Armor balance

[Gilberreke]

Currently there's a lot of armors, but the way they are balanced, they don't feel very varied, since they are all either linear upgrades or borderline useless. This leads to less player decisions and a bunch of fun subsystems that go under-used. Dawnraider gave the following breakdown of how she uses armor:

Basically I feel like these are the main choices you have for armor right now
- Super early game armor: Basically just wool as everything else is not really accessible
- Early game: Padded or leather
- Mid game: Padded, leather, iron, diamond
- Late mid game: Tanned leather, chain mail, diamond
- End game: Tanned leather, chainmail, plate

The main pain points in this list really are padded and iron
I don't think padded needs to be viable in end game, but making it viable into mid game would be good

It seems like the main issues are (after Discord conversation):
- Wool armor is annoying to make for what it is
- Padded armor is borderline useless, because it's too expensive in early game and overtaken too early in mid-game
- Diamond armor cramps on iron armor's style
- Tanned leather is too intensive to make to be useful and doesn't quite extend into late as well as it should because of chainmail

Based on some consensus and ideas thrown around, it seems like increasing the durability of wool, padded and tanned leather would go a long way and EpicAaron noted that repairable armor might be a good way to make that happen. To help out wool in super early game, we could also easily add some wicker armor (sandals and hat), just for a bit of variety. This would give the following breakdown:

- Light armor: wicker, leather, chainmail
- Heavy armor: iron, diamond, plate
- Repairable armor: wool, padded, tanned

Note that I put chainmail in Light Armor, because it seems to be mainly an exploration armor and thus it competes more with leather and tanned than it does with the other heavy armors. Here is how repairable armors would be defined:

- Are infinitely repairable
- Have an intensive recipe to make
- Have a way to be automated

The automation part seems obvious. Tanned is already automatable, wool, wicker and padding could use a loom block, which is the obvious answer.

Given that definition, wool is sitting fine if we add repair and automation, padded will need to be cheaper, Dawnraider recommends making it a 2x2 recipe like wool and have it be "knitted" (sown) and I agree. Tanned is already sitting fine where it is, it just needs repairability to give it an interesting edge compared to chain. For repair, Dawn similarly suggested it should be a "knitting" (repair) action that is automatable. I think it's a bit much, but it's easier to try out Dawn's method and then tone it down, than it is to give players a feature we'd have to come back on later.

The only thing left in that case is iron armor, which consensus seemed to indicate that the best way to extend it is to make diamond more expensive, bringing it in-line with plate, by having it require padding and straps. This is fine, since plate is so super-late game.

And then a final tweak that is more contentious: make it so repairable and recyclable items don't break, but instead become useless and sit at 1 durability. This wouldn't affect balance in my opinion, it would just make it less annoying to have it break when you almost certainly were trying not to.

[EpicAaron]

I would temper the iron to diamond discussion a bit. Dawn is the only player I know to regularly use diamond armor outside of the dragon fight, and she is also notoriously good at not dying. Your average non-save scumming player is a lot squishier.

Diamond is really good. It also really really really sucks to die with. The amount of effort needed to get diamonds, even with blacksmith trading, is astronomical. On paper it is a strict upgrade to iron, but in reality it is a terrible burden to wear, mentally and physically.

I used a mix of iron and chainmail for most of my pre-steel playtime. Occasionally I would use tanned leather when I could afford it, but leather is a tight resource without animal automation. It was hard to justify making more leather armor after dying.

Padding I did not touch. I sort of forgot about it, and I think FC did too honestly. It is not intuitive where it falls in the armor department. Worse than leather, better than wool? And it looks shitty.

Personally, I wish leather was less expensive. You need to deplete an entire region worth of cows and own a pair of sheers to make a full set of leather armor. Before agriculture, leather is your only real armor choice. Wool might save you half a heart, but leather actually feels impactful. During those early caving trips, leather lets you actually take a few hits and keep playing without needing a crybox.

I have some ideas of my own for revamping earlygame armor, but I'll save that vision for its own post (or a complete addon if I can work up the motivation).

[dawnraider]

Dawn is the only player I know to regularly use diamond armor outside of the dragon fight, and she is also notoriously good at not dying.

I would like to point out though that these are correlated. Part of why I don't die often is *because* I am almost always wearing good to great armor (the other part admittedly is being very experienced in the early game to live even without armor). I think people are too afraid to use diamonds on armor and don't really consider just how hard it is to die in diamond armor. A full set means you can be literally clipped inside a creeper and not even be down to hurt afterwards.

Some of the other points you made about leather being too hard to get and the blacksmith being too expensive are on the to-do list. They are issues, but I think the root cause needs to be addressed and not the side effects.

[EpicAaron]

I guess I just don't see the problem. Diamonds are expensive and a huge commitment. Diamonds pumped into armor cannot be used for beacons or lenses. Lava will still wipe them off the face of the planet, as would a long fall. If player's are comfortable grinding the diamonds and wearing them, I say power to them. Otherwise, I think iron is reasonably the best economical choice for the average dangerous situation.

