plate mail. My point is that even at full kit--which is quite heavy when you're not wearing it, even without the backpack--I didn't find it uncomfortable in the same sense or the same scale as the OP was proposing, and with ammo it was heavier than most (non-jousting) plate mail. I could move about easily and it didn't take any skill, nor would I experience any "unhappy thoughts about uncomfortable body armour".

[Alastar]

A medieval knight in combat armour carried less than a modern western soldier in full combat gear.
A lot of uncomfortable, stiff and heavy gear survived... but that's because it was for tournaments rather than battle.
Same how there was a belief medieval people were tiny because a lot of child armour survived (Europeans were rather shorter than today for some time, but that came later in the early modern age.).

Comfort of plate vs. mail is also not so straightforward... plate distributes its weight much better, mail sits heavily on the shoulders. With historical armour+padding, the real problem is actually heat dissipation.

[Migrant]

Perhaps clothes should have an insulation value besd on the material's specific heat and coverage.

I think conductivity and specific heat are very different but I agree that it would be a great feature.

[Madman198237]

Specific heat is the amount of thermal energy (In Joules) required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of material by 1 degree Celsius.
Conductivity is specific heat, in that a more heat-conductive material (Metals are a good example) have much lower specific heats than non-conductive materials.

Example: Water's specific heat is 4.2 J/g or so. Copper's is less than 1 (.8? Don't quote me, I don't remember). Copper takes 1/5 of the energy to be heated the same amount as an equivalent amount of water. Therefore, copper is a more conductive substance than water.

[The Ensorceler]

That seems wrong to me, especially since clothing relies on macrostructures, which can easily change those properties. A plastic shell won't insulate the same way as a plastic wool sweater.

[Migrant]

That seems wrong to me, especially since clothing relies on macrostructures, which can easily change those properties. A plastic shell won't insulate the same way as a plastic wool sweater.

True but if you take the type of clothing into account (in addition to material) you can probably get some semi-realistic values for how well some clothing protects you from the environment. You could have a base value for the design that incorporates coverage and typical thickness of the design and multiply it with a number derived from the material.

[Madman198237]

The specific heat of a material in a macrostructure is of course changed by the presence of other molecules. If there are no other molecules, attributes like surface area may be responsible for changing the speed of energy transfer.

That said, I'm no thermochemist, so don't take what I say as absolutely right (Not that any of you have a problem with saying I'm wrong )

[hatiphnatus]

Gambeson! It's actually a surprisingly effective for the price piece of armor due to sheer amount of cloth used. Hard to cut through, not very easy to stab through (because of thickness) and absorbs blunt trauma well (for an armor).

Please?