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[Earthquake Damage]

Cost: several years' tithes.  Benefit: being alive to collect the next several years' tithes.

Tithes or death?  Where the hell did that come from?  How is that a meaningful response?  Your example was body armor.

[Arkenstone]

The cost of a really good suit of armor is several years worth of tithes and taxes from the lands of the nobility.  The benefit is that you get to live long enough to collect the taxes next year.

[Earthquake Damage]

The cost of a really good suit of armor is several years worth of tithes and taxes from the lands of the nobility.  The benefit is that you get to live long enough to collect the taxes next year.

Oh.  I failed to make that mental jump.

You're being silly, though.  Death isn't guaranteed in the absence of "really good" armor.  Survival isn't the only incentive to purchase/commission such armor, either.  Status and so forth.

[SanDiego]

Oh, it seems I accidentaly derailed this thread by useless historical fact... But, to jump on the bandwagon (replying to various comments I saw on my way here):
1) Plate armour was primarily designed to offer maximal amount of protection for vital parts of body (head+torso), while leaving maximal possible amount of freedom of movement (arms and legs were less protected, so they could stay mobile), because immobile soldier = dead soldier.
2) People in medieval ages were skinnier because they had nothing to eat. Hell, you could probably beat an average peasant to paste, because you are better fed.
3) Knowledge of forging is not lost, actually we can make much better crafts than medieval smiths as we have superior techniques.
4) French at Crésy lost mainly because they fatally underestimated English and because they were too eager to fight. At Agincourt they lost because they were drowning in several feet of mud.
5) Longbow was superior to first guns in terms of accuracy and range, but crossbows (namely Arbalests, which were even banned by pope) were superior to longbow in some aspects. Mass deployment of guns was marked by Hussite revolution (inacurate, gross guns, but they freaked the hell out of horses) and this also marked the end of knighthood (whole crusade defeated by dirty peasants).
6) Armour was so ridiculously expensive that even some knights couldn't afford it. In more modern times advanced techniques allowe mass deployment of cuirasses and morion helmets, see Spanish pikemen (note that his only real armour is breastplate, morion and gauntlets. Yet theese guys ruled the battlefield):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

7) You didn't need armour to collect your tithes and taxes. As I said, the peasants were so underfed they couldn't resist a small party of trained mercenaries to save their lives.

[Nikov]

Nikov's Bayonet:

As life or death situations quickly eliminate people making bad decisions, prevalent trends in military technology and tactics always represent the best decisions given the situation.

[Arkenstone]

*REDACTED*

[Earthquake Damage]

True, you don't need better armor to survive, but if the choice was yours, would YOU pick the inferior one to wear?

Again, cue cost-benefit analysis.

Some things to consider:  price, quality (how inferior is the "inferior" option with respect to the "superior" one), and benefit/need.  Benefit and/or need addresses concerns like "am I likely to be wearing it when I need it" and "how much protection do I really need."  You assume we're preparing for and expecting to fight in a war, where we can gear up before a battle, but maybe I'm more likely to get in a bar fight.  Am I even a soldier?  Do I expect some assassin to shiv me or shoot me from afar?  Maybe I expect to fight the occasional duel.  Hell, even the weapons I expect to face can have a huge impact on my decision.

[SanDiego]

True, you don't need better armor to survive, but if the choice was yours, would YOU pick the inferior one to wear?  Those Spanish pikemen were either given uniforms, or had limited funds to purchase it (or both).
Also, you say that we have better techniques, but I say this: for how long has modern technology been applied to making medieval armor?  Not nearly as long as medieval technology was.  So while our materials are better, our techniques are not.  While we have the potential to produce something better, that potential isn't realized.

All medieval soldiers bought what they had money for. Uniformed standing armies are matter of 18-19th century. But that's inferior detail.
How can you be so sure about their techniques being so superior to ours? As I (and many others) stated before our techniques in fact are superior. We have better steel because our blast-furnances are highly superior to smelters they had back then, our swords are better, because we know the technique of welding, that was not discovered until late medieval times and it has much improved since. Our swords hold better edge, because we can make the edge of really hard steel, as our metallurgy knowledge and hardening techniques are more advanced. Our swords are more resiliant, as we can make much more flexible steel, thanks to our superior metallurgy. Also, there is a quite good deal of experienced smiths out there, who know they way around the craft. We just do not mass produce swords because we have guns.

