I’m just going to throw here some of the thoughts I have gone trough about the encumbrance, what it is and what it could be.
Currently layering penalty and only two of a kind go for same limiting reasons: to promote diversity. So that we would not run in trenchcoats or hoodies (which it actually does not do, we ONLY wear them both unless for RP reasons). They also pevent stacking of low enc items for armor (t-shirt, long sleeved shirt). Only two of a kind more over prevents us from wearing a lot of strong items (harness, drop puch, face masks, hoodies, trenchcoats, cargo pants) than layers.
A lot of the discussions turn in to “People would be stacking t-shirt for armor” and “people would only use trenchcoat”. when we look at encumbrance and changes. These things don’t really have much to do with layering in my opinion. If each t-shirt would have 05 enc people could not stack them for armor. There would be no point there are better clothing to stack. So why would people wear t shirt? Good question, why should they? Perhaps for wramth and getting just tiny bit more armor and still not going over the encumbrance to get more penalty. This in my opinion is only a balancing issue. 2 of a kind rule is a bit more harder to solve if you remove it. Removing it would be pretty much a balancing nightmare and I feel that it is better to be left alone.
Trenchcoat is not really that good coat. It gives a lot of volume that people want. Armor is easier to get from shirts. Trenchcoat is actually pretty bad for armor and wramth. If getting wet would be a lot bigger issues and wramth would be a lot harder to get, trenchcoat stacking would be less ideal. You would want to have more item with better wramth and armor values.
In a imaginary situations let’s say that trenchcoat would have enc of 7, t-shirt enc of 1 and long sleeved shirt enc of 2.
To not go past 10 enc you would could wear 1 trenchcoat and either 2 t-shirts or 1 shirt. With t-shirts only thing protecting your arms would be trenchcoat with very low armor, but with shirt you would get a sliver more. Add in another trench and we would be at 14 enc. Now we could stack 1 t-shirt and 2 shirts for 19 enc. We would have quite a bit of armor and wramth with the values that the game has now (I feel that there values and armor pen need some work) but not really much volume and getting anything else would give us even more penalty. As I did not delve to deep to min maxing it does not sound TOO bad without layering penalty item properties are played with. A lot more work than just implementing small fix to “layers easily” items, that I won’t deny.
Personally I feel that armor values could also go below 1 (but only full points count) and t-shirt might as well five you a 0.5 or 0.2 armor. Basically for armor you need to stack it with something else for it to be effective. It would still help for wramth and wet penalties.
I expect a lot of weirdness in the text above. I need to start doing my house work since putting these thoughts to text took a bit more than I would have liked.
