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[soup_alex]

Don't know about armor, but clothing is sure as heck overpowered in the current version.

Amen. The improvement in protection from attacks offered by, say, a pig tail tunic (when compared to total nudity), is quite dramatic.

[Seraph]

Remember what the Wikipedia article said?  Well-made medieval armor weighs LESS THAN MODERN COMBAT ARMOR.

If you had checked the source of the claim on wikipedia you might have noted that page 119 of "Warrior Race: A History of the British at War " says nothing about the weight of a suit of armor, rather it talks about the weight of a lance. Further more, page 122 of the same book gives the weight as 60lbs. Page 151 of "The art of war in the Western world" by Archer Jones giuves the weight of a suit of plate armor at 70lbs. I've seen sources (Not energetic enough to dig the books out of the garage) that gave full suits of jousting armor at over 100lbs, Jousting armor was useless in a real fight (among other things the helmet was bolted to the brestplate so you couldn't move your head, but you also didn't have to worry about your neck being broken) but it's probably the source of Mark Twain's often repeated "knight loaded onto a horse by a crane" idea.

[Hyndis]

Remember what the Wikipedia article said?  Well-made medieval armor weighs LESS THAN MODERN COMBAT ARMOR.

If you had checked the source of the claim on wikipedia you might have noted that page 119 of "Warrior Race: A History of the British at War " says nothing about the weight of a suit of armor, rather it talks about the weight of a lance. Further more, page 122 of the same book gives the weight as 60lbs. Page 151 of "The art of war in the Western world" by Archer Jones giuves the weight of a suit of plate armor at 70lbs. I've seen sources (Not energetic enough to dig the books out of the garage) that gave full suits of jousting armor at over 100lbs, Jousting armor was useless in a real fight (among other things the helmet was bolted to the brestplate so you couldn't move your head, but you also didn't have to worry about your neck being broken) but it's probably the source of Mark Twain's often repeated "knight loaded onto a horse by a crane" idea.

This, too, is the more common figure I've heard.

Soldiers throughout time have worn about 60-80lbs of gear, from Roman legionaries to medieval knights even to soldiers today.

Why? Because a soldier needs a lot of stuff to do his job. Armor, weapons, supplies, tools, and a backup in case a weapon breaks. A person can really only carry about that much weight before they're too slowed down by the weight to be effective. If they can, they'll set their pack down before going into battle, but only if the battle is not mobile at all, such as they're defending a position, but thats still risky because if they have to move and can't pick up their supplies again, they're probably screwed at that point.

Used to be most of that weight was in the armor and weapons, and squires hauled around the other supplies. These days the armor is much lighter, but soldiers now carry their own supplies on their backs.

Take a look at any picture of a US soldier, such as in Iraq or Afganistan. They carry around a ton of stuff in addition to their rifle.

[Sphalerite]

The problem is not that armor is overpowered.  The problem is that in the material raws tooth, bone, horn, and nail all have the same strength and hardness values as skin.  Which is why even silk clothing will block animal attacks, since at the moment most animals are just gumming you and hitting you with nerf horns and claws.

[Kazang]

Full modern combat gear and pack is around 60-70lb.  Soldiers don't fight in all that gear though.

Modern ceramic armour is not that heavy, compared to plate armour.  You will certainly notice it but it's akin to the weight of a large dinner plate strapped to each part of your body.


But anyway yeah clothing/armour is a bit messed up, plate armour was good but you still should get hurt.  A GCS should be able to crush a dwarf with it's weight alone, forget piercing armour and I doubt they would be smart enough to aim for the joins in the plates anyway.  If your going for realism anyway.

[riznar]

The problem is not that armor is overpowered.  The problem is that in the material raws tooth, bone, horn, and nail all have the same strength and hardness values as skin.  Which is why even silk clothing will block animal attacks, since at the moment most animals are just gumming you and hitting you with nerf horns and claws.

Silk clothing should probably offer the best protection besides adamantine clothing.

Also there should be a silk armor reaction.

[Intelligent Shade of Blue]

You'd have to include a soldier's pack, firearm, and other gear to get close to (or maybe exceed) the weight of a suit of plate armor. This certainly is somewhat due to the fact that modern body armor doesn't have nearly as much coverage as full plate (no coverage for arms, legs, or feet), but c'mon - they're made out of kevlar and ceramics, not steel. Most helmets used by US soldiers weigh around 3 lbs, while body armor systems like the IOTV and MTV weigh around 30-35 lbs in size medium.

