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[Splint]

Studded armor isn't a real thing.  Made up RPG nonsense (as is leather armor, actually).

This deserves to be a bit more specific. Soft leather, the kind used for most garments, won't do jack against any kind of weapon, and is only moderately useful to ward off animals with small claws & teeth, and plants with smallish thorns. But boiled leather (boiled in wax, usually), and other types of thick, hardened leather (think boots & saddles), would provide decent protection in combat--definitely less than an equivalent piece of plate armor, but it would at least be reasonably effective. Historically, it was always cut into small segments, ostensibly for the purposes of flexibility, though it's also sometimes done on armor pieces that are themselves quite rigid.

Yes, studded armor is essentially BS. The only possible benefit I can think of is that if a slashing weapon is sliding over the surface of the armor, the stud can catch the blade and keep it there--as opposed to letting the weapon continue on, possibly striking some part of you that isn't armored.

Useful link, featuring some thoughts from scholagladiatoria: https://www.quora.com/Did-leather-armor-ever-exist

Long story short, I think "soft" armor like gambesons, quilted armor, and boiled leather would be more useful for civilians, while your actual warriors use the "real" stuff (with a gambeson underneath, ideally). High boots, vambraces, and a breastplate of boiled leather might be cumbersome, but an Herbalist or whatever would feel a lot better wearing them when there are dingoes wandering through the area.

Historically, some cultures had armor made out of bark/wood, and even paper.

If memory serves, Masterwork actually addressed this via making leather upgradable into a hardened variant that provided protection comparable to copper armor. Haberdasher also addresses cloth armors the same way, just by using cloth to make a lower end metal grade armor. Of course the latter also allows you to use cloth to make steel-grade armors at great material expense, but hey. I think that's fair.

So it is stuff that's modable, assuming you know what you're doing. I think the whole point of this suggestion is to implement such armors as a vanilla feature that plays nice with everything without adding new materials.

Plus this whole ide would mostly benefit the elves 9and similarly equipped modded races,) animal man tribes, maybe kobolds, and a player in a shockingly resource poor area in terms of metals (and in better situated ones, offer a somewhat lighter alternative to equip marksmen with, since I think encumbrance affects rate of fire still.)

Might be helpful to have alternatives like quilted armor for worlds that have not a lot of metal in them.

All this is making me wish I had thought to install haberdasher for Battlejudge.... I'd be having such an easier time equipping my army...

[Miles_Umbrae]

Studded armour was just an example of how if we are able to decorate stuff with rings and spikes, then why can't we also improve by adding onto them?

[anewaname]

DF doesn't have stats like edge defence or blunt defence, it has physical properties of the material and the item. Not sure if it simulates thickness in terms of armour the same way it does for tissue layers, but if it does that's a pretty important facet of gambesons.

I did some weight comparisons and suspect that LAYER_SIZE represents thickness for armor. I would be more sure if I found the relative size of dwarf body parts in the raws for the UB/LB_STEPs, but didn't spend much time on that.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The weight for each item was presumed to be based on the thickness multiplied by the area covered (which could include the area of the body part plus the area of the UB/LB_STEP body parts), so I did the easy comparisons first where the items had similar area coverage. The helm:cap weight ratio was 6:1, which matched the 2:1 Coverage ratio multiplied by 3:1 Size ratio. The weight comparison for robe:dress is 2:1, which matched the 1:1 Coverage ratio multiplied by 2:1 Size ratio. Those were the easy comparisons, but the numbers for vest:tunic:leather_armor seemed about right. The items were made for elephant men for the larger numbers, and each comparison was of done with the same materials.

So, gambesons from LAYER_SIZE?

[SixOfSpades]

Studded armour was just an example of how if we are able to decorate stuff with rings and spikes, then why can't we also improve by adding onto them?

Things like spiked helms and shields do have clear potential for flavor, and even some actual function, but personally I think that angle would better be implemented as a difference between cultures (each civ gets procedurally assigned its own unique style of helmet, each of which has its own pluses & minuses but does basically the same job), than as "upgrades" that all civs can do (It's a 3-step process to add the spike, cheek-guards, and aventail, after which you've got the exact same fully-upgraded helmet that you had in your last game--and the one before that, and the one before that).

