I like the new traits. they do the job without any added confusion

I for one like the new rules for units. Both MW Chain and Light plate are quite equal now, although one should definitly choose one of them.

With Masterwork Chain, you can later upgrade basic chain units for MW Chain, and will never touch the "Plate skills" armour in unit design.

With Light Plate, you start with Plate units which will eventually upgrade to heavy plate units. 

What should be done however is adding more armour choices on the leather tier (so you get kick ass leather armour when your tech improves enough), and perhaps giving the "Master Smith" Perk the bonus of being able to buy Decalon like tomes that teach Chain or Plate proficiencies to heroes. Right now, Master Smiths is quite meh, esp. at the doubled perk cost.

I think the current system is massively inferior to the previous encumbrance system to be honest. The previous system was more realistic, more accessible, and more fun.

Now I constantly end up with 20+ items in my inventory that are cool, but that I can't use in my long games. Whereas in FE I had loads of enjoyment out of them, and it was perfectly balanced with the initative penalties.

Furthermore there's now zero reason not to outfit all your units with as much armor as you can. In FE I loved how it was beneficial to outfit archers for example without armor, now I put leather/chainmail/plate on them whenever I can, because why wouldn't I? There's no reason not to, except maybe that it looks terrible on archers, but that's purely aesthetic.

Come on guys, there's a reason D&D didn't let mages wear armor. Gameplay decisions. If you add more initiative penalties to armor, it's not worth wearing!

If you want armor, then go warrior or defender and still pick spell traits to cast some spells. Choose Warlock, pick up ring of ash/staff of souls/cloak of stars, you'll barely notice you're not a mage path. 

+1 accept this design decision and move on please.

There are two things that I do not like about the new system.

1) You essentially need three troop designs. The previous system was much less cumbersome and flowed much better. It's either that or you lose an attribute slot until you actually do the research. That is very icky.

2) I'd rather the Armor ability be a flat choice on Hero upgrade and not be part of a tree, or just be a short tree.

Best solution there would be to make armor proficiency a 4th trait slot.  

Quoting Borg999,

reply 4

Quoting joeball123, reply 2I tend to agree with Alstein - it doesn't make sense that I cannot wear a chain shirt or a piece of plate unless I have some specific training. It would make sense that I suffer from some kind of penalty (most likely initiative, but defense and dodge penalties would also be appropriate) if I don't have some degree of practice or training in using the armor.



 

(at least, reading the other responses and adding +1)

In relation to how Spellcasters relate to this, I mentioned this already in another thread.  Increase tactical mana costs for spells 2-3x while wearing heavy armor and 1.5-2x while wearing lighter armor.  Special armors (using crystal, etc). could be created for mages, which would offset these penalties some, at a steeper price of course.

Rolemaster had a great system for this.  Channelers could only wear leathers, Essence users had problems in anything heavier than cloth, and Mentalists has issues with helmets.  RM also had a chance for spell failure, which increased greatly if you were wearing armor that interfered with your magic energy.  We don't have chances of spell failure here (which could in extreme cases cause debilitating injury), but that'd be fun if we did!

Encumberance added to the problems we needed to solve, which in my opinion increased our connection with the various heroes, and added to the immersiveness to the game.  By 'soaking up' a perk slot, Heroes become less legendary, and more like other units, which should not be the goal.  And, again, this is why I have no problem with 2-3 stat points on top of a perk pick every level, so you could allocate a stat point to Strength (increase carrying capacity), or perhaps Maneuvering (a new stat to reduce maneuvering/movement penalties when armored/encumbered).

Heroes in this game need to be MORE legendary, not less.  IMHO of course!

AGAIN, to placate you crybabies that don't like to have too many things to deal with, make this optional in scenario setup.  This way, if you don't want encumberance, don't check the box.  Don't want stat points? Don't check the box.

I love games that give you a bunch of decisions up front r.e. which options you want to play with.  This allows you to tailor the playing experience to your own playing style, rather than having to accept only the specific scenario the designers want to force on you.  For online multiplayer, of course, everyone has to agree to the parameters of the host scenario, but for single player, well, more options good.

The thing with chain proficiency that I don't quite get is that I don't see chain anywhere. It isn't in the tech tree and I've only ever seen one piece of it as a random drop from a quest. What am I missing?

This is a really great solution, if you ask me. Since the extra labour cost already covers the trait's production value, there is absolutely no reason why we can't have a dedicated 4th armor slot that allows you to specify your unit's chosen level of armor proficiency. If it's unoccupied, maybe you could give the unit an initiative or dodge bonus, as suggested above, making leather armour need a trait too (but only do this if adding this extra slot, or nightmares arise).

On a related note, the default unit designs seem even worse now with the addition of these extra armor traits. Early game, there is really absolutely no reason to build units with additional labor costs for armor proficiencies when all you really want are cheap and quick units that, if they have full trait kit, would not need the armour proficiencies that won't even be useful until halfway through the game when you research "Armor".

Also, the new updates outfitted scouts with the Soldier's Cloak, which is fine, but it costs crystal. So now, early game, I can't even afford to build Scout units because they cost 3 crystal which of course I don't have. And again, this would be fine, except I can't redesign the scout unit and keep the "Weak" trait, so they end up costing more anyway. It's a pain! And unnecessary.

First of all, it's ridiculous that chain and plate armors are different skills. Armor training consists of tempering one's body to have enough strength and stamina to move with the armor with acceptable speed, and getting accustomed to slightly diminished freedom of movement when fighting in it. But the notion that a combatant trained to fight in chainmail would be helpless in plate is ridiculous. 

Second, there is a prevailing notion in fantasy games that chainmail armor is lighter than plate, and that plate armored combatant is a sort of heavy, slow tank. Plate armor was in fact a technological upgrade to chainmail, and was superior in every way, including being lighter and offering better mobility and protection. Even when full plate suits were rendered obsolete by firearms, cavalry retained the use of plate cuirass till as late as 18th century, while nobody would ever think of wearing chainmail after 1500 AD. 

once again - chain and plate proficiency are just different skills so you can define units that don't upgrade beyond chain armor (e.g. a semi high initiative unit with fast, warg mount, haste amulet and finesse trait) - you can still upgrade the shield to a tower shield this way without breaking the whole concept of the unit. chain proficiency is slightly cheaper than plate, too. if you want to upgrade the unit to chain and later to plate, just use the plate proficiency, which - once again- unlocks both, chain and plate.

re-using the scout for the weakness trait works, but the trait is removed when you change gender or randomize their look, so you are pretty much stuck with the default look of the scout.