v0.31:Armor

xTATTEREDx  · +FINE+  · *SUPERIOR*  · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡  · ☼MASTERWORK☼

Armor is the protective equipment used to reduce/deflect damage during Template:L. It comes in several pieces, each one protecting a certain area. The purpose of each piece is pretty much self-explanatory. Note that breastplates only protect upper/lower torso areas, while mail shirts also cover the upper arms. Throat, ears, nose, fingers, lips and teeth are exposed, even in full armor.

The four best materials for armor are: Template:L, Template:L, Template:L, Template:L, in that order. The two poorest metals for armor are Template:L and Template:L

Concerning armored enemies you are likely to meet, it is advisable to equip your military dwarves with at least bronze armor. Testing in the arena shows that armored dwarves have a huge advantage over the unarmored ones, usually taking no casualties while making short work of their enemies. (Well now that is really new and unexpected, sire!)

It should be noted that armor material is extremely important now. For example, fully iron-armored dwarves with iron short swords stand no chance against steel-equipped ones. A weapon cannot pierce armor of the same material (e.g. steel short swords vs. steel armor).

It is unclear whether the Template:L skill affects combat in any way, since the movement speed and armor penetration look the same for legendary armor users and untrained users.

Types of Protection

Garments fit on different body parts depending on the item in question, and require different orders based on material sometimes.

They may additionally protect upper and lower arms and legs, depending on the garment. Dwarves do not seem to make a distinction between genders when selecting clothing to wear, so don't be startled when you see males running around in dresses.

There is no real difference between armor and clothing, except that maybe only non-clothing garments may increase the Template:L skill.

Note that the availability of specific articles of clothing varies from civilization to civilization. So, one civilization may not be able to make vests, another may not be able to make togas, still another may not be able to make dresses and cloaks.

This list only includes equipment Dwarves can potentially manufacture, from the file \raw\objects\entity_default.txt, while other items which exist can never be made by un-modded dwarves such as a head or face veil.

Body Part	Clothing	Armor Level*	Material Size	Template:L/Template:L	Template:L	Template:L	Template:L	Template:L	Template:L	Template:L	Template:L	Layer
Head	Cap	+	1	Clothes	Clothes			Leather		10	15	Over
	Helm[S]	1+	2		Leather	Leather	Leather	Chain		30	20	Armor
	Hood		2	Clothes	Clothes					10	100	Cover
Upper Body	Dress		5	Clothes	Clothes					10	50	Under
	Shirt		3	Clothes	Clothes					10	50	Under
	Tunic		3	Clothes	Clothes					10	50	Under
	Toga		5	Clothes	Clothes					30	100	Over
	Vest		2	Clothes	Clothes					10	50	Over
	Robe		6	Clothes	Clothes					20	100	Over
	Coat		5	Clothes	Clothes					20	50	Over
	Leather Armor[S]	1	6		Leather					20	50	Armor
	Chainmail	2	6					Chain		15	50	Armor
	Breastplate[S]	3	9					Plate		20	50	Armor
	Cloak		5	Clothes	Clothes					15	150	Cover
Hands	Gloves		1	Clothes	Clothes					10	10	Under
	Gauntlets[S]	2	2			Chain	Chain	Chain		20	15	Armor
	Mittens		1	Clothes	Clothes					15	20	Cover
Lower Body	Trousers		4	Clothes	Clothes					15	30	Over
	Leggings[S]	1+	5		Leather	Leather	Leather	Chain		15	30	Armor
	Greaves[S]	3	6			Plate		Plate		15	30	Armor
	Loincloths		1	Clothes	Clothes					10	30	Under
	Thongs		1	Clothes	Clothes					10	30	Under
	Skirts		2	Clothes	Clothes					10	100	Over
	Short Skirts		2	Clothes	Clothes					10	100	Over
	Long Skirts		2	Clothes	Clothes					10	100	Over
	Braies		3	Clothes	Clothes					10	30	Under
Feet	Socks		1	Clothes	Clothes					10	15	Under
	Shoes		1	Clothes	Clothes					20	15	Over
	Low Boots	1	1		Leather			Chain		25	15	Armor
	High Boots	1+	1		Leather			Chain		25	15	Armor
Shield	Buckler	1	2		Buckler			Buckler	Buckler	NA	NA	NA
	Shield	2	4		Shield			Shield	Shield	NA	NA	NA

Some clothing articles may not be crafted in fortresses of a given Template:L - only those items marked as 'common' for that civilization may be crafted^v0.31.03.

