Coats should display over armor on the character model

[williams_482]

Currently, a seraph wearing something in every clothing and armor slot will mostly only show the armor they are wearing. This is unfortunate because it hides whatever cool clothing they might have tailored up for themselves, but it's also unrealistic and ahistorical. Armor should go over most garments (pants, shirts, etc), but it should not always be the highest visible layer.

Mostly this is obvious (you aren't going to put a straw sun hat under a chain mail coif; if you wear it at all you'll put it on top), but I think the historical side merits emphasis as well. The popular conception of a knight's plate armor being worn as an outermost layer without decor is a 15th century style, known as "alwyte" (all white) armor. For the centuries preceding that, across many iterations on types of armor, the style was pretty consistently to wear a cloth surcoat over at least the torso and often arms or legs. This was useful for allowing knights to identify each other, but it also just looked good. People like to look good. 

The cleanest way such a thing could be implemented in the current game is if coats would render over a player's armor. This also gives a use for the coat slot in warm weather when the extra warmth from wearing a coat is pointless: you can replace your fur coat with something designed to look nice, perhaps one of a set of specific surcoat items (in whatever color) that adds negligible extra warmth but is designed specifically to look good as a top layer over armor. 

Hats should also display differently, depending on the type of head armor worn with them. The straw hat from earlier has to go over mail or a gambleson hood, but it would look ridiculous on top of a visored steel helmet. This one has no historical backing, as I have no idea if soldiers would wear brimmed hats along with their helmets (I'm not aware of any contemporary images showing such). It is purely a realism choice which gives more opportunity to show off your fancy clothes. 

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, williams_482 said:

you aren't going to put a straw sun hat under a chain mail coif; if you wear it at all you'll put it on top

No, I'm going to cut the brim off and put that over the coif, with the rest under the coif.

Jokes aside, I do agree that some coats and other clothing articles(like cloaks) should render over the top of the armor. Perhaps not all, given that coats tend to be thick and putting thick cloth over armor that already covers thick padding is not just overkill on insulation, but hindering movement as well. Granted, that much realism probably doesn't matter for a videogame, but still...

In any case, I think it would require a more sophisticated rendering/animation system than what currently exists, given that most armor models are already bulky. Coats might look weird getting covered by armor, but they'll look even weirder if they wind up floating around the player's body.

1 hour ago, williams_482 said:

his one has no historical backing, as I have no idea if soldiers would wear brimmed hats along with their helmets (I'm not aware of any contemporary images showing such)

I'm not gonna say they never did, but...if you're already planning to wear a helmet, then you're going to want to pick one with a metal brim. Not only will that brim shade your eyes from the sun and rain, but it will also be more protective from incoming attacks. A typical brimmed hat is likely going to be uncomfortable under the helmet since there's already going to be extra padding, and the fact that said hat is easily damaged means that it can easily obscure your vision in combat. Removing the hat from under the helmet prior to combat isn't always an option either.

[williams_482]

Intelligent rendering would have to be a part of this, to get the models all lined up properly. And I know that's not trivial. 

As you're hinting at, a big part of the problem here is the video game logic that armor neither competes with clothing for slots nor (with the exception of bear armor) provides any warmth benefit, and just piling on the layers doesn't make you any more encumbered or give any danger of overheating. Wearing a winter coat under a properly fitted suit of armor would be impossible, and wearing a properly fitted coat over the armor would be only somewhat more manageable. But you almost certainly won't do either, because outside of really extreme cold, that armor is itself providing quite a bit of additional insulation. 

I highly doubt that the current armor and clothing system is in it's final form, so hopefully these quirks get ironed out in time, along with a more sophisticated encumbrance system and some sort of overheating penalty. 

[OBAMFSpike]

Thirteenth and fourteenth century is where the game is intended to take place and your suggesting to jump hundreds of years into the future so you can look good?

Personally, I take my armor off if I want my clothing to show. Because it's simply stupid to think that a drifter gives a rats ass what I look like when im laying into his decrepit rotten core. 

[LadyWYT]

27 minutes ago, OBAMFSpike said:

and your suggesting to jump hundreds of years into the future so you can look good?

Well that is why Jonas built his machine, right? 

 

29 minutes ago, OBAMFSpike said:

Personally, I take my armor off if I want my clothing to show.

A vanity toggle would probably be the easiest workaround.

 

2 hours ago, williams_482 said:

more sophisticated encumbrance system and some sort of overheating penalty. 

Overheating penalty I'm inclined to be in favor of, as wearing full furs in summertime doesn't make a lot of sense outside of the arctic. Encumbrance though, eh, I'm inclined to pass. Inventory is already fairly limited and limiting it further is likely going to make building and exploration/looting a real hassle.

[williams_482]

56 minutes ago, OBAMFSpike said:

Thirteenth and fourteenth century is where the game is intended to take place and your suggesting to jump hundreds of years into the future so you can look good?

Quite the opposite. Having armor as the outermost decorative layer is a stylistic choice that only became common after the period in which this game is set. 13th and 14th century knights and men at arms would almost universally have worn a surcoat and other cloth coverings over their armor, or even have a decorated cloth outer cover incorporated into some forms of armor (such as brigandine).

Of course if we're going to be pedantic about timelines we should also keep in mind that a full plate harness like the steel plate armor or the Forlorn Hope armor set have their origins in the 15th century as well. The alwyte style emerging at roughly the same time as much more elaborate and visually striking plate armors is probably not a coincidence. 

