Woven clothing prices and weights

[Sami]

On our way to detailed clothcrafting the woven clothing (linen/nettle) currently appearing in the game has been under intense review and re-checking.
This is linked to the fact that in the future versions player character's will be able to weave their own fabric and make woven clothes.
We can't have this big addition in the very next version yet, but many preceeding steps and adjustments can be experienced there already.

Based on historical sources, practical tests, and brainstorming, it has become clear that woven clothes in Finland during the Iron Age were very expensive, essentially a luxury item. So, the prices for woven cloth garments in the game have been increased significantly. This reflects the true workload required for woven cloth production as a whole. 
    Linen is the most expensive cloth material, and linen garments now cost around three times more than previously. This makes a proper linen shirt more expensive than, for example, the most axes. Nettle is the least valuable cloth material, but most nettle garment prices have nevertheless been roughly doubled.
   Even though player characters can't yet produce cloth garments in the upcoming version, the price change now introduced give an indication of how valuable self-crafted cloth garments can be once they are introduced in versions to come.

For weeks already I've been discussing with Erkka about things like how much thread is required per meter of standard-width linen fabric, and how much the finished cloth will weigh.
There's pretty solid variable and mechanics base already figured out and in action in Erkka's open-ended survival and resource management game Ancient Savo so it's been fruitful to combine the know-how of the two Enormous Elk titles.
    Both of us have been also hand-sewing linen clothing in real life, so we've also got practical measurable values to utilize in the clothcraft planning. One of the values being a weight of a handwoven garment. Now I've come to a conclusion that some cloth garments are overweight in the game. As a result, the many woven clothing (linen, nettle) items will have their weight reduced by 30-50% compared to previous values. For example, a linen undershirt that previously weighed 3 lbs now weighs 1.8 lbs.

Now we'll also do price and weight comparisons for woollen, fur and leather garments too, so that their relative prices to the woven clothing will be reasonable. With a quick look today it seems there are not big changes to be expected, but some tweaking may be required.

Clothcraft as a whole is a big, complex addition and therefore needs to be planned carefully so that it will stand the test of time.
Speaking of which, I hope to release the next version before the end of this month. We'll see how it goes. May the spirits favour us.

These are future features - not yet functional in current version 3.87

[Matti-patti]

Yeah the clothing was extremely heavy, like way beyond even heavy duty work clothing, I remember that from this previous thread: https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=6356.0

That being said, if clothing is made even more weight efficient form of protection than it currently is (and it already was better than mail), this section from Harnmaster rules is worth imitating:

CLOTH: heavy, coarse cloth, typically buckram or
serge, worn over or under other types of armour, or
alone as everyday garb. Fine linen clothing offers
negligible armour protection.

Reducing edge/pierce protection all the way to 0 for linen/nettle/wool is worth considering.

Prices for iron age Finland are probably quite hard to get right. I would presume almost nobody actually bought any clothing beyond the very uppermost crust of society buying the equivalent of tailor made brand suit. Normal people at best bought cloth and then made that into clothing at home all the way into 19th century, if they didn't just wear clothing from rough homespun fabrics. Might be worth considering couple of grades of linen. E.g. normal homespun, and imported luxury stuff dyed with expensive dyes like carmine?

Here's a link to some prices in medieval England I've kept handy: https://web.archive.org/web/20110628231215/http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/medievalprices.html

Worth noting England was notable wool cloth producer, but cloth still seems quite expensive compared to stuff like tools and cheap weapons.