I see earlygame (pre sustainable agriculture) as an area in need of support. Or does it? Shears aren't that difficult to make.

I like the idea of mending clothing to save time on recrafting damaged pieces of armor. I could see myself patching up a leather chestplate easy. If padding's gimmick was that it was easy to mend, maybe I could see myself using it? I think some tests ought to be run, I really do not know how good padding is currently, I assumed it was wool tier trash.

[Gilberreke]

I like the idea of mending clothing to save time on recrafting damaged pieces of armor. I could see myself patching up a leather chestplate easy. If padding's gimmick was that it was easy to mend, maybe I could see myself using it? I think some tests ought to be run, I really do not know how good padding is currently, I assumed it was wool tier trash.

To be clear, repairing leather was not in my post, only tanned leather would be repairable, otherwise leather would fight with padded and would need a more intensive recipe, not a cheaper one. The idea being that repairing is offset by a higher initial time investment.

[EpicAaron]

When you are living night by night with a campfire or oven, time is abundant. When I need to knit or weave, I tend to just sit a stapler on my mouse and look at my phone while the game works away. By the time you have big agriculture and light and a lot of projects to balance, the idea of wasting time doing patchwork recipes becomes a lot less pleasant. The game becomes a lot more traditionally Minecraft at that point, and you can enter a flow state with activities.

Being able to repair armor at that stage rather than make a whole new set would be nice, but you also want to wear good armor as much as possible. If leather was still strictly better than padded, I think I would probably still wear leather. Players like me that take a lot of risky adventures would probably opt for max defense despite its high cost, but maybe padded is good enough for others. Convenience/renewability (padded) or max protection (leather)? I also see a scenario in which padded is the fallback when leather reserves become tight. Hunting can get kind of stale, especially when you need to go further out to find patches of animals.

Perhaps there is an interesting dynamic brewing here. On the other hand, I feel like padded is just an inferior but cheaper clothing option, and giving the player the ability to mend it won't change that fact. Fabric becomes pretty cheap, why wouldn't you just craft more? Repairable leather, on the other hand, would free up so much valuable crafting material and make players really pay attention to the durability of their armor.

[Gilberreke]

I'd like to summarize some more discussion that happened on Discord:

Hiracho rightly argued that the mending idea is flawed, since the goal of this new "category" of armors is to encourage automation and the mending mechanic works against that. It wouldn't add a lot at first and be obsoleted by automation. I still think there's merit to creating some new category of armor that offers the player a third choice, to give the lesser used armors a bit of breathing space.

Repairable leather, on the other hand, would free up so much valuable crafting material and make players really pay attention to the durability of their armor.

I think making just leather (and tanned leather) be repairable might make sense, provided it stays a quite rare material. The thinking is then that you can easily recycle metal armors and you can easily make more cloth armors (once automation comes), so it would be fun to have some armors that you can't easily make more of and have to maintain.


That still doesn't fix the issue with making cloth armor more attractive though. I'm sure there must be some extra gameplay to be squeezed out of armors beyond just making padding cheaper (which is probably still relevant).

[Hiracho]

To summarize on my thoughts on armor:

LIGHT
I envision cloth armor as a new basic armor. Where it is used as a padding layer below better armor. An armor which costs could be renewable in a fairly early state. and automated in a fairly quick manner

• this would hold the wool knit armor pieces but also cloth(farbric) armor, giving armor equal to a full set up wool knit armor

MEDIUM/HEAVY
Leathers and metal ingots could be combined with fabric and wool(or wool knit) to craft leather or metal padding(like padding is now but one side instead of fabric, the required material. which in turn could be used to craft armor of their respective type. Padded armor could be placed in this group as well

• The effect of this would be that all armor have a base cost of fabric and possibly wool, locking renewability of these armor pieces further than LIGHT armor.
• MEDIUM armor would consist of padded fabric, leather and tanned leather. each giving the same amount of armor but with each step a double durability. Right now it is a kind of lackluster difference, but with each item now having a base cost of wool and fabric, the difference is smoothed out a lot and durability will have an increased value. after all it will halve and quarter the cost of that upkeep material.
• HEAVY armor is already pretty set in my oppinion with its different armor values and the overall value of diamond. The only thing I am not statisfied with right now is that you can melt down those armors without real cost(iron is free once you have a mobtrap, diamond gives full return) which in turn makes you melt them over and over again to get whatever enchant you want on them. With the proposed change melting these armor costs you wool and fabric, which at least doesn't make you reforge them without any repercussions and further incentivizes setting up that wool/fabric automation

My thoughts on why I think repairing is not a good thing:

