There better be more armor types than this or I'll be very disgruntle.

It's only better in the sense that it's free stuff with no cost. Not requiring perks for armor would be "better," too. They obviously want to limit smithing by perk. So you're going to have each tier of equipment require a different perk. You want to improve smithing the weapons, you have to perk each weapon tier.

That means there's two options, one line done by weapon tier that everyone has to go with or the way they did it. Those who want to focus on armor can focus on armor. Those who want to do weapons can go for weapons as well.

When you say Dragon, do you mean Dragon Bone or Dragon Hide? I thought there were two variants. Or maybe the Bone is the heavy armor and the hide is the light armor.

You don't have to pick and choose between weapons made of the same material as light armours, and weapons made of the same material as heavy armours. Regardless of what armour you use, the weapon is not armour and therefore shouldn't be classified within the same perk. Smithing is useless now unless you put perks into it- which is quite dumb. I agree with the way they set up armour perks, going one way light and one way heavy, but the only two viable ways I see to add weapons into that is if either they make the pathway a bit more zig-zagged, meaning I can go from glass to Daedric once I reach the required level, or if they separate weapons entirely and put them on a linear skill-level based line.

It's ridiculous to expect light armour users to put in double the amount of perks to be able to smith daedric weapons, or heavy armour users to smith glass weapons.

I never meant that the types I listed were the only types in the game. There will assuredly be other sets of armor, I was just concerned over the balance of the Smithing tree.

It seems to be that way because it is Skyrim. Nords are a warrior race, heavy armour is bound to be more popular.

No Mithrill? I wonder how difficult is to import a mesh from Oblivion...

Why would you want to have a nice suit of Elven or Glass armor and a big ugly Daedric sword on top of it?

Probably because I'm not attending a fashion show and I'd rather have the more efficient weapon as opposed to the prettier one in this situation.

Maybe with steel you can make Chain mail armour as well?

Smithing is a skill meant primarily for use by warriors, so of course it's going to have a heavy armor bias.

And let me ask you, how does it make sense to be able to make Daedric weapons but not Daedric armor? And why the hell should you be able to make top-tier equipment without investing in to the skill? Perks are not special bonuses, they're your damn ability set.

Glass and Daedric had parity in Oblivion what makes you think they won't here, or that Dragon won't outclass both?

From what I've seen when you take Steel Smithing you can make "Studded" Armors that are a step between Leather and Elven because they incorporate some steel buttons that cause blows to slide off. It's what Dohvakiin wears in the trailer.

Refer me to the confirmation of dragon weapons and I'll shut up gladly.

That's not true for the other skills. You can pickpocket without perks. You can lockpick without perks. You can cast magic without perks. However, smithing requires you to have perks to do just about anything. Even with 100 smithing, you would only be able to make iron swords without any perks. Doesn't seem right.

You'd be the best ironworker in all Tamriel, though. Think of the Smithing perks as acquired knowledge.

If you want history, scale and mail are both heavy armors. Mail was the heavy armor of choice for nearly 1000 years until plate came into being in the late 13th century. Roman segmented armor is also pretty heavy stuff, as would be Greek Hoplite armor. All of these things belong in heavy. I always viewed Orcish as finely made steel armor and not a different material.

Elven is about the only metal armor that could possibly be considered light.

If you wanted some more light armors I think that a couple of the insect armors from MW could have been brought back and localized to the border of Skyrim and MW. If you wanted a historical light armor you could have padded armor - which would stink so bad that nobody would use it anyway.

Not sure why a heavy armor perk would show up in the middle of the light armor branch. Hell, they have weightless heavy armor so why not light heavy armor .

Oh man I hope I can make a Lorica Squamata instead of the Lorica Segmentata the Legionaires are wearing.

But you already can smith. You can make iron armor and weapons, or hide/fur/leather armor, or simple bows and arrows, and improve any of them. Your improvements will last longer with a higher skill.

Just like all the other skills though, if you want to be a master smith (and canonically you must be one to forge Daedric gear) then you need to put perks into it. Think of skill rank as your experience/practice and perks as the techniques you've learned.

Theres hide and fur armor there different in this game. There might be some your missing

I can see a mod coming, which rearranges weapon smithing, to not have armor smithing pre-reqs.

(Personally, though, I am inclined to not invest in smithing at all, at least for now, because it's just too many levels before I'd have even an idea of what I would be getting into.)

That would be fine, as long as the ability to upgrade the weapon remained as a perk...

Agree, you could also have studded leather armor as a step above leather (still light but drifting toward medium) You could have padded as you said. Another light armor using Skyrim material would be Beast armr, using leather and bones from different animals. Wolf skull Headgear nyone?

I agree to a point. I say compromise. Your skill should allow you to make any type of armor but the perk would give you the knowledge to improve it....

hey wasn't the reason the greaves and curiass were merged, that they could include substantially more armors, it seems that they've made even less this time.

seems like crafting stuff with smithing seem the luxury
and the normal skill lets you improve you stuff, and that's even stronger than crafting
because the moment i get the ore to craft ebony, it drops too, so the benefit is low with the perks
only good thing seems the 100 perk