I was wondering, is there some lore reason that orcish material equipment is on two different tiers?
i mean, the armor is equivolent to Steel plate i think, and as such is only surpassed by the potent ebony stuff. But then, the swords etc. are actually worse then dwarven, on par with regular steel. You find leveled orc daggers and whatnot waaaaay early on, but armor is rare, and shows up much later.

it sort of makes the smithing perk kind of meh, Imean half of it is sort of useless(the weopons) by the time your skill is that high, you have already unlocked Dwarven which makes for better weopons anyway. I am not totally against the idea of certain materials fitting certain items better, but it breaks tradition on TES games to have orc weopons be pretty much on par with baseline equipment while the armor retains it's place as formidable and somewhat rare.

So, any thoughts on this? Is there some lore I dont know about for this, or other explaination?

Its simple, they should have had two sides of the tree like it is now, but one one side should be weapons and one side should be armor, and each type of armor should have light and heavy variants, but that makes too much sense...

Orc weapons are lighter so you give up damage for lower weight.

Thats a dumb excuse. Steel weapons weigh more and do less damage.

I didn't understand this either. Smithing perks aside (that's a whole different discussion) I don't know why you would have the same material be in one tier for armor and a different one for weapons. I was thinking something about lore (Orc armor is strong, but the weapons are crude and bad?) but that's kind of a silly excuse.

Well, logically, if Orc armor is superior to Dwarven armor, does it necessarily follow that Orc weapons have to be superior to Dwarven weapons?

Orcish brutality is their weapon there fore they focus on defense in their smithing.
Other races need better weapons so they focus on both

maybe orcs find more importance in defence than offence, actually their constantly defending their homeland and they never invade others...also in ob they had the highest starting endurance i think (or it was their highest stat) Maybe dwemer made better weapons and only decent armor? Maybe orcs svck at making weapons, every sword is dull and holds a poor edge...or something

an ork can kill a hundred imperial soldiers with a rusty butter knife, but they die as easily as any other man. they can make due with any weapon but need stronger armour to protect them while they use that weapon

Elven weapons do more damage than Dwarven, and are available around the same time. If Orc weapons also dd more damage than Dawrven, there would be even less advantage to learning from both sides of the smithing tree. As it is, if you are willing to blow that extra perk, you can max out offense and defense in the mid-levels.

I think the idea that orcs always have a large boost in heavy armor has something to do with it. Theyre known for their skill and smithing with heavy armor... While the weapons seem to be less on par, but serviceable

Orcish Armor looks ridiculous. The armor makes you look like your wearing a diaper. If you don't know what I am talking about, try looking at it behind in third person.

The weapons look stupid. Seriously the only thing from that whole orcish set that looks decent is the shield.

I think it should be logical that dwarven weapons and armor are better than orcish ones. This is of course, if you take a LOTR approach to this. I also think that the weapons and armor should be on par with one another and there should be both light and heavy armor types for all. I appreciate that the TES crew took a risk with dwarven armor and abandoned the LOTR Gimli look. But it is frankly a complete disaster. It looks like the gear of an Ultramarine from Warhammer 2000 (awesome but out of place). On a aside note, i agree with you Big Iron on His Hip, that orcish armor is silly-looking, but I think the weapons are boss, wish they were stronger. I generally take a meh approach to all heavy armor and so I'm not too worried about the whole affair. Savior's Hide is just fine for me!

This is my take on all the armor in the game:

Iron and Studded armor looks so cool and fits the setting. Banded Iron shield is the coolest looking shield in the game, next to Elven.

Elven armor looks amazing, imo.

Dwarven Armor is pretty cool

Steel armor looks so ridiculous. Yuck.

Ebony armor looks absolutely awful from the back and decent in the front.

Orcish armor looks awful anyway you look at it.

Daedric Armor is sooooo cool.

Dragonplate armor looks amazing from the back, but looks like crap from the front.

Glass Armor is decent depending on your mood.

Steelplate armor looks great but I don't like the tapestry on the hip. Scaled armor looks like a bad version of Studded armor.

The only downside to that is it forces you to take both sides if you want uber weapons AND armor.

Eh, I havent really had the need or want to use the armor, by the time I could get the perk, I have steel plate anyway, and for what feels like some really simple grinding you can raise the skill to make Ebony which is boss hoss at that level.
The orcish shield is cool. I really like the helms on Khajiit too. Seems to fit the longer nose and the eye holes fit with their narrow cat like eyes.

Otherwise a few people here have some decent lore type reasoning as to why it would be the way it is. Interesting stuff.