Will the effectiveness of weapons and armor (damage/defense) still be based on the old material values? I.e. steel 1.3x, iron 1.0x, bronze 0.75x, copper 0.66x and everything else 0.5x.
Nope, and honestly this is one of the things I'm personally most excited for. Weapons and armor now have numbers based on actual real world properties of the material they're made out of. Because its based on multiple properties (elasticity, yield, fracture, edge and density) this moves us away from a tier system of metals (where one is greater than the other) to a more give-and-take system.
I knew most of this already, but to have it stated with all the different variables is nice (I thought it only did density and edge).
*happydance*
Modding next version (once I get it figured out) will be so much fun...
right now dwarves seem to don armor without leather so there is nothing to mitigate blunt trauma.
This is probably still the case, but you could order them to wear leather armor underneath plate using the new uniform interfaces. If you wanted to you could probably mod in a new leather armor (called padding or whatever) and cause it to be thicker to better absorb blunt trauma, I don't know if you could feasibly make it weaker if worn on it's own but, eh, more realistic seeming maybe.
Totally different question, but does anyone know if there is an actual word to describe armor use? Like the skill for properly maintaining and donning armor? I guess there isn't one...
Annoyingly enough, no there doesn't seem to be. Most games don't actually take maintenance of armour and weapons into account, and it is just referred to as 'maintenance' in reality. Most blacksmiths or armor / weaponsmiths tended to repair things as well as make them however, so could probably tie it in that people would take it to a (the?) local smith to have it repaired, rather than doing it themselves. I suppose those that actually used their own equipment could probably look after it by themselves to a small degree, maybe without any related skill, after all, it doesn't take a great deal of know-how to sharpen a sword, or oil a pair of gauntlets, does it?
This would probably remain true in regards to reality, all you need to sharpen a sword is a stone from the ground, unless it's an adamantine sword, in which case you would need to have an adamantine whetstone (essentially just a flat piece of rock or metal, wears away slowly over time).
Pretty easy to introduce, just have your blacksmith able to repair damaged armour and weapons, maybe using a small proportion of metal to do so, maybe up to 1/2 of the items material size, depending on how damaged it is. He could make whetstones from metal, or your mason could make stone ones, to sharpen a weapon you would need to use a whetstone of equal or greater hardness, and although they are not one-use items they would still wear away gradually. They don't need to be huge, so a blacksmith or mason could probably make 5-10 whetstones from one lot of bars or block of stone.
In any case, theres probably a topic somewhere that has already posted all of this stuff and ideas. As they say, "if you think something is a great brand-new idea, chances are someone else does too, or already has."