Just a discussion for now. I would like to know what other people think about heavy armor, average armor levels, gloves, etc. I wrote this a week ago and tweaked it a little bit. What do you think about changing armor / gloves in these ways?
Armor need some more differences to better suit preferred styles of play. Instead of nerfing medium armor (too much), perhaps the extremes on the armor scale need to give better strengths. imodbits_plate is also unused ever since the loomed armor nerf a few years ago.
Finally, gloves need their own imodbits. This may be an alternate to increasing difficulties, but I will put recommended difficulty levels for future reference.
EDIT: Increase all armor at +0 by 1, except for gloves which receive -1. Keep gothic plate with bevor at the same head armor.
+1: +1 armor, 93% weight
+2: +2 armor, 85% weight
+3: +3 armor, 80% weight
Reasons: Armor values on cloth still result in very high damage received. People choose cloth for looks or low weight.
Problems: I can't say how the weights will round. (attack values round up I believe, so I will assume weight rounds up).
There may be some cases where the weights round to the same value with one armor being better than the other.
Change this to cloth: light strange armor
+1: +2 armor
+2: +3 armor
+3: +4 armor
Reasons: Medium armor toned down along with a change to gloves will decrease the average armor by ~3 along with gloves.
Change these: Many helmets have imodbits_plate as the modifier. Many of these need to be changed to imodbits_armor probably from 1.2 to 2.9 weight.
+1: +3 armor, 104% weight
+2: +5 armor, 106% weight + 0.1 (if not possible, 108%)
+3: +7 armor, 110% weight + 0.3 (+0.3 for helmets) (if this isn't possible, something like 112% weight)
Reasons: Because glancing isn't much of an issue any more for good swings, higher armour extremes is tolerable with increased penalties. 79 max -> 84 max with more penalties should not be too much of an issue.
Which to change: All body armours 19.3 weight and above. Leg armor weight 3 and above. Helmets 3 weight and above.
Problems: low weight gear penalty isn't high enough (ex. heavy gloves). Heavy gauntlet punching damage might become out of hand.
Just like with cloth, there may be some cases where the weights round to the same value with one armor being better than the other.
All gloves aside from leather gloves -1 armor
In addition:
Very light(0.1 weight):
+1: +1 armor
+2: +1 armor, 0 weight
+3: +2 armor, 0 weight
Light (up to 0.7 weight)
+1: +1 armor
+2: +1 armor, -0.2 weight
+3: +2 armor, -0.2 weight
Medium (up to 1.2 weight)
+1: +1 armor
+2: +2 armor,
+3: +3 armor, +0.1 weight
Heavy
+1: +2 armor, +0.3 weight
+2: +3 armor, +0.6 weight
+3: +4 armor, +1 weight
One neat thing that can be done is to split within the same weight tier:
cut off light at wisby gauntlets
cut off medium at gauntlets
Gloves:
Can mostly receive +3 difficulty, leave leather gloves as is. Make the 0.3 weight gloves 6 difficulty and the 0.5 weight gloves 9 difficulty.
Legs:
Black greaves = 21, then every difficulty decrease is -2 instead of -1. Once it matches, leave the lighter ones as is. Leg armor isn't so great anyways, so it deserves a more lenient difficulty
Helmets:
Weimar Helmet = 21, then every difficulty decrease is -2 instead of -1. Many people like their helmets, so this will cause the most rage.
Body:
Gothic plate with bevor = 24, Milanese Plate = 21, then every difficulty decrease is -2 instead of -1 until it matches current difficulty levels.
Possible?: Difficulty = strength + IF, increase all difficulties shown above by 5.
Gloves:
Border cases:
Leather gloves: 0 weight, 3 armor
Mail mittens: 0.1 weight, 4 armor
Wisby gauntlets: 0.5 weight, 6 armor
Scale gauntlets: 1 weight, 8 armor
Hourglass gauntlets: 1.3 weight, 9 armor
Plate mittens: 2.4 weight, 12 armor
Heavy Gauntlets: 3 weight, 14 armor
Extremes:
Leather gloves: 0 weight, 3 armor.
Heavy Gauntlets: 3 weight, 14 armor.
The Armor-to-weight effectiveness ratio gets worse higher up. Heavy gloves would trade a harsher wpf penalty for a more lenient movement speed penalty.
Leg armor:
Should be fine.
Head armor:
Should be fine at the extremes, maximum head armor achieved without gothic plate with bevor isn't very high. Cloth head armor is also pretty underpowered.
Body armor:
Border cases:
Heavy aketon: 5.3 weight, 34 body, 14 leg
Dark Hayberk: 10.3 weight, 42 body, 15 leg (using this to match leg armor)
5.2 weight, 8 body, 1 leg is an okay tradeoff.
Sipahi Yawshan: 19 weight, 54 body, 23 leg
Coat of plates: 21.6 weight, 58 body, 24 leg
2.6 weight, 4 armor, 2 leg. Very good tradeoff for body armours, but the heavier gloves have worse penalties.
Extremes:
Milanese Plate: 31 weight, 67 body, 31 leg
Gothic Plate with bevor: 31 weight, 64 body, 28 leg, 16 head
Plate armors become quite good, especially in the leg area. Gothic plate with bevor becomes OP compared to the milanese plate, so it may need a special difficulty of 27 (or 24 and decrease milanese/other 22 difficulty armor to 21) / slight price decrease for milanese and increase for gothic plate with bevor.