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[zagibu]

Plate armor protects much better than maille, because it a) can distribute the force of impact over a large area and b) deflects many blows because they are not coming in perfectly parallel to the armor's surface normal. I'd like to see you take a heavy thrust from a spear in maille and still claim it's not worse than plate afterwards.

[jokermatt999]

Can we please keep this on topic? If not, as mentioned before, at least can we please cite some sources?

[SirHoneyBadger]

Can we please keep this on topic? If not, as mentioned before, at least can we please cite some sources?

I've been studying medieval arms and armour for the past 30+ years. My dad was a professional antique sword appraiser for auction houses, and one of my ancestors was a master armourer for German royalty. My family owns quite a few antique swords, many of which saw real service. I've been raised on this stuff my whole life. I've handled swords, studied their manufacture and design, as well as fencing/swordfighting/medieval military tactics, and studied real world plate armour, in detail, over a period of decades.

I do know of what I speak, but I'll be happy to provide specific sources for any of the information in question.

Although, I'll point out that my "side" of things has already cited sources--the estoc, the bodkin arrow, video footage of real katanas cutting through actual steel plate, etc. I've yet to see anyone offer anything beyond shear speculation about the nature of plate's supposed invulnerability.

If someone wants to put on some medieval plate and let me chop them in half or otherwise exsanguinate them thoroughly enough to prove the point in a final way, I'm not unwilling, but the morality, as well as legality of the experiment, may fairly be called into question. 

[ungulateman]

I'm having trouble resisting the urge to quote that meme about "Katanas / Lightsabers / Underpowered threads are underpowered", with all this "I ordered a legit katana from Japan, cost me 30 grand"-style commentary going around.

Anyway, plate's invulnerability is pretty easily disproven - see the tournament example above.

[Some Internet Guy]

Couldn't you have left it at 'because making common weapons useless against armor nearly everyone wears would suck and break the game'

Why did you have to bring katanas into it

What's the deal with hammers not sending stuff flying anymore, is there still room for that in the current system and the physics is just nerfed or is it gone for good? This is an important queston.

[zagibu]

Noone claims plate armor should be unbreachable. Also, historical references are nice, but you have to remember that DF is a GAME set in a FANTASY UNIVERSE. Realism only applies as far as it enriches gameplay. Although Toady calls DF a fantasy world simulation, this description is actually quite misleading. I don't think he would want to tip the balance towards simulation in spite of gameplay (or if he would, I would stop "using" his simulation). And even if he would do it, what system is he abstracting? A simulation is an abstraction of a more detailed system.

As I've said before, and to what those claiming swords should slice plate have not yet responded: even if your claims are true, you have to hit the armor at the right angle, which is difficult in combat. The same is true for projectiles. Armor is not a plane, it is rounded, and thus the chance of a deflected blow is high. You don't need to have a background in history, come from a family of ancient swordsmiths or consult any sources to understand this, it's basic math and physics. If anyone wants to seriously dispute this, do it in a new thread. This is my thread, and it is about DF, not about the real world.

What's the deal with hammers not sending stuff flying anymore, is there still room for that in the current system and the physics is just nerfed or is it gone for good? This is an important queston.

It's possible, try platinum hammers. The problem is that the raws contain lots of default values, and that the force of impact doesn't seem to be correctly calculated yet.

[Shoku]

Noone claims plate armor should be unbreachable. Also, historical references are nice, but you have to remember that DF is a GAME set in a FANTASY UNIVERSE. Realism only applies as far as it enriches gameplay. Although Toady calls DF a fantasy world simulation, this description is actually quite misleading. I don't think he would want to tip the balance towards simulation in spite of gameplay (or if he would, I would stop "using" his simulation). And even if he would do it, what system is he abstracting? A simulation is an abstraction of a more detailed system.

As I've said before, and to what those claiming swords should slice plate have not yet responded: even if your claims are true, you have to hit the armor at the right angle, which is difficult in combat. The same is true for projectiles. Armor is not a plane, it is rounded, and thus the chance of a deflected blow is high. You don't need to have a background in history, come from a family of ancient swordsmiths or consult any sources to understand this, it's basic math and physics. If anyone wants to seriously dispute this, do it in a new thread. This is my thread, and it is about DF, not about the real world.

What's the deal with hammers not sending stuff flying anymore, is there still room for that in the current system and the physics is just nerfed or is it gone for good? This is an important queston.

It's possible, try platinum hammers. The problem is that the raws contain lots of default values, and that the force of impact doesn't seem to be correctly calculated yet.

