Medieval weapons seem ridiculously overpowered

[Bio]

It seems like medieval armour is ridiculously overpowered considering it is durable and blocks almost any non-special damage (like bullets or heavy impact). most medieval things around nowadays are merely just for show and are incredibly flimsy, and there aren’t that many blacksmiths around who make “actual” weapons even before the cataclysm. and that’s not to mention the quality of steel.
unless you have to craft them yourself and are unable to find them in the environment, it can be way too unbalanced to just make a bee line for a museum or mansion.

otherwise the armor seems pretty fun. are there any mods that nerf this without removing historical items?

[Eggelstein]

I agree that the armor seems overpowered. The reason full-plate armor’s popularity dropped after the 15-1600’s was due to it being unable to ward off bullets, thus making it unnecessary weight. So, unless your assailant is using .22, it’s not gonna stop sound-speed lead. It’s also not great against “bashing” style attacks (I know from personal HEMA experience), but any cut or jab with a sharp point will be deflected with nary a scratch on the armor, if it’s made properly. Hell, even cheap plate can be somewhat effective if it’s thick enough.

Also, I believe you find cheap steel versions of the weapons more often than you find battle-ready models, but that might just be me.

[Erk]

In general the armour itself seems fairly accurate to me with the exception of working ok against guns. The problem is that it should be almost nonexistent.

I recently massively dropped mansion spawns, which helps a lot I think. Next up we’re overdue for a crafting time change on the high tier armours like this… Coming soon

[Sanehatter]

Brutes and hulks should be a hard counter against heavy armor. Any blow as heavy as theirs is likely to deform the plates making the player unable to move or breathe properly.

[Bio]

yeah but like I said high mass damage enemies are the only way to counter and they can be rare

[Canivir]

I think part of the problem is that steel plate armour should be really good at defending against cut weapons (No sword is ever going to pierce/cut through the plate itself, only gaps in armour), but bashing weapons will still transfer most of their energy through. They also should take some punch out of Hollow Point rounds, while FMJ pierces clean through for the most part.

If you wanted to be wholly realistic while not changing any damage types, plate armour would have something like 40-50 cut armour so not even the best swords can damage through it (but bypass most on crit), but then guns would need upwards of 35 armour penetration in order to go through it.

The real problem then comes in with Kevlar (without ceramic reinforcement), since it is incredibly good at stopping bullets, but can be pierced with a knife.

I think that if we want to go full realism on all of these, we would probably have to change what damage types we use, maybe making pierce near exclusive for bullets and give Kevlar plates special advantages versus pierce.

[Love_osu]

In the old days, when a soldier uses a sword, he can only kill 6-7 enemies with it before the sword start becomes dull and slippery. The blood and fat splashes on it, the edge will be jagged and will be dulled when slices through skin, muscle, flesh and bones, armor,etc.
So yeah, even if you’re skillful , running around killing dozens of zombies with just a sword (no maintenance) is just unrealistic.

[mlangsdorf]

Do you have a cite for swords and other primitive melee weapons becoming unusable that quickly? It doesn’t pass the sniff test to me: we have the manuals of arms for Napoleonic era cavalry men, they were expected to run down dozens of fleeing soldiers during a pursuit, and as far as I know there aren’t any sections in the manuals about needing to retire after riding down a half dozen people because your saber was unusable.

Heck, if you use a cleaver or hatchet to dismember animal carcasses, you don’t have to resharpen it after butchering a half dozen of them. Not quite the same scenario as fighting, but similar.

Weapon maintenance is a thing that CDDA doesn’t handle well right now, but I’d expect that weapons would last longer than what you’re suggesting.

[crazykiddeath]

Stop copying fluff from Goblin Slayer, it’s not historically accurate.