Anyways, I think the problem with silk is that Toady used its actual tensile strength (which is admittedly high), but there's probably not enough checking for how thin a piece of clothing is and how much energy would transfer through.

[Proteus]

Jep, while Silk might not be able to be cut by an axe/sword/dagger ,
it probably still (RL) wouldn´t offer any protection to it...
the silk of the clothes would just wrap around the blade,
with silk+blade still being thin enoughto cut through the underlying flesh.

Not to mention piercing weapons (like arrows), which just might pass through the silk fabric by pushing the silk strands aside 

[Intelligent Shade of Blue]

Jep, while Silk might not be able to be cut by an axe/sword/dagger ,
it probably still (RL) wouldn´t offer any protection to it...
the silk of the clothes would just wrap around the blade,
with silk+blade still being thin enoughto cut through the underlying flesh.

Not to mention piercing weapons (like arrows), which just might pass through the silk fabric by pushing the silk strands aside

Yep, basically what I was thinking. It's a bit hard to accurately model items composed of individual threads woven together, so clothing probably functions like a solid layer, which in turn would make silk clothes quite impervious.

[Arkenstone]

*REDACTED*

[wrajjt]

a lot of knowledge has been lost since then,

Just... no. Why do a lot of people seem to belive this? The human race as a whole does not forget, not nowadays, and while there is most probably less master smiths of the traditional ways today, the knowledge sure as hell isn't lost. Steel today is alot stronger than it was 300 years ago, due to better ways of tempering and folding it, amongst many things.

[Hyndis]

Some things are forgotten over time.

Recent article on the subject:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18533_the-6-most-important-things-humanity-just-plain-forgot.html

[soup_alex]

a lot of knowledge has been lost since then,

Just... no. Why do a lot of people seem to belive this? The human race as a whole does not forget, not nowadays, and while there is most probably less master smiths of the traditional ways today, the knowledge sure as hell isn't lost. Steel today is alot stronger than it was 300 years ago, due to better ways of tempering and folding it, amongst many things.

All it takes is for the information to be lost or destroyed, which is a more real risk than you might imagine. It's difficult to find a school now that teaches students how to correctly calibrate and maintain a tape machine, so there are few people learning, and there are even fewer companies that still make such machines (and most that did are out of business, or have effectively written-off their "obsolete" brands). Say if in the future all those engineers that are alive today are dead, and haven't passed on their knowledge of a given machine's workings to another knowledge receptacle of some sort (a book, a human), then that knowledge will have been "lost" (although this is admittedly a bad example; the laws of electricity don't appear that they'll change any time soon, and a clever engineer might with some effort write a new manual "from scratch"). Digital storage machines are even less reliable; once they go out of fashion (as has the reel machine) and are no longer in production, and the copyright holders for the relevant proprietary codecs die a death (and take said codecs with them), these machines and the associated data will be fit for nothing but the landfill.

Also, the Great Library.

Also, when did this stop being a discussion about balancing armour in DF?

[123BIG]

If anybody is interested i might post some combat logs for reference.

when did this stop being a discussion about balancing armour in DF?

After about 3 posts 
It seems the issue is not in strong armor but in weak "natural" attacks, kinda like a reverse carp. We will just have to wait and see what Toady does with it in the upcoming patches and fixes, so there isnt a lot more to talk about. Might as well discuss medieval combat and realism vs fantasy.

[Qwernt]

Jep, while Silk might not be able to be cut by an axe/sword/dagger ,
it probably still (RL) wouldn´t offer any protection to it...
the silk of the clothes would just wrap around the blade,
with silk+blade still being thin enoughto cut through the underlying flesh.

Not to mention piercing weapons (like arrows), which just might pass through the silk fabric by pushing the silk strands aside

Jep, while Silk might not be able to be cut by an axe/sword/dagger ,
it probably still (RL) wouldn´t offer any protection to it...
the silk of the clothes would just wrap around the blade,
with silk+blade still being thin enoughto cut through the underlying flesh.

Not to mention piercing weapons (like arrows), which just might pass through the silk fabric by pushing the silk strands aside 

Actually, if you study Mongollian warfare, you find that they relied on loose heavy silk as a major part of their armor.  Reportedly, arrows would not cut the silk (too loose), but actually push it into the wound.  This slowed the progress of the arrowhead meaning mere flesh wounds instead of piecing through the body part and also allowed for quick recover as there was no tearing when the arrow was removed - meaning more men could stay on campaign longer - a good thing in that time period.