Lol... so you want to FORCE everyone to play EXACTLY like YOU want them to play... How generous.
Try heavy armor. Try cavalry. It's not even half as good as you pretend it is "ride an armoured bear while firing lazer beams from behind their adamantium armour.". Heavy armor will save you from two or three more hits, while in the meantime slow you down to the point you will be three times as much more likely to be hit by anything. Cavalry is well and good if you know how to play it (that is, like a ninja), but as soon as the map isn't flat or that there are roofs, half the enemy team is immune to you. You can also note that attacking any ranged camping group is a suicide mission, even on perfectly flat ground. Look at how noob cav do. Compare with noob infantry or noob archers. Is the horse worth it ? No.
If anything, it's the light gear and agi that need to be looked at for nerfing. A human weight, no matter the armor, is at the very least in the 50kg range, and not 10g like high agi + light equipment allows. This would also go a long way towards fixing the retarded spam&footwork-centric melee metagame we have ended up with.
Increasing upkeep will unbalance the game towards light gear even more than now, and hurt the few poor souls that still want to roleplay a knight in armor, despite the whole mod being designed to repel them.
I dont want to force ANYONE to do ANYTHING, and as usual Kafein, you have made conclusions...I love cav, playing as cav and fighting against it. I dont want it nerfed, but it was NEVER meant to be a match for aware infantry, as you say: "like a ninja" YES, cav must ambush for its kills. You dont need:
Here's the equipment I usually use:
Light Kuyak: well mostly for the looks and cuz its loomed already
Sarranid Veiled Helmet: mostly for the looks - I like full facecovered helmets and cuz I dont wont to get oneshotted off my horse by some roofmonkey through half of the map.
Splinted Leather Greaves over Mail: necessary as cav
Scale Gauntlets: well, that one is loomed too and it was really crippled during last patch like all gauntlets and I have the feeling its the gear that gets damaged most
Knightly Heater Shield
While you are ambushing unaware players. If you are trying to fight them headon as a cav...thats silly.
As to nerfing speeds because of footwork...no, that WOULD kill the mod, since as it is, ITS VERY hard to play as lightly armoured player, you get constantly owned: 1hit by anything when you make one mistake, and that I can live with, but also 1hit by every FRIEND who cannot be bothered NOT to hit you, since he suffers no penalty for killing his teammates. Friendly horses usually claim at least 50% of my HP's about 1 round in 3, if you take from lightly armoured playstyle the ONE thing that makes them, you are just gonna make a game where EVERYONE just strives to wear the heaviest thing they can, and while 90% of the pop DOES do that, there should be the choice not to. Im not forcing anyone to play as I want, like you claim, but you DO want to force everyone to walk around real slow and boring.
I like speed, Im addicted to it, when my agi bonus was removed and the game slowed down I was heartbroken, but I lived with it. Also when the cash income became so much more, so everyone can afford heavy armour, and then the upkeep was nerfed so you can currently afford to wear pretty much what u want whenever, I was heartbroken again: I saw the mod becoming what it IS mostly: All armour, all the time.
IMHO:
Kuyak, greaves, veiled helmet and scale gauntlets:
Now tell me: Does that already count as heavy armor or is it still medium?
Very mofo'ing heavy! But I dont want you not to be able to wear it: if it makes you happy, thats great.
I'm just of the oppinion: My sword is armour. And some gens my shield is too
BTW anyone want MW Short Sword or MP round shield, PM me! Very good price