• It stops demand of the exact material costs of said armor and instead makes it cost whatever the repairing object will cost. In other words, repairing leather armor without costing leather makes leather lose its biggest resource sink by means of armor maintenance. One could argue leather is rare and therefore could use a little less demand. But that is something I completely disagree with looking at how little of it you need already, and the overabundance of it running around in the world, not to mention the recent boost in leather drop. Next to that, animals aren't automateable yet and cows are an annoyance to breed with how cake as an item works(stacks to 1, recipe has to be made 1 at a time, the exponential problems that causes with their need for a kiln). When animal breeding automation gets a little work on, the price of leather might drop even further.
• If repairing would make it hold their enchants, the price for getting said enchants becomes a one time done deal as well dropping value of anything that produces stuff to get that enchant(exp farms, scrolls)
• It all seems like something that doesn't add anything to the game because we already have the means to make infinite armors. if you can make infinite armors, there is no need for an item that can repair one. in fact, it would counter having infrastructure to get to that state of making infinite armor

Please note that for these changes I'm counting things like animals and weaving to be automateable, as much as a rebalance on how much fabric you could get out of hemp using the automation (spinning and weaving)

[EpicAaron]

Hiracho you ninny, leather is the most valuable late game crafting material! Off the top of my head:

Screw pumps

Blasting charges

Bellows

Water wheel

I cannot get enough of the stuff in my single player world.

[Hiracho]

that's your comeback? aside from blasting charges(which aren't really balanced in the tech tree as per FC's words) those are very limited in their need/use. an armor set costs 12 leather, if you run with leather all the time, their upkeep is way bigger than you ever really need for the items you mentioned. plus you transform your leather armor into glue after use which covers most of those.

We're still talking miniscule amount of animalkilling here, as each cow gives an average of 1 leather, and up to 2.5 leather with looting each. the amount of animals you need kill is really low and the whole leather is rare thing is more a psychological aspect rather than an actual rarity. It is completely dependent on killing cows though, and since that's mostly by hunting. yeah sure there is a problem if you're looking for variety and renewability in the way of a base. but that is an issue besides the point here. That's an issue of animals not being automateable, or reasonably semi-automateable

Sad that you picked out just that sidenote while I wrote up a whole page of restructured armor crafting.. Like, even if you think leather is rare. it doesn't change anything in what I've actually wrote.. armor is a continuous resource sink, buildable stuff is a one time investment. removing the resource sink destroys leather economy.

[EpicAaron]

Hehe sorry Hiracho, your post is good! I merely wanted to point out that leather is really important, and IMO the most important late game crafting material. I go through cobble like nobody's business, and I need to dig holes. Being able to mass produce mining charges would be great. Hunting is boring after the 100th time out, and that chore is exasperated by the inability to produce a lot of rails for navigating the nether/overworld quickly. Obviously, the problems with BTW mid and late game are complex and interwoven. The fact is, until we have automated cows, leather is painful to craft with, and some machines rely on having a lot.

Your ideas about mixing armor materials are very interesting, however. I also agree to an extent about repairs. Being able to automate fabrics would be very cool.

[Equitis1024]

To summarize on my thoughts on armor: ...

Great post. Repairing seems like a mistake to me for all the reasons you outlined. Adding a padding component to armors is a great idea for smoothing the system out.

[dawnraider]

So personally I don't think leather should be that rare of a resource. That's mostly a biproduct of animageddon being half-finished for 2 years and that setting the new status quo. I don't really think "just go hunt more" should be the answer for leather after early mid game, but yeah that's an issue with animals and not with armor.

Being able to automate fabrics would be very cool.

This is something that is 100% planned.

[Hiracho]

Just wanted to emphasize that I don't want leather to be some rare resource and think that having working automateable animals will help make it more accessible in other ways than hunting and that's something i look forward to. I may think getting leather is easy right now, but i dont like that its a game of hunt every cow in a 5k block radius. I am advocating on stuff having maintenance costs more, because maintenance drain puts a bigger need on automation.

Thanks Aaron :) id love for ideas on how to improve/incorporate explosives in BTW, we should start a thread about ideas on that!

And thank you Equitis1024 for your kind words!

[Psion]

would perhaps giving a form of blast protection and/or feather fall increase the value of wool/padded armor? i find it a bit odd that such fluffy, padded materials don't provide you with some protection against shocks and impacts, with the downside being their low durability and not so great protection against traditional stab and brain-craving attacks. (perhaps with the downside of it taking an extra durability hit if it protects you from said sources of damage.)

[EpicAaron]

Giving different armor specialized properties would be very cool. My only concern is that there will be so many little tweaks to keep track of that players will ultimately just throw up their hands and throw the best armor on anyway. Like, who cares about marginal blast resistance when leather armor just absorbs more damage generally? It would have to be a noticeable change I think, something significant.

My favorite idea for specialized armor stuff is boots. I think boots should negate some of the slowness of walking on grass and other natural ground materials. Gives the player a real boost for going out there and getting that leather. If you've ever tried to go on a large hike without a nice pair of boots, perhaps you know what I am talking about.