Will there be distinct armor strategy/tactics?

[Trell]

Hi guys I was wondering how the armor and weapon balancing was going, specifically in regards to having 3 typical roles armor could help foster. I was wondering if this design I hade in mind holds any weight. Light armor would allow fast attack and retreat and fighting from a distance and also help in stealth as it would be comprised of quieter material. Medium build armor is a jack of all trades but not a master of them however would be the perfered dueling armor one on one, gicing enough stamina to fight and move while having enough protection while getting hit. Finally heavy armor builds would allow front line fighting in heavy combat where multiple strikes from people who flank or arrows shot during the heat of battle, it would make you too slow and too much stamina drain for duels but allows you to keep marching forward and makes being in a group of heavy armormed allies very dangerous.

So I am wondering if this was the design idea for balance warhorse is going for or did you have a different perspective in mind? will the armors have enough protection or enough agility to fulfill their roles? But most important in the polish, will the game feel differently when you have the different armor class sets on?

[savvym]

Do you know you can choose each layer of your armot and combine even heavy with light armor?

[Lieste]

Metallic armour rattles and is usually shiny. It makes for generally poor stealth options, but is resistant to cuts and stabs. Cloth armours don’t rattle but can still make some noise and come in a variety of colours from the distinctive and impressive to the drab and unobtrustive. They are much better than the common perception as armour when worn alone, and are convenient to wear outside of intentional combat situations.

The different armour types work together - heavily padded cloth alone can be cut (if not trivially) but adding maille or harness over a gambeson makes penetration much less likely and the cloth armour absorbs the energy of the blunt impact remaining even though the sharp edge is defeated by the hard armour layer.

The head has two layers for armour (plus two decorative/functional) - the arming cap and helmet, plus a hood and necklace.
The torso has three layers for armour - shirt, flexible armour, hard armour with typical flexible armours being gambeson, gambeson and maille, maille, or reinforced maille. Hard armours include coat of plates, brigandine, white harness cuirass, boiled leather (improvised cuirass).
Over the shirt and gambeson sleeves you can add a hard armour (chains and couter, pauldrons, vambraces or a full arm harness (brigandine, splinted or white harness), and gloves or gauntlets for the hands.
Legs are protected by the lower part of any long torso armour, plus hose, gambeson chausse with a hard layer optionally over - either brigandine, splinted or white harness again.

The amount of noise, intimidation, impressiveness, obviousness, distinctiveness and weight varies according to what you have equipped - how much full suites of protection slow your character is at least in part determined by his strength and conditioning - within the beta it was quite easy to overload the weaker two character developments by equipping the most protective armour combinations & a sword and shield, so they couldn’t run - while the strongest development had the potential to move freely even when maximally protected, and with additional inventory items (albeit not too many).
What is shown in the E3/Gamescom demos is a pared down options selection which offers a ‘palette’ with four flavours (heavy/medium/light/peasant), but these are not the scope of all that is possible.

[Earl_Thorn]

Great post man, well put together.