I dont know if this has been suggested but with the black smith in development why not make it that the footman has to be a certain level until it could wear better armor?
This prevents that other armors become obsolete and it would make sense. An untrained rookie wouldnt go in full heavy armor when it just learned how to swing a sword.
Also if you give heavy armor a speed penalty, you get more depth in combat. Do I go for a faster defence or a more durable one?
What Do you guys think?
awesome idea, not sure why this wasnt thought of yet. i definitely want to see a speed penalty for heavy armor. i think that idea could also go well with weapons, while a wooden sword is really fast its damage wouldnt be so great, and an iron sword might have good damage but have a slow speed.
Great idea, I didnt even think of the weapons, you could also make those level bound. For example Have footman that reach like lvl 5 and unlock iron equipment perk, this makes them able to wear iron sword and armor.
I like the speed debuff for metal armors, though I’d like to see higher/max level armors that are stronger and yet light (think mithril), that can be reached later on in the game.
The level requirement is cool, but I’d also like the option to sell armor. And the metal ones should go for a lot of money or high-value trades since they seems to be resource-intensive, time-consuming and generally hard to make (which isn’t bad).
Well, I kind of mentioned it to @Tom during last night’s stream…
Another thing I suggested was possible traits, like resistances to certain statuses or elemental affinities. Things like certain metals being conductive to electricity, or leather being able to burn.
if only i had been able to make it 
is there going to be any sort of blunt weapon? (clubs, maces, hammers, etc.) if so we could have multiple damage types. Blunt weapons do crushing damage and blades do slashing. there is a lot that could be added to this concept however i’ll just leave it at that for now.
Wow these are all cool ideas!
Nice idea’s 
But also make it possible then to smelt the older weapons in to bars or like 50% of the material you used on making it so that you can use it for new higher end weapons.Cause if your footman are all high level you stuck with allot of lower end weapons.
be green and recycle 
i don’t think you should be recycle any armor and weapons because you always will want to have a set for new recruits.
For level restrictions.
Level 1 should be base gear - wooden sword and normal cloths
Level 2 weaver craft and new weapon
Level 3 new weapon options
Level 4 low tier heavy armor
Level 5 high tier heavy armor and new weapon
Maybe there will be a situation that you want to recycle it at end of missions/skirmishes where you know you won’t need more footman or simply need that one extra resource to create a better armour.
So i personally would prefer a recycle option for situations like that
This has made another idea pop into my head - should probably start a new thread, and I haven’t seen anything about it, but never mind!
Classes that are dependent on strength, particularly warriors, should ever so slightly get bigger/ bulkier as they level up, certain specialisations could perhaps increase their size allowing for easier distinction when looking quickly.
This is related to the original idea as - heavy armour provides a speed debuff - relative to the level of the unit equipping it? So, higher level, stronger the unit, less of a debuff? But you still have the debate of:
wow with all these new ideas, should I edit my first post to get an overview of all the ideas or is this a bad idea?
(ill credit the one who made the idea ^^)
There are already battle hammers and maces in progress