Regarding the armors, I think somebody’s gonna have to go through and make a reasonable baseline, having several people with different perspectives trying to balance the same thing always ends up with something skewed, I haven’t really paid much attention to armors lately since my usual MO is to avoid getting hit at all.
One thing that should probably be taken into account for melee combat is what your target is wearing, killing a guy wearing riot gear or plate armor with a sword/stick/bayonet should have a higher chance to damage your weapon, not just make it harder to damage the target.
Having messed around with various different swords and talked with people who know a hundred times more than I do on the subject, this sounds about right to me.
A katana would work fine against unarmored zombies as long as you maintained it properly, but it’s hardly the best sword to take down zombies in riot or firefighting gear.
Here’s a quick comparison of a few swords in my current version’s json, they’re in the right area but seem a bit off:
The katana and broadsword have identical weight, both have Durable_Melee, Sheath_Sword, and Iaijutsu.
The katana has Slice, Rapid attack, WBLOCK_2, +1 to hit, 4 bash, 38 cutting, and takes 115 moves per attack.
The broadsword has Chop, WBLOCK_1, +2 to hit, 8 bash, 35 cutting, and takes 111 moves per attack.
A Rapier is about 12% lighter and has +2 to hit, 29 stabbing, and takes 105 moves per attack.
Note: In-game WBLOCK_1 is Parry, and WBLOCK_2 is Block, I’m not sure how these work exactly but blocking with a rapier vs parrying with a broadsword seems a bit awkward.
I also don’t know the difference between Chop and Slice (Especially since any sword can do both of these), but I’m mostly really curious about why the katana has Rapid strikes. Katanas aren’t significantly faster or easier to use than any other sword of similar size and weight.
