Plate armor!

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Rias
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Plate armor!

Post by Rias »

Per the changelog: (Metalworking) New ability: Plate Armor Construction. (Available at main town smithy workyards.)

It's finally here! The Plate Armor Construction ability (see details by clicking here or by typing HELP PLATE ARMOR CONSTRUCTION in-game) grants access to all the plate armor piece recipes. This stuff is a bit more complicated to put together. It requires an underlying armor piece of the leather (soft, not ridgeleather) or cloth variety, first of all. Then one must ATTACH all the plate armor pieces to it to turn it into metal plate armor. LOOKing at the various plate armor pieces (or checking their recipe info via the RECIPE INFO command) will give a description that says what they need to be attached to as well as what other pieces are required in order to produce a plate armor piece.

The hope is that the extra complexity lends a little more fun to the experience of crafting it and also helps it feel more intricate and valuable.

Do note that, as per the ability description, copper is not suitable for plate armor pieces. You'll need at least iron or bronze.

As always, feedback and bug reports are very much appreciated! Looking forward to seeing those heavy fighters wearing nice shiny suits of metal plate soon.

P.S. Expect some tweaking of the armor system in general soonish(TM). It will likely become increasingly non-viable to wear heavier armors without appropriate armor skill levels, with some penalties to systems beyond just the current armor encumbrance roll reductions in combat. It's a bit too easy and viable at the moment to just throw on the heaviest armor around without any armor training for various activities. We also may be tweaking the damage reduction levels of various armor pieces now that plate is finally out as our top tier so we can now look at the entire range of armors and do some comparing and measuring and such.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
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Rias
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Re: Plate armor!

Post by Rias »

P.P.S. I've been encouraged by my fellow GMs to point out that plate has some significant bonuses over ridgeleather and brigandine for some of the non-conventional damage types that don't show up in EXAMINE output; particularly against fire, acid, and nether.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
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Karjus
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Re: Plate armor!

Post by Karjus »

Very exciting, looking forward to getting the time to get a suit made.
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Squeak
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Re: Plate armor!

Post by Squeak »

Not sure if anyone else's plate metal armor has been fine quality, but bringing this up just in case.

Just made a bronze one, myself. Of course, with 400 skill, it *should* be fine quality - like everything else I've hammered out. The base jacket was also of fine quality.

Unless there's something I'm missing, it should be fine but it's not. Curious if anyone else has made fine quality, or perhaps bronze itself can't be forged into fine quality plate.

Edited to add: Also, my Recipe Info for plate armors only shows Average quality. Another PC reported similar.

I suppose with that, it's intended ... but if we could just get confirmation, that would be divine. At least - intended as of NOW without further plate armor crafting techniques.
Gorth
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Re: Plate armor!

Post by Gorth »

While the full suit of plate itself is rather realistic in it's weight, I have a problem. While it's true that it's heavy, it is also built so that one can do heavily active tasks in it, such as combat on foot, on a horse, running, and similar. Thus, the fact that it nearly halves my dodge roll and brings my parry roll down to about 530 out of 700 is kind of..a problem for me.

Dodge is fine, it makes some sense, and I'd rather be parrying things than dodging as a Dreadnought. But I take...just so much more damage in this than I did in Ridgeleather. It's a product on not having Strength or Constitution, I know. Strength players are fine with the weight, as far as I've seen, and maintain pretty passable defense rolls. Thus, I'm not sure how to fix it that doesn't just make it feather-light to Strength players. I'll have to consider it more, but I thought I'd bring it up as I was considering it.
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Gorth
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Re: Plate armor!

Post by Gorth »

The plate armor pieces are made of their metal type. This is cool, and good, especially for things like nether, or other things which care about metal. But uh.

It's cold, now! Metal doesn't give any warmth, at all. But these armors are underlayed with clothing. It's probably pretty complicated to have this case be based upon it's minor components, but please? It's going to be very important, as winter comes. I don't want to be forced to wear excessive amounts of clothing just to stay warm for more than five minutes. Especially considering it looks silly, takes up room in my screen that I'd rather have for important things, and most importantly to me, lowers my defensive rolls even more than plate already does.
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