Is chainmail worth it when you have specialist/masterwork armor?

[Froobus]

I've trained my smiths up to the point where they can make good armor but I noticed the debuffs from chainmail are kinda high. Is wearing it under heavy armor worth losing like 20 dex?

[Karina]

Nope. I exclusively use only leather turtleneck/leather hive shirt.

[Freeasabird🕊]

Well ask your self, do you want more or less defence?

[Bragdras]

You can always wear leather turtlenecks if you don't want statloss but still want undershirt protection, which is always worth having.

Personally I find it worth the stat loss, if you want to cut down the middle, you could always train someone to make masterwork KLR series arms which will each provide 10% dex & str, effectively preventing the dex loss while still wearing the best underarmor one can craft.

[Froobus]

Originally posted by Bragdras:

You can always wear leather turtlenecks if you don't want statloss but still want undershirt protection, which is always worth having.

Personally I find it worth the stat loss, if you want to cut down the middle, you could always train someone to make masterwork KLR series arms which will each provide 10% dex & str, effectively preventing the dex loss while still wearing the best underarmor one can craft.

Thats a good idea but also that would require amputing my men somehow and not being allowed into holy cities anymore

[Carl Brutananadilewski]

Absolutely not. I don't think enough people realize that a 15% dex penalty is a 15% penalty to attack speed, block speed, and cut damage. So that's a 28% penalty to cut dps(!!) and it's even higher when you consider that the lower attack/block speed means enemies will get more hits off against your character because their animations will take longer. All for an undershirt that takes away 28.8% of the cut damage left over from your outerwear instead of 15%. Those are both so low that I don't see how the protection could be worth that huge penalty, in almost any situation.

I do use high grade chainmail when I want to train low stat characters in defense though. I guess there might be some perfect theoretical envelope where a tank character might take marginally less damage with chain shirts than leather, but blocking is much better than being hit anyway, so you either want your tanks blocking or you just don't want tanks.

[Carl Brutananadilewski]

On the other hand chainmail looks cool.

[Froobus]

Originally posted by Carl Brutananadilewski:

Absolutely not. I don't think enough people realize that a 15% dex penalty is a 15% penalty to attack speed, block speed, and cut damage. So that's a 28% penalty to cut dps(!!) and it's even higher when you consider that the lower attack/block speed means enemies will get more hits off against your character because their animations will take longer. All for an undershirt that takes away 28.8% of the cut damage left over from your outerwear instead of 15%. Those are both so low that I don't see how the protection could be worth that huge penalty, in almost any situation.

I do use high grade chainmail when I want to train low stat characters in defense though. I guess there might be some perfect theoretical envelope where a tank character might take marginally less damage with chain shirts than leather, but blocking is much better than being hit anyway, so you either want your tanks blocking or you just don't want tanks.

I didnt know Carl Brutananadilewski was a kenshi fan

[Bragdras]

There's a few ways to force amputation if you want to upgrade your people with robotic limbs:

Safest is to have the skeleton shredder and put someone in it, the shredder will quickly damage all limbs, as soon all the limbs pop off, have a team of medics ready to get him out and quickly patch him up so he doesn't bleed out then install the limbs.

Another way is to have them swim in acid, it will take time and you need to go onshore a little to heal the vitals but not the limbs, then repeat the process of waiting for the limbs to drop and replace it all.

And the third way is to go into the fogland and have a guy put himself on a fogman pole, wait for the fogmen to show up to eat his limbs, then have a team jump in to save him, a high enough level character can save himself but it's risky.

In the first 2 examples you need to change dismemberment options to frequent rather than rare, frequent means a limb drops as soon as it reaches negative (-100 for humans, -125 for shek etc) and rare means the limb has to be hit at or below that negative value to be cut.

[Omaeka]

Black leather shirt or a leather turtleneck are ya boi. Turtleneck for warriors shirts for scouts/workers.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Froobus:

I've trained my smiths up to the point where they can make good armor but I noticed the debuffs from chainmail are kinda high. Is wearing it under heavy armor worth losing like 20 dex?

You'll have to look at your own characters and ask that question. CAN they deal with that stat loss? What's their Toughness? What's their Strength?

Leather Turtlenecks are awesome all-around. Best shirt ever...

But, what are you fighting? If you're fighting trash and don't have to worry about anything much stronger than a guard or a Beak Thing, you probably don't need to worry about Chainmail yet. If, however, you're moving into end-game mobs and named bosses, then you'll probably want some Tanks wearing it.