[Miles_Umbrae]

Studded armour was just an example of how if we are able to decorate stuff with rings and spikes, then why can't we also improve by adding onto them?

Things like spiked helms and shields do have clear potential for flavor, and even some actual function, but personally I think that angle would better be implemented as a difference between cultures (each civ gets procedurally assigned its own unique style of helmet, each of which has its own pluses & minuses but does basically the same job), than as "upgrades" that all civs can do (It's a 3-step process to add the spike, cheek-guards, and aventail, after which you've got the exact same fully-upgraded helmet that you had in your last game--and the one before that, and the one before that).

I'm not talking about spikes, horns, feathers and other decorative details.
I'm pointing out that if it is possible now to have weapons and armour decorated, then why can't they be either repaired or enhanced/improved, for example by adding rings or scales to leather armour, or cloth-padding to plate armour.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Studded armour was just an example of how if we are able to decorate stuff with rings and spikes, then why can't we also improve by adding onto them?

Things like spiked helms and shields do have clear potential for flavor, and even some actual function, but personally I think that angle would better be implemented as a difference between cultures (each civ gets procedurally assigned its own unique style of helmet, each of which has its own pluses & minuses but does basically the same job), than as "upgrades" that all civs can do (It's a 3-step process to add the spike, cheek-guards, and aventail, after which you've got the exact same fully-upgraded helmet that you had in your last game--and the one before that, and the one before that).

I'm not talking about spikes, horns, feathers and other decorative details.
I'm pointing out that if it is possible now to have weapons and armour decorated, then why can't they be either repaired or enhanced/improved, for example by adding rings or scales to leather armour, or cloth-padding to plate armour.

Did somebody say this shouldn't be possible? I don't think anyone disagrees with you. It's just hard to see the link between that and plant/silk based armour construction.

[Miles_Umbrae]

Studded armour was just an example of how if we are able to decorate stuff with rings and spikes, then why can't we also improve by adding onto them?

Things like spiked helms and shields do have clear potential for flavor, and even some actual function, but personally I think that angle would better be implemented as a difference between cultures (each civ gets procedurally assigned its own unique style of helmet, each of which has its own pluses & minuses but does basically the same job), than as "upgrades" that all civs can do (It's a 3-step process to add the spike, cheek-guards, and aventail, after which you've got the exact same fully-upgraded helmet that you had in your last game--and the one before that, and the one before that).

I'm not talking about spikes, horns, feathers and other decorative details.
I'm pointing out that if it is possible now to have weapons and armour decorated, then why can't they be either repaired or enhanced/improved, for example by adding rings or scales to leather armour, or cloth-padding to plate armour.

Did somebody say this shouldn't be possible? I don't think anyone disagrees with you. It's just hard to see the link between that and plant/silk based armour construction.

I am clarifying my point to two people who misunderstood me.
AceSV thought I was only talking about making it possible to create studded armour.
And SixOfSpades thought I was talking about implementing more weapon and armour specific decorations.

[Halnoth]

I wish there was a better way to model the benefits of cloth armor vs metal armor.

As is, any material that is not equivalent to weapons grade metal will not stand up to metal weapons.

So, I had to settle for a somewhat resource intense cloth industry to balance haberdasher.

I'm glad some people are enjoying it.

[AceSV]

I remember when I was working on new kinds of wood for a mod, translating Janka Hardness into DF material stats, Putnam mentioned that the DF engine does not handle anisotropic (non metal) materials well.  So the problem is not just that cloth is under represented, the entire physics engine just doesn't use it correctly. 

[SixOfSpades]

SixOfSpades thought I was talking about implementing more weapon and armour specific decorations.

Kind of. Along with the "cultural flavor" I mentioned earlier, I was also thinking about the suggested Innovations plan, which would use the existing Strange Mood mechanic to "invent" various new technologies--because the player doesn't choose what new techs get "researched", every fort you play will have a different feel. While I am in favor of being able to add functional augments to wind up with things like Ring Mail and "true" Scale Mail, I'm a bit worried that if all of these possible improvements are to be made available in every fort, that could hurt the game's replay factor a bit.

What I'm saying is, yeah, players should definitely have options (especially if their access to appropriate metals is limited), I just don't think they should all have the SAME options.