[Proteus]

... We just do not mass produce swords because we have guns.

In fact the Japanese did during/before WW2.
They mass produced Katanasto issue them to the officers of the  IJA.

Katanas which were of inferior quality compared to the Katanas made by swordsmiths.

(something that,of course,  doesn´t prove that automatically mass  produced = poor quality. After all it might theoretically be that the poor quality was the result to cost cuts in production and that, with much more expenses per sword produced, mass produced katanas might have been of comparable quality to swords produced by weaponsmiths).   

[Fluff]

I kinda got a little lost trying to follow this thread, but, just so I know, is armour overpowered in DF2010?

[Arkenstone]

Cloth armor is.

[CognitiveDissonance]

I kinda got a little lost trying to follow this thread, but, just so I know, is armour overpowered in DF2010?

Several viewpoints:
- Simply, yes
- No, but attacks are underpowered
- No, because material interactions are strange
- No, but their interaction with skills is

[Seraph]

In fact the Japanese did during/before WW2.
They mass produced Katanasto issue them to the officers of the  IJA.

Katanas which were of inferior quality compared to the Katanas made by swordsmiths.

(something that,of course,  doesn´t prove that automatically mass  produced = poor quality. After all it might theoretically be that the poor quality was the result to cost cuts in production and that, with much more expenses per sword produced, mass produced katanas might have been of comparable quality to swords produced by weaponsmiths).

Just about everything metal the Japanese made before/during WWII was of inferior quality. Japan suffered from serious problems obtaining all the necessary components needed to make high quality steel, and was generally not willing to spend the money needed to overcome the problems that resulted.

[Vester]

Cloth armor is.

Only because teeth are about as soft as skin. Meaning that that wolf's bite attacks? Aren't going through your shirt.

[o_O[WTFace]]

Not nearly as long as medieval technology was.  So while our materials are better, our techniques are not.  While we have the potential to produce something better, that potential isn't realized.

Modern Craftsmanship < Ancient Craftsmanship <<< Modern craftsmachineship

An ancient swordsmith with a hammer could produce a better sword then a modern swordsmith with a hammer, but thats because if we wanted war swords we would use a company with robots and lasers.  We could design a stronger, sharper, more awesome sword given the same materials and then produce ten thousand a day forever.  But of course no one bothers to do that because we use guns and missiles instead, but if we did do it our swords would be better.

Its like saying ancient egyptians had better methods of moving stone blocks by hand then we do.  Its true, but thats because we don't bother with stone blocks and if we did, they would be moved by machines.  So everyone might be arguing the same thing, sortof?   

Meanwhile, in Back On Topic land:
I have conducted some arena science.
21 werewolves vs 21 wereworlves packing cave spider silk clothes
--> clothed werewolves win, with a few surviving (mostly injured)

21 werewolves (grand master all relevant skills) vs 21 clothed werewolves (grand master same skills)
--> clothed werewolves win with 19 surviving most with not too bad injuries. 

21 iron sword dwarves vs 21 iron sword dwarves with silk clothes
--> clothed win with like 3-4 survivors, one bleeding on the floor others injured

21 sworddwarves (grandmaster all relevant skills) vs 21 clothed sworddwarves (grand master same skills)
--> clothed win with maybe 10 survivors, plenty of injuries and missing parts

conclusion: obviously clothes help.  Big sloppy arena fights exaggerate the effect due to the N^2 law but they still have a significant effect on standard combat that increases with skills and decreases with power of weapons used.  Since claws and teeth are hilariously bad, clothes are going to have a big impact on the outcome of any fight involving creatures.  They matter alot less when weapons are involved, because subtracting a little bit of force and slightly blunting an attack still leaves you with a potentially mortal injury. 

Is it overpowered?  Arguably, but I would say not really unless you can actually convince everyone to pile on clothes or even wear more then 3 socks and a cloak... 
TLDR: The issue is that claw/tooth based attacks are just barely able to penetrate dwarf anyway.  Add a cloak and it just isn't getting through.