[S] = Max one [S] per body slot (e.g. plate mail cannot be worn with leather armor, but can be worn with chain mail, and greaves and leggings cannot be combined).

• The armor level of an item with a "+" can be increased by one if made from metal.

Size, Permit, and layering armor

The Size and Permit values govern how much clothing or armor can be worn.

Under the old system the lowest "permit" value for any given body part is used: for instance, if a dwarf is wearing a dress (permit value: 50) and a total of 50 or more size worth of clothing on the upper body, it cannot put any more clothing on the upper body. (This explains why the old Template:Ls tend to wear several cloaks: they arrive at the fortress wearing only a cloak on the upper body (permit 150), and can put on a total of 10 of them, at 15 size each.)

Unfortunately, [LAYER:COVER] items are the only items playing by the old rules. This much is certain from testing in arena mode.

• If the item to be add is a [LAYER:COVER] item, add the total item size on the body part, if this sum is less than or equal to the item's permit value then evaluate as true.
• If a [LAYER:ARMOR] item is present or to be added and if the sum of the non [LAYER:COVER] items would be less than the sum of the [LAYER:ARMOR] size+permit values then evaluate as true.
• If one or more items of the same non-[LAYER:COVER] layer as the one being added are present and if the sum of their size values is less than the smallest permit value then evaluate as true.
• If the sum of the size values for all items on the body part are less than or equal to the permit value of the item about to be added then evaluate as true.

The item is allowed if all rules either evaluate to true or are not applicable. This is in addition to the rule allowing only one shaped item on a given body part at a time.

Example: A helm(30 size,20 permit) means you can put on a mask(20,10) or two caps(10,20), but only two head veils(10,100). Any of these configurations can fit 6 additional hoods if desired.

Example: Wearing a cap(10,20) allows only one face veil(10,100), because they are both [LAYER:UNDER], but an additional combined total of up to 9 head veils and hoods is possible.

Note that the armor value of socks and other clothing is unknown under the new system - however, wearing them under "armor" such as boots is recommended for an adventurer.

Template:L follows the arena rules so it is possible to have three chain mail shirts(15,50), a breastplate(20,50), and 25 capes(10,300) on ones upper body plus two caps(or one mask), a helm, and six hoods on ones head. Confirmation is needed to see if Template:L follows the old rules or the new arena rules.

Some more workaround about Size, Permit and Layering

• You can only have one shaped armor piece (marked with [S]) per body part.
• The total size of non-cover items must be lower than any armour piece's permit + size total.
• The total size of all items of any layer on any body part must be lower than the lowest permit value (excluding that item).
• The total size of all items on any body part must be lower than the size + permit value of any cover item.
• All items are put on in order of their layer.

As an example, lets say you want to kit out your soldiers upper body. Try walking through this in arena mode to get a feel for it.

You start off with a Template:L breastplate. This has a size of 20 and a permit of 50. It is also shaped, so you can't add any other shaped items; no more breastplates and no Template:L armor.

Now you want to add mail shirts. Each one has a permit of 50 and a size of 15. You can add three of these if you want. It checks the size against each of the armour pieces permit + size (or rather, the permit value ignoring that items size in the calculation), like so;

• Against each of the mail shirts, you have 2 x 15 = 30 total size in mail shirts, + 20 from the breastplate, matching the 50 permit.
• Against the breastplate you have 3 x 15 = 45 < 50, fine.

Now if you add a fourth mail shirt these test will fail. However, because of the layering order (mail shirts being armour layer 2, the breastplate armour layer 3) the breastplate is added after the shirts. This results in the breastplate being dropped.

Because this reaches the 50 permit limit for the mail shirts, you can't add more non-cover items without substituting them for existing items. If you want a robe (size 20), for example, you need to remove two of the mail shirts to clear a total size of 30, which then lets you add an extra size 10 shirt, vest or whatever.

However, you can add cover layer items. In this case, cloaks. Each cloak has a size of 15 and a permit of 150. Taking into account the 65 size already on the upper body, we can add 100 size worth of cloaks. This lets us add 6 (x 15 = 90) cloaks over the existing armour.

Going through like this for the rest of the body (most of it is simpler) gives you a final setup of;

1 x breastplate
3 x mail shirts
6 x cloaks

2 x gauntlets
2 x mittens

1 x trousers
1 x greaves

2 x caps
1 x helm
6 x hood

2 x socks
2 x high boots

Of course, so long as the bugs are still around, we are likely to see dwarves wearing more than this or refusing to put parts on because they found their boots before their socks.

