Is realistic carryweight even possible?

[skydragon1978]

Wanting as realistic a playthrough as I could imagine, I turned my attention to the carry weight. Through the vanilla game and the wonder of mods, we now have at least ten races, two sexes, and three generations of character (adult, teen, child).

 

I lack the skill, reactions and dexterity to do anything in melee combat other than resort to 'button mashing', which is neither enjoyable, interesting, or challenging. Therefore I always end up keeping my distance and fighting from range....something mods have also massively enhanced. And I don't like the way the game says 'If you want play style x, use race y....Ie, orcs make good tanks, Bretons good mages, Bosmers good archers. One of the very first play throughs I did was a Bosmer archer.

 

Wanting this realism and roleplay, I needed a reason for fighting at range, and decided it's because I'm a child. I'm small, can hide easily, can sneak slightly better.....and it's a lot safer putting an arrow between a vampires shoulder blades from 50 feet than a sword, from 2. Then I thought, how could a child carry 300...whatevers? (Seriously Bethesda, you need to work on your weights and measures!). So I gave it some thought, made some decisions and assumptions about my character and child races in general...and came up with a carry weight of between 90 and 110.

 

My worry is, is this even possible with a deep immersion playthrough? Needing to eat, drink and sleep, not to mention stay warm and dry, my girl is going to need food, drink, camping gear, potions, and of course weapons and armour. So am I utterly barking mad in trying to reduce the carry weight? Is it even possible to do in this type of playthrough?

[Lachdonin]

Last i checked, there was never a real definition of what weight is used in Skyrim. It's denoted only be a feather icon, not an actual measurement. 300 Feathers doesn't seem like much of a carrying capacity... And it's not in Pounds or Kilograms by any stretch...

 

Until we actually know the unit of measurement, 300 is just as realistic as anything else.

[cdcooley]

It's not really weight, it's a generic encumbrance value on an arbitrary scale with no named units. The values are meant to represent a combination of weight, bulk, and sometimes utility (i.e. better weapons generally have higher values). If you stop thinking of them as purely weight values then it's not nearly as immersion breaking. Of course, realistically a child would have a smaller value for that than an adult.

[bben46]

Unfortunately a real weight system is not actually realistic either - as it must also take size, bulkiness and convenience of carry into account - this could be covered in an encumbrance value. But then each and every item would need both a weight and encumbrance value. A large bulky but light item would have a high encumbrance.

 

A bag of feathers weighing 3 units would be more difficult to carry than a iron ingot that also weighed 3 units. The ingot could be placed into a backpack. How are you going to carry a bag that is 4 feet high and 4 feet around? Then what does a hundred gold coins weigh? If each coin is 1 unit, then your carry capacity will be used up quickly if it is based on some vaguely realistic weight. So we make each coin = .1 unit so that 10 coins now = 1 unit. or .01 unit so it takes 100 coins to weigh 1 unit. How big is a coin anyway, how much bulk will 100 coins take up? How much weight is a 'unit'?

 

As for encumbrance - have you ever carried a real pike? they are 16 feet long and weigh about 10 pounds. Not really exceptionally heavy. Now imagine carrying that 16 foot pike through the woods and trying to run with it - that is what encumbrance means.

 

Real swords (not the modern reproductions) are actually much lighter than most people expect - usually between 2.5 and 3.5 pounds. The huge claymore type two hand sword weighs just 6.5 pounds.

[Bloodinfested]

The average plate mail was 40 to 75 lbs two handed swords not really that heavy I think 4-6ish lbs but carry too much of anything else would make you not very maneuverable in combat. There might not be an actual weight unit involved but if weapons & armor are relative to lb then considering the volume of all the items it would be impossible to carry the amount of items in game.

Volume is more of an issue looking at every single item in game notes could be shoved inside your plate mail but you couldn’t fit 15 books or the 100's of arrows that you carry could never fit on your back.

 

Realize that its just a game and in a fantasy setting its not suppose to be very realistic.

[saurusmaximus]

This goes back to the question, "How much immersion is too much?". As one poster put it, "The best way to ruin immersion is to worry about immersion".

[Boombro]

This goes back to the question, "How much immersion is too much?". As one poster put it, "The best way to ruin immersion is to worry about immersion".

I can agree.

 

I have heard of this guy, he made his skyrim just like real life. He needed to wash himself, to poop, to shave, to eat. He would wash his armor in the river, would not loot in combat, would only craft few thing a day, would do only few types of quests a day etc.

 

He hated it.

[BigBizkit]

yeah, if Skyrim was totally realistic, you would not fight dragons and breathe fire but get up early and drive to work.

[Lachdonin]

yeah, if Skyrim was totally realistic, you would not fight dragons and breathe fire but get up early and drive to work.

Heeeeey maaaan. I take clean, eco-friendly Silt Strider transit to work, man. We only have one Burn, after 'll, not like we can run to the moon'sif anything goes wrong.

[LoneWolfEburg]

Yeah, I doubt it's physically possible for a reasonably strong person to carry two suits of Iron Armor in their "inventory" for the reason of space, let alone mass.