. . . why can't they be either repaired or enhanced/improved

I've long supported the idea of a Tinker skill, which pertains to sharpening and repairing metal goods, rather than simply making them. Each of the Smithing labors would also activate the Tinker labor for that specific type of metal item.

[Anandar]

Keep in mind, in medieval times most people couldn't afford much more than a dagger or knife, and when they could get swords they wouldn't be all that sharp or well made, rulers would take the best smiths, crafters and artisans of the trades and use their skills to arm the armies  and their guards, given that leather armours were a fairly decent defence against most brigands, thieves and highway robbers.... and with the magic arc cloth armours would be in turn enhanced with magic properties increasing effectiveness while remaining light for the wearers agility and speed...

[Egan_BW]

I recall a lindybiege talking about how swords were actually pretty damn cheap but am too lazy to go find it~

[catoblepas]

Kind of. Along with the "cultural flavor" I mentioned earlier, I was also thinking about the suggested Innovations plan, which would use the existing Strange Mood mechanic to "invent" various new technologies--because the player doesn't choose what new techs get "researched", every fort you play will have a different feel. While I am in favor of being able to add functional augments to wind up with things like Ring Mail and "true" Scale Mail, I'm a bit worried that if all of these possible improvements are to be made available in every fort, that could hurt the game's replay factor a bit.

One of the things I love about strange moods is the chance for dwarves to make unusual weapons and armor they can't normally make, so this would be very cool. Even if these 'experimental armors aren't better than what dwarves normally produce (though I imagine the artifact modifier+magic effects will mitigate those shortcomings somewhat) so you could get experimental oddities like 'ringmail'

I've long supported the idea of a Tinker skill, which pertains to sharpening and repairing metal goods, rather than simply making them. Each of the Smithing labors would also activate the Tinker labor for that specific type of metal item.

I don't think we need yet another skill-we already have quite the bloat of (oftentimes overlapping)skills already. I think that to repair an item, the same labor that is used to create it should be used. So a Weaponsmith would be faster at repairing a sword based o ntheir weaponsmithing skill.

On the note of ahistoricality of stuff like ringmail and studded armor being discussed here, one should always try to keep an open mind! Humans have been experimenting for millennia with arms and armor, and you should never wholly discount the existence of stuff like the aformentioned ringmail-which actually pops up a few places in history in various forms across a wide range...In Europe there's 'eyelet armor'-metal eyelets densely sewn together to form sheets armor. There are surviving examples of armor made from chinese coins stitched to textile backing from both the Pacific Northwest and from Japan, and I have seen an example from Sudan of a breastplate sewn with Iron rings. People experiment a lot. some of it works out pretty well, some...not so much.

I really like the idea of Dwarves 'experimenting' with strange moods for new armor types. Perhaps that could happen in worldgen too for humans/goblins etc.

Gambesons/padded armor would be a good idea for somethign that could be in (in one form or antoher) by default IMO

[SixOfSpades]

I don't think we need yet another skill-we already have quite the bloat of (oftentimes overlapping)skills already. I think that to repair an item, the same labor that is used to create it should be used. So a Weaponsmith would be faster at repairing a sword based o ntheir weaponsmithing skill.

My desire for a separate skill stems primarily from the real-world presence of actual tinkers, who had the resources to perform routine maintenance & repair, but not the actual production, of metal goods. If we're going to incorporate more basic realism into the game (a copper pick should be nowhere near as effective as a steel one), certain mechanisms will have to be implemented (softer tools will need repair far more often), and a Tinker labor is the perfect counter to that. In my opinion.

In Europe there's 'eyelet armor'-metal eyelets densely sewn together to form sheets armor. There are surviving examples of armor made from chinese coins stitched to textile backing from both the Pacific Northwest and from Japan, and I have seen an example from Sudan of a breastplate sewn with Iron rings. People experiment a lot.

Turtle shells, Giant Beetle chitin, etc.


Back on the subject of gambesons, the caverns are a vast source of potential weirdness. The trees alone could be quite interesting: Out of the several types, only nether-cap and glumprong have any unique properties, leaving all of the others available. Suppose the wood of fungiwood trees, for instance, was tough, flexible, and spongy to the feel: Rather weak against sharp blades, but blunt impacts would be largely absorbed and negated, making a fungiwood gambeson excellent for wearing under chainmail--even if it's noticeably stiffer than a cloth/leather one.