So then what is a good frequency for those types of blows and about how much higher should that be when a legendary weapon user it trying vs someone dabbling in all of the skills that make you maneuverable in combat while wearing plate? Right now it looks like it is 0% with a 0% boost, right?

[jokermatt999]

Yeah, I don't mean to say I disbelieve either side here, because I know nothing about weaponry or armor whatsoever, I just think that arguments like these are pointless without examples or sources. You may be correct, and damn sure that you are too, but I doubt you'll convince the other side of that without some evidence. Also, I've noticed that unsourced arguments have a tendency to get nastier than sourced ones, because it turns into personal attacks rather than examination of the claims and sources.

Well, that was waaay offtopic, so I oughta say something remotely pertaining to it. What does everyone think of the current balance? What is most in need of fixing? Would you rather have the system go for realism even it winds up biased towards one weapon or those in armor, or would you prefer a more balanced, but unrealistic system.

[zagibu]

Honestly, I would ditch the "realistic" material properties. It's too complicated for proper balancing.

But Toady will most certainly not do this, so if you keep the material system, you might want to do something like this (i'm going to use physical terms very sloppily):

Combat skills should determine on what bodypart a hit falls, strike quality (full overhead swing or desperate backhand slash), and hit quality (glance or bull's eye). Obviously, dodging, blocking and parrying are not interesting here, since we are concerned with armor. Then the "energy" of the blow should be calculated using the strength of the attacker, type of attack (swings are accelerated on a longer path than stabs and thus have more "energy"), strike quality and weapon data (material mass and volume). Now, this "energy" should be fed to the final formula that calculates "effect", and it should take hit quality, area of effect of the weapon, armor type, quality and material as parameters. Area of effect should be used twice, first along with hit quality and armor type to diminish the "energy" (a spear point is more easily deflected than a hammer head), then again to scale the remaining "energy" (calculate pressure). Then use armor quality and material to check whether it breaks, bends or completely absorbs the blow. Finally, use the "effect" to do the wound calculations.

[Proteus]

... Would you rather have the system go for realism even it winds up biased towards one weapon or those in armor...

Yes.
Fortunately it doesn´t seem to be totally one sided.
Different RL weapons are differently good against armored and unarmored targets...
and DF has enough of both types of enemies

[VerdantSF]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[SirHoneyBadger]

The point is that a system based on (and that's based, not dictated by) reality is always going to be preferred to an ass-pull system.

From what I've seen, ToadyOne is atleast heavily leaning towards more and more realism, not away from it. And that's good for everyone, because the fact is, there were no perfect weapons, armour, tactics, etc. in the middle ages.

This whole "plate is uber" issue doesn't take into account that DF uses a materials-based system. If you make plate arbitrarily and objectively that wonderful, then why not just forge a bunch of copper plate? Why develope steel at all? Or hunt for HFS metal?

Everything had it's strengths and weaknesses, and there were always a great many variables to consider, no matter who you were, or even how much money you had. That's why they are called "medieval", as opposed to "modern"--because weapon systems of the 1400's continued to be developed and improved, and will continue to be many years from now.

They weren't perfect, and we don't use them anymore. That's easy enough for anyone to understand, with or without a background in structural engineering.

Plate, itself, evolved over time. The design changed. Many times. Is that hard for anyone to understand?

Masterwork steel plate should be extremely good protection, should make the dwarf wearing it hard to stop on the battlefield. I'm all for that. Masterwork steel plate isn't easy to manufacture, and it should give appropriate benefits. But not unrealistic benefits, even against piercing weapons. Otherwise, you'd only ever need to forge a single suit of armour.

There's no good reason to make a bunch of ridiculous, non-fact-based guesses on what was what. If something works better for game balancing, and has a real benefit to gameplay, then go for it, but making an uber fantasy version of plate, just because, just makes the game simplistic, and a lot less interesting. Plate was better protection than maille, which was better than leather, which was better than nothing.

That's just not the whole entire argument. This isn't D&D, afterall, and I think DF should strive to be a little deeper than that. 

[Vester]

I'm just gonna pop back in and say that a knight in full armor was basically the medieval version of a tank, especially before they developed weapons to properly counter heavy armor (read - hundreds upon hundreds of longbowmen will seriously ruin your day). There's a reason those cavalry charges were so devastating back in the day (the other reason was that a horse is a huge animal roughly three to four times the weight of your average peasant conscript.)

[ZeroGravitas]

So uh to put the thread back on topic...

any insight into how protective the artifact lead greaves my armorsmith just made are?

[ungulateman]

Reasonably so. Lead is hard to break or breach, and artifact = massive bonus. Your military's legs should be fine.