[WIP] Armour Overhaul (working title!)

This is something I've been working on for a while for personal use but I thought I'd reach out here and see if anyone else had any interest in it.

It has been a long, long time since I played unmodded Oblivion. I've been through FCOM, TIE, Deadly reflex, UV, Realistic Fatigue/Encumbrance, Stealth overhaul mods etc and much more.
The one thing that I haven't seen touched much is how armour is handled, and it frustrates me that I find in my game now that armour has become virtually useless (beyond the aesthetic). Especially heavy armour and particularly at low level.

In my game (modded with the above and more) I find that a warrior type (especially at low level) wearing a full set of heavy armour sacrifices a lot of encumbrance, is running out of breath every 100 yards, unable to carry much loot, clanks around everywhere so sneaking is impossible and in exchange gets a measly few points of protection which frankly makes no difference whatsoever. Heavy armour is actually much more of a hinderance than a help. On top of that if I find some magic armour, which lets face it, should be a fun, "woot!!" moment in a fantasy rpg, it's useless because like all my armour it will be smashed to pieces after every minor mud crab engagement and I have to run back to town to and hand over my few hard earned pennies getting it repaired..phew. In other words there's really no point in wearing armour at all, at least until you get to high level, have maxed out your armour/armourer skills and get access to the top tier enchanted ebony/daedric stuff. That's not fun!

So I decided to try and address this situation and make armour not only viable but desirable again. The problem is, once you start to tinker with one area of balance another imbalance becomes apparent and before you know it it's turning into a full time job.

Please note: I'm not trying to make an ultra-realistic representation of medieval armour in combat, nor do I want to implement a resource intensive, heavily scripted system etc. I'm trying to restrict it to in-game mechanics as much as I can with the simple intent of making armour feel like it's doing its job properly.

Progress

So far I've approached it in a number of ways:

Done so far:


• (1). I've changed the way that the armour skills work, meaning you get far more protective benefit from your armour at lower levels of skill. I expect to tweak this continually until I'm happy with the result.
  
  
• (2). I've slightly increased the amount of protection that light armour offers and significantly increased the amount of protection that heavy armour offers. The same has been done to durability. I've rebalanced some weights (I could never understand why the iron armour is lighter than steel for example). I've improved the stats of all pieces but I've weighted emphasis onto the cuirass, helmet and shield. Shields now have been massively improved so that they can really take a beating before they break.
  
  
  To do:
  
  
• (3). I realise that (1.) means there's less reason to raise/major the armour skills. I want to try and balance that out and I'm looking for suggestions. I'd like to make heavy armour have more of a detrimental effect on speed and jump height, then have the armour skill/perks improve on that. I think this is a slightly more realistic representation of someone becoming accustomed to operating in armour than simply increasing their armour rating. I'm thinking about mixing fatigue/fatigue regen into heavy armour skill/perks but I'm a bit wary because so many other mods affect fatigue rates it might become a bit of a conflict nightmare. (and this mod is not designed to be used in isolation remember, I'm trying to fix a heavily modded game not vanilla oblivion.). Likewise with regard to balance I'm thinking in terms of fatigue/encumbrance/stealth overhaul mods being used in conjunction with this. So many new negatives have already been introduced into the mix for heavy armour, it's time for some positive.
  
  
• (4). I want to, if possible, change the way that armourer works. So that whether an item can be repaired or not is determined by the material type and not whether it is enchanted. i.e 1-25 skill can repair Fur, Leather, Iron. 25-50 skill can repair Steel, Dwarven and so on. Or perhaps have it so that you are limited to the durability % that you can repair an enchanted item. i.e a low level armourer can repair enchanted Iron to 100%, enchanted steel to 75% and higher to only 25%. I haven't worked out the details here yet because I'm not sure what is possible with the game mechanics for the skill. Your input appreciated.
  
  
• (5). Other stuff - This is a heavy WIP. I'm posting this to get input, feedback and to thrash ideas out. I fully expect to change everything I've written here by the time it gets done!