Edited January 20 by williams_482

[OBAMFSpike]

So what im struggling with is the media representation of a knight donning armor without a surcoat in about every movie ever made. Thanks for explaining this to me. 

[LadyWYT]

10 minutes ago, OBAMFSpike said:

media representation of a knight

To be fair, most media gets knights and medieval times hilariously wrong. Armor doesn't protect, people don't wear helmets, everyone is dirty and no bright colors, etc. Granted, a few concessions are sometimes necessary for storytelling, but there's a lot of tropes that are really just...nope, lol. 

[OBAMFSpike]

So much truth in this thread im getting dizzy with elation. 

[MKMoose]

On 1/19/2026 at 10:17 PM, williams_482 said:

Currently, a seraph wearing something in every clothing and armor slot will mostly only show the armor they are wearing. This is unfortunate because it hides whatever cool clothing they might have tailored up for themselves, but it's also unrealistic and ahistorical. Armor should go over most garments (pants, shirts, etc), but it should not always be the highest visible layer.

There are also some items (one that I've noticed was the forgotten noble mask) which aren't even disabled correctly under armor, which causes them to clip through it. It can be a tricky matter on a technical level, because sometimes it's really just a case-by-case issue. In many cases you might want one part of a larger item visible, but a different part hidden. In some cases you might ideally even want two items to appear in different order based on context, e.g. a shirt could be tucked into the pants while you're wearing a coat (it's probably not relevant to armor, but nonetheless part of the same general system). Another issue on a technical level would also be that some items may need multiple models (or at least slight changes to scale) depending on what they're worn on top of. A hat might look good on your head, but could be too small to appear over a helmet without clipping.

Those issues are all fixable, of course, if time-consuming. I do agree that a lot more variety would be great on top of armor. Even if not something particularly large, then at least some more smaller items and symbols that would allow to identify a person in armor based on anything other than their nametag. To keep things simple, I wouldn't mind to keep it to items that are intended to exclusively be placed on top of armor (especially a surcoat, tabard etc.), but a more comprehensive overhaul of the clothing system could be beneficial in the long term as well.

 

That said, I think that the existence of armor types which can be worn at little to no detriment could be considered to be the primary issue. It's convenient, but it removes all the incentive to ever take that armor off, except when putting on heavier armor when expecting combat. Whether that's addressed by adding more debuffs to armor or adding some buffs to regular clothing, the player should have more reason to wear regular clothing and not armor while outside of combat. Of course, that doesn't come without its own issues, but it's genuinely detrimental to the game's outfit variety to wear armor literally non-stop. One of the things that could be done to address this to some extent as well could be to localize surface threats to specific areas, making combat encounters more voluntary and letting players feel safer without armor. Adding more creature sounds is a simple improvement as well, and limiting aggression alongside adding more warnings before enemies commit to an attack could also reduce the deaths due to unexpected attacks.

[LadyWYT]

22 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

the player should have more reason to wear regular clothing and not armor while outside of combat.

Like you said, the prime reason players don't bother removing the armor is that light armors like leather and gambeson offer pretty strong benefits for practically no drawbacks.

Heat penalties would be a pretty good motivator in that regard. Leather is heavy, and while it can be protective for little cost, it's not really a good idea to cover yourself in leather in hot weather unless you have to. It's a similar case for gambeson too--thick quilted fabric is effective at mitigating damage from incoming attacks, but it's also quite insulating. 

I'd also throw in helmet overlays as a possible factor to consider. Many of the plate helmets in the game have closed visors or otherwise very limited vision. I think it could be interesting for that to actually affect the player's field of vision while they have a helmet equipped. For helmets with visors, there could be a toggle to open/close the visor, which exchanges some protection for extra visibility and vice versa. Otherwise, the player may need to remove their helmet outside of combat/dangerous areas, or may consider choosing a different helmet option(like scale, chain, or brigandine) to have a better field of vision. I would also note that with this kind of change, the accuracy penalty should be removed from helmets entirely, since the obscured vision is penalty enough. Doing so opens up more armor options for ranged characters, since equipping something like a scale helmet with gambeson body/legs is now more feasible.

[Monsota]

What reading through this is telling me is that we need an NPC squire to hire to handle all our armor and weaponry needs for us. Hopefully we'll get the ability to negotiate with the rift dwellers and locusts to give us ten minutes so our squire can fit us into our armor and equip us so we may do battle with honor.

Jokes aside, I like looking good. Evidently, other people like looking good. Coats over armor would be rad. I see no issue with the aesthetic idea at least.

Though, in the interest of actually adding to the conversation, I do agree I should be punished at least a little more for wearing armor all the time, at least for medium armor. As far as I'm aware, you don't need much more than light armor and maybe a shield packed away to handle most defense on the surface outside of the occasional bear attack, so I do think it would be fairly reasonable to ask players to reserve the bigger guns for when they're planning on doing something more dangerous than having a picnic eight blocks away from a rift in daytime.

I do have my reservations about my choice of helmet actively restricting my line of sight, but that's a personal thing. Realistically, if I'm going into battle with steel armor, I'm probably not going to feel it too much if some drifter nerd chucks a rock at me outside of my peripheral vision.
 

Edited Friday at 11:56 PM by Monsota
Sent too early so I had to edit to finish the post. Whoops.