Coverage

There are three tags that govern how far coverage reaches.

[UBSTEP:0]
This controls how far 'up' the body an item of armour reaches. It only seems to apply to torso armour. Basically you can think of it as going out in stages along the body. It doesn't cover legs. It doesn't cover body parts with certain tags (notably [HEAD], [GRASP] and [STANCE], or the head, hands and feet). It can cover the children of such body parts (such as parts of the face, fingers and toes) if it extends beyond them. The upper body and lower body are counted as 0 steps away, and so both always covered.

Breastplates have a default of 0, meaning they only cover the torso.
Mail shirts have [UBSTEP:1], so cover the upper arms.

A number of clothing items have [UBSTEP:MAX]. What exactly this covers depends on a certain bug I haven't been following myself, but unless you are making adamantium robes you probably won't get that much extra protection this way anyway. This would mean, for example, they would cover the upper arm, lower arm, skip the hand, then cover the fingers. The same goes for facial features (and, oddly, the throat) after skipping the head and the toes after skipping the entire legs and feet.
The clothes with these properties seem to be robes, cloaks, coats, shirts and dresses. However, of these only robes and dresses also have [LBSTEP:MAX] (see below) and so I'm not sure if anything else would actually cover toes or not. Needs testing.

[LBSTEP:0]
This controls how much of the legs an item covers. Legs in this case are defined as [LIMB] body parts that end in a [STANCE] body part (eg, foot). Arms are [LIMB]s, but end in a [GRASP] hand instead. This only covers the leg parts. It doesn't extend to feet or any other attached body parts. Because the upper and lower body are effectively zero steps from each other, torso armour can extend this way easily.

Both greaves and leggings have [LBSTEP:MAX] and so cover the entire leg to the best of their ability.
Mail shirts have [LBSTEP:1] and so can protect the upper legs. A range of other clothes (including cloaks) and leather armour also have this. As mentioned above, robes and dresses have [LBSTEP:MAX] and so cover the entire legs. These also have [UBSTEP:MAX] and so cover the entire body. Although not the strongest armour, a leather (or maybe adamantine?) robe or dress gives you maximum coverage.

[UPSTEP:0]
This determines how far up the limb a boot or glove protects. As with [LBSTEP], this doesn't cover anything but the [LIMB] tag body parts, but it does cover arms as well as legs. Because it only covers limbs, it doesn't include fingers and toes.

Low boots literally only cover the foot.
High boots have [UPSTEP:1], so cover the lower leg. If you consider the upper legs can covered by [LBSTEP] from above, you can effectively have an entire layer of chain armour on the legs from high boots and a mail shirt even before adding leg armour. This is why I go with greaves for a plate layer. Gauntlets have [UPSTEP:1], so cover the lower arms. Because there is no other protection for arms as there is for legs, you need gauntlets and mail shirts to protect your arms fully. Chausses are a very rare sock substitute, but they are the only items to have [UPSTEP:MAX] and so offer full leg coverage while being exactly the same size as regular socks. The perfect undergarment.

The whole method is pretty nifty with just two problems.

• Fingers/toes/faces can't be covered by hand/foot/head armour.
• They can be covered by MAX extended torso armour, despite it skipping the hands/feet/head.

Other Restrictions

In fortress mode, "under" layers cannot be put on over "over" layers, so, for instance, a dwarf cannot put on socks unless it first removes its shoes. They can wear over layers without putting an under layer on first, which explains their fondness for "going commando" (trousers without loincloth). Dwarves will only put on the specific armor they are told to put on -- unless they are not told what to wear.

In adventurer mode, you have direct control over what armor you put on, and are only limited by permit and "one only" restrictions. This means you can wear three suits of chain mail (total size 45) plus another suit of chain or plate on top of them. On top of this, you can add six cloaks.

Bugs

A metal breastplate currently only requires 1 bar of a metal to forge; however, when out of bars, the announcement seen reads

"Urist McArmorsmith cancels forge <x-metal> breastplate: needs 3 <x-metal> bars."
A similar situation exists with chainmail (40d:chain armor), but with an announcement re "2 bars". Since in 40d a breastplate (40d:plate armor) required 3 bars and chain required 2, it's a good bet that this can be viewed as a (minor) bug.

In adv and arena mode, putting a pair of socks(or any under-layer foot wear) on before putting on a pair of boots(or any over-layer foot wear) will keep you from putting on the last boot. So the order sock, sock, boot, boot doesn't work, but changing the order to sock, boot, sock, boot does. This is a very minor bug.