[SirPendrak]

Plate armor is really superb protection aganist melee weapons, and even more aganist scratches, bites and punches. Some proper made, hardened steel, 1,5mm thick plates can deflect 9mm in some cases, or at least lower the impact. Its muskets and other long blackpowder guns like jezzails that ended era of knights. And when we talk about blunt damage… Maybe steel isnt best energy absorber (still better than for example ceramic plates), but it can spread energy of impact over much larger area. So if youre hit with baseball bat, or hulk punch, you will be much better wearing steel plates, even if you absorb the same amount of energy, it will do much less damage when spread.
On the oposite, things like padded armor, gambesons etc. dont spread the energy of impact, but they absorb it quite well. And when you combine these two things… you get very potent combo. Energy distributed over lets say 10x times larger area means 10x more of padding underneath armor can work to absorb damage. But we dont have mechanic in game that would allow certain combinations of armor work better than when separate.

[crazykiddeath]

I think when people hear that blunt weapons are “good” against heavy armour they don’t take into account that it’s “comparatively” good against heavy armour. People running around with maces didn’t stop people using plate, as you said, guns did.

[Mantar]

Guns also didn’t entirely stop armor. There was a downward progression, first people stopped armoring their arms and legs, because a bullet wound there was typically not immediately fatal, and because armor is hot, heavy, time-consuming to put on, and most importantly, expensive. Putting soldiers in a breastplate and helm was effective and much cheaper.
Later armies dropped the breastplate and stuck with just the helmet, which remains to this day, because it’s cheap, easy to wear, and can still deflect an incoming bullet under the right conditions.
Ned Kelly showed that if you’re crazy enough, putting on armor can still do a lot to keep you from being shot effectively.

[crazykiddeath]

True but on the other hand, I can’t think of any army that was composed of fully armoured soldiers, that was generally reserved for the aristocracy and their elite troops. I suspect that the changes in that group, the fact that such people generally stopped having private armys/troop formations, had as much to do with it as anything else.

[techincal]

unless you have to craft them yourself and are unable to find them in the environment, it can be way too unbalanced to just make a bee line for a museum or mansion.

You have it all wrong, being able to craft them is what makes them stupidly OP.

I play with item spawn rate set to 0.33 and have disabled all recipes for survivor gear/medieval stuff, haven’t seen a medieval sword in last 4 playthroughs, all well into mid/late game.

[Eggelstein]

This is true.

If you’re using a stainless steel sword that you bought from ebay. In the sense of battle-ready, sufficiently-forged, high-carbon steel, you can reliably take that blade to a rock a couple dozen times with only superficial edge damage.

Source: novice-ish HEMA practitioner

[Bio]

well you were also required to constantly maintain your weapons in the army to prevent rust from blood and elements, plus soldiers really didn’t survive long enough in melee to kill enough people to actually “test” how many people it could actually cut through, so I guess it just seemed unnecessary to puff up the manuals even further.
In addition the materials you use build a sword have a massive importance in how durable they are. For example many people think japanese swords are the best and cut anything, but because of the iron quality in japan was so low they were incredibly brittle. In contrast European steel was much harder but the manufacturing of the swords was pretty inefficient.
I don’t know much about how high quality iron is in new England, but I doubt a sword moulded out of scrap metal and constructed by a civilian with less than a year of experience could endure that much punishment.

[Bio]

I don’t honestly know where you got the goblin slayer idea but i’m shocked to find out a fantasy manga isn’t historically correct

[harison86]

Love_osu’s comment was (inadvertently or intentionally) quoting Goblin Slayer almost verbatim. That’s where the Goblin Slayer comment came from.

[mlangsdorf]

Cavalry manuals had drills for running down fleeing soldiers, stabbing them in the back, and clearing the weapon so the cavalryman could run down more people. There were historical battles like Cannae where thousands of people died on the losing side and very few on the winning side. Similarly with the Spanish invasions of the Americas, where the Conquistadores wracked up surreal body counts. The idea that people didn’t last long in melee combat and melee type combat is just not well supported.

Do you have an actual reference for this idea that swords became unusable that quickly in combat?

[Erk]

Even without a keen blade, a sword is a hefty piece of metal that focuses to a narrow edge would deal significant damage, especially to unarmoured zombies. I just can’t see any way a sword would wear out that quickly.

Consider how long a sawblades lasts digging into wood over and over and over again.