Tribal Armor

[bdole92]

With the introduction of Tribes as a playable alternative to the traditional colony, i believe that new armors be added at Neolithic and Medieval tech levels, to allow Tribes defensive options. In particular, im thinking of a few examples,

Cloth Armor: Made from cloth/wool, low blunt/sharp, low durability, slightly better than going into battle naked, relatively cheap to make.
Hide Armor: Made from hides, mostly just a straight upgrade to cloth, relatively quick to make.
Leather Armor: Better than hides, but takes longer to make.
Studded Leather: Requires a Metal in addition to hide, takes even longer to make but boasts good durability.
Chainmail: The first proper Medieval armor, built from Metal, has decent durability and protection, in particular good Sharp protection, but is correspondingly slow to make.
Plate Mail: Plate mail could actually be split into Half Plate and Full Plate, or combined into just Plate Mail for simplicity. Plate mail should be extremely slow and expensive to make, but offer very good protection at the Medieval tech level.

I think that the inclusion of these armors would really help to flesh out tribes.

In addition, i think shields should be considered for inclusion into the game. My idea is thus, weapons should be categorized as either one handed or two handed, and if a pawn has a one handed weapon they can also carry a shield into battle. What are the benefits of shields? Well, whenever a pawn is attacked, they have a chance to deflect the attack based on the quality of the shield and their melee skill. If an attack is deflected the pawn suffers low/no damage, but the shield takes a hit to its durability. As the shield loses durability, it loses effectiveness.

Suddenly, you have a real tactical question when it comes to arming your pre-industrial warriors. Do you go for a huge, two handed claymore and hope your pawn doesn't get picked off by an archer? Or do you give everyone a shield and try to minimize loss of life? I think that if the above two suggestions were implemented, combat in general would be much more interesting, particularly for tribes.

As an additional suggestion, if low-tech shields/armors were added into the game, i believe their effects should be partially negated by firearms, potentially by a "hardness" stat or something similar. Plate mail may be very intimidating, but a man with an assault rifle doesn't really care how impressive your armor is. This stat could be extended to the other armors in the game as well, to represent the increased bullet protection that power armor has over, say, a Kevlar vest.

Sorry for the long post!

[Wex]

Ok, just a bit off.

Wodden armor: yes, it was actually used, kinda works, for a while; slows you down.
Paper filled armor: why american indians were so fond of bibles? Shields made with leather and paper would stop bullets (layered armor)

While speaking of metal, before a full plate armor (cool!) we have:
Banded armor: the one of the roman legionaries (see Asterix for reference) easy to make, pretty mobile, not as sturdy.
Scale armor: metal scale over leather: close to plate, but no cigar. Pretty heavy, nice defence.
Chain mail: metal links chained one another: not so heavy, mobile, great against slashing, not so great agains impaling (bullets should be considered impaling, in this case)

[keylocke]

i actually would like to play a version of rimworld where all factions are stuck using medieval technology.

no more turrets, no energy shields, no blasters. just pure medieval combat.

the new melee combat mechanic would be perfect for this, coz melee combat no longer involves melee deathstacks. so people are gonna create battle formations for melee.

and yep, it is possible to do a 300 spartan though-shall-not-pass blockade because of this awesome new battle mechanic.. glorious. 

[ThePhoenix]

I agree. With the introduction of a 'tech tree' of sorts, it's really quite odd that one can go from neolithic tribalism to futuristic demigod in such a short amount of time, and with very few steps in between. Having more Medieval items and technologies provides a good bridge between the two, and is at least a very logical step up from Tribal.

Ish's Medieval Mod was great, but hasn't been updated for A14, so probably wouldn't operate well within the new tech system.

[Goldenpotatoes]

Honestly, considering rimworld's arsenal jumps from bows to low caliber pistols/rifles as the lowest possible tier, anything below leather would be pretty pointless unless the concept of more low-tech weaponary was played with (crossbows and musket-ball based guns).

I mean, considering most rifle-barreled weapons can reliably penetrate most medieval methods of absorption, you'd still be better off pushing for kevlar to actually protect against the majority threat of Rimworld, which is is usually gun-totting raiders.

[b0rsuk]

When you start with a tribal colony, you soon notice Smithing is semi-useless without...  Machining. Because Machining is the only source of good armour. It's probably faster and easier to get Machining than research Devilstrand, plant a big-ass field and tailor good quality dusters. If your biome has winter, you won't manage to research, plant and harvest devilstrand in the first year! But to get kevlar vests, you "only" need Electricity and Machining (wind turbines and fueled generators don't need to be researched).

Great bows are the only thing in Smithy that doesn't require armour. Melee colonists die too easily without armour.