Medieval weapons seem ridiculously overpowered

[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.

[Love_osu]

No, I’m not taking this from Goblin Slayer. The weapon’s quality in the medieval age was not as high as nowadays tools. I think 6-7 armored opponents will be enough to reduce durability of the sword.
My bad, I didn’t meant “unusable”, very sorry. I’m edited my comment.
I think we should add weapon maintenance system for sharp weapons into the game. That’s what I wanna say.

[Love_osu]

Yes, my bad. I edited my earlier comment. Thank you.
There is 1 thing that bother me though: a char in-game can kill like 10 zeds and still hold his/her sword easily. While in reality, the handle WILL become slippery because of the fat and blood that stick on it. Zombies in this game still have and blood in their body, so this should become an issue.

[kevin.granade]

Regardless of that, we need more than your opinion to be convinced, there’s a strong consensus here that purpose-built weapons for war are not going to have this problem, so we need some evidence to the contrary.

[QuietCoyote]

I think even then a person’s grip is strong enough (even without being scared poopless by the in-game menacies) that blood and fat shouldn’t even reach into the creavice between your hand and hilt, unless you’re trying to do some cool party trick, in which you probably shouldn’t even have a sword then

Also contrary to your comment about japanese katana being awesome cutting weapons is the fact that european swords weren’t made to have a razor edges mainly because of the fact that it makes the blade way more brittle and requires more matinence to keep its sharp edge

[Tripleight]

I agree that medieval weapons are too easily obtainable and craftable, but I like them so much. I fell in love with melee because of them.

[Sargash_Contola]

Make special tags for guns and melee and plate armor
Melee_Pierce would have much less trouble with Kevlar where as
Gun_Pierce wouldn’t do shit to kevlar

Also armor wasn’t stopped around the 1600s, was stopped before then because it was just cheaper to make 100 swords, and 100 swords could beat ten dudes in plate armor. It was more just the size of armies made plate not common. Then guns. Still decent chainmail and gambison could at least keep the user able to breathe from even decent strikes.

[mlangsdorf]

I would like to split PIERCE damage into two sub-categories, PIERCE and BULLET. PIERCE would remain for rapiers, spear points, arrows, and other low energy, moderate momentum attacks that are somewhat effective against rigid plate, excellent against woven ballistic fibers like kevlar, and fairly terrible against bulky things like bales of hay. BULLET would be for high energy, low momentum attacks like bullets that are somewhat effective against rigid plate, terrible against woven ballistic fibers, and excellent against bulky things.

I just need to sit down and write it at some point.

[Trigon]

I agree. Bullets having their own damage type would be ideal. A Kevlar vest can stand up to a 9mm handgun but not necessarily a trench knife. It would also help move away from there always being a “best” armor.

[Eggelstein]

I should probably have mentioned that historically, plate was almost (when I say almost, I mean like 1:10000 odds) never worn on its own, and was usually paired with a gambeson at the least, and mail on top of that if the soldier was quite rich. That gambeson would help disperse the force of blunt impacts, making the plate ever more effective. However, if your character wasn’t wearing a gambeson or other thick garment underneath their plate, any significant blunt trauma should comparatively hit a lot harder. T-shirts won’t cut it, a thick jacket would be needed. Though, most people get emergency jackets on day one, so that’s a non-issue. Still, the kinetic energy from, say, a hulk’s punch would likely be far stronger than some dick with a club. It’d be preferable to nothing, but you should not be walking away without a decent injury if that hulk manages to get its hands on you.