I'm by no means an expert modder I'm not pretending to be, I don't know how to script etc. I just didn't see anyone else trying to fix this and figured I'd get off my backside and try it myself. If you agree with me that this is a problem worth addressing then this is the place to get involved. If you're experienced with modding game mechanics or scripting and want to get involved, or even take the lead then by all means please say so. I could certainly use some help and direction. I'm not going to be pedantic about this being 'my mod' or anything like that I just want to get this into the game, and if you can do a better job of it than I can then that's going to be better for everyone who uses it.

So far I can say the difference is very noticeable. I've only altered base game items so far, therefore items added by mods are unaffected. When I wear or fight someone wearing my improved heavy armour you can really tell the difference. The unaltered stuff is like paper in comparison. It's great to play a warrior and actually feel like a tank class again. It needs a lot of work and improvement before it can be called a proper mod though, right now it's more of a compilation of tweaks

Have you looked at shields? I've always felt that they should block 100% of damage, but maybe make the defender more likely to stagger when hit? The difference between shields would then be their durability, fur would break extremely easily, whereas higher stuff would last for many battles.

Hmmm ... some of your stuff sounds very nice . I'm a light armor wearer myself. I didn't find too much trouble with it other then I'd agree it breaks down awful easy. I guess I could understand that point being as it's leather/fur and not some type of metal. I did find as I leveled LA that seemed to ease up considerably.

I'm not much into heavy armor but this part of your statement does concern me. In my mind things need to make sense. To me, it would make no sense that someone in heavy armor can sneak effectively. In turn, it would make light armors fairly unnecessary. If someone wants to be a warrior and wear heavy armor, then sneaking should be left to those who can do it effectively with the right gear. Mixing the two sort of eliminates the need for one if that makes sense.

Please remember this is just IMHO. I'm sure alot would disagree

Best of luck though and it sounds like you put alot of hard work into it!

Thanks for your reply. I don't plan to actually touch any combat mechanics as such, that's beyond the scope of this mod. There are already a number of great mods that affect the blocking/staggering mechanic - Deadly reflex timed blocks and keybound bashes, Unecessary violence has keybound stagger moves (kick) etc. I agree that a shield should block 100% or almost 100% of the damage that's a great point, I will also look at the block skill then and how it can be tweaked. However I don't plan to change/add staggers, knockbacks etc. Those things are for other mods.




Thanks for the reply. This is aimed at making heavy armour more viable to be honest. Light armour doesn't confer the same penalties as heavy armour so I don't feel it needs the same boost. Also there needs to be a reason to want to choose heavy armour over light armour. I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say about the drawbacks of heavy armour, I probably didn't make it clear enough.

I absolutely agree that heavy armour wearers should have a tough time sneaking around, should be encumbered etc. I'm not complaining about those things, in fact I have purposefully modded my game to add them in. What I was saying though, is that there also has to be a benefit to heavy armour. There are plenty of drawbacks, and the drawbacks are good, I like them. It's just that the very small amount of protection offered by heavy armour, especially at low level, means there's really no point in wearing it when you balance the pros and cons. You're almost always better off just wearing light armour as it stands.

It's because so many mods have ramped the damage weapons do up and up that combat is all about getting in one or two big hits. The problem is that armour hasn't been scaled up accordingly. Deadly, fast combat is fine, but there should still be a noticeable difference between fighting naked and being in full plate. For example when a sword did 30 damage a hit and armour gave you 25 points of protection then there is a point to wearing it. You take 5 points of damage, whereas a naked person would take 30. A big difference, wearing that armour would really allow you take a bit of a beating compared to the naked person. With weapon damage scaled up however a sword now does maybe 75 damage but the armour still gives 25 protection. Now the difference between wearing armour and being naked is quite small. You will die almost as quickly in full heavy armour as you will being naked. Once you consider the extra weight, repair costs etc there's just no point to wearing the plate. That's what I want to address.

Hope that makes it clearer. Thank you both for your encouragement it is appreciated.

You bet it's something that needs atention! I do agree with you that something has to be done so I salute the effort!

Good stuff so far! I don't think there should a too much of a difference between boots/gauntlets/leggings and the other stuff as far as durability is concerned. They are made out of the same material after all. Granted, some get hit more than others, but I think it's something worth keeping in mind.


The big thing here is to make both types of armor worthwhile, while keeping them as different as possible. The way Vanilla works, both end up offering the same amount of protection with heavy armor twice as heavy.

Here's what I would suggest:
Heavy armor should have greater protection value than the light equivalent, greater durability, enough so that the penalties to movement speed, encumbrance and jumping would be something worth accepting.

Light armor should have a basic protection level, a basic durability (still, greater than Vanilla perhaps), but with smaller penalties to the above. Note that I do think some should apply - it is armor after all, not cloth.

As far as sneaking goes, I don't think just the boots should matter. In a heavy armor set, you should be clanking from the knees up as well. Penalties from both types would be good.

The spell penalties probably could use looking at as well.

I like the idea for Armorer - depending on your expertise level, you could only fix it up to a certain point. Additionally, you might want to consider taking into account the type of armor skill itself. A specialist in Heavy Armor could fix this type more efficiently than he could fix a flimsy fur cuirass. And while you're at it, maybe propagate this on repairing the Blade/Blunt items as well?

It would be cool if store armorers used the same system as well. Then you would have to pick the ones that do you most good.

Perk-wise, yeah, they kind of svck. One thing to include is, indeed, increased mobility. Another increased defence (up to a point, it does make sense). The "degrade" rate just shouldn't be there at all. Other perks could be a small bonus to certain skills (based on the idea that you can move better in the suit so you're not as clumsy). The alternative to this would be have a small penalty to some skills (I mean Blade, Blunt, Hand to Hand, Marksman and Block) that would get removed at a certain perk level. Then, you could have a small absorb spell chance or a small reflect chance, or even a disintegrate weapon thingie on high level perks. That is, if you want to extend into magic effects.



I know how you feel! Some of the changes I suggested might be a bit too hard to implement, of you might not think they would work nicely at all. So take it all with a grain of salt.

I'll be keeping an eye on this! It sounds really promising!

Cheers!

cc

Durability is done to a formula based on the material type. Shields have much more durability than the other parts.



Yes, this pretty much describes exactly what I've done so far.



I agree, the thing is this is already handled perfectly in JOG's Stealth overhaul. The difficulty with planning at the moment I am finding is that I'm not designing this based on vanilla oblivion, I'm trying to build something that meshes with a bunch of other 'essential' mods. Ones that I use specifically but that I know many others are also using, hence I made this public. Heavy armour honestly isn't that bad in vanilla Oblivion so this mod isn't really needed. I mean encumbrance is set so high the weight doesn't really matter, fatigue doesn't come into it and you raise your skills so fast that you're a master in no time. You can scoop a full set of daedric off a bandit within a few hours of playing and vanilla weapon damage is pretty low. It's all kind of a non issue in vanilla.



I hadn't even thought about those to be honest. I'll put it under 'maybe' for now lol.



Yeah I thought it made sense. A novice armourer can bash a trashed briastplate out enough to strap it back on so that it will offer a little protection but only a master armourer can take a wrecked suit and make it like new again. That sort of thing.

I like your idea of seeking out better npc armourers, kind of like having to find the more advanced skill trainers as you progress. It also makes armourer more desirable as a major skill.



I don't want to do penalties to skills or attributes as that would make it less compatible with other mods. Either they have to be done as ModAv/ModAv2 which can mess with levelling mods etc or as drain disease effects which I think might get clunky (no pun intended). I think mobility is the main one for heavy armour, I actually quite like that you can't run around as fast. As I said before, many of the negatives are already covered in other mods, fatigue, encumbrance etc. This is unashamedly designed as a boost for armour to be used in conjunction with those other mods, it's not intended to be a balanced system in isolation. That means whether people like it or not will depend entirely on which mods they use themselves. I'm aware of that, I can't make this balanced for everyone so I'm just making what I find useful and offering to share it. On the basis that the main combat mods I use have hundreds of thousands of downloads I figure there must be some who have a similar set up to me and might therefore also find it useful.



I'm really learning as I go along. My only other mod (another wip!) is a content mod, which adds a bunch of populated dungeons, new items etc to the world. I haven't messed with any game mechanics and I don't have a clue about scripting. Rebalancing the armour stats was pretty simple, it's time consuming but it's not master modder stuff.



Thanks for the input, your enthusiasm is encouraging. I'll update with news, given that I'm a bit of a noob though please expect progress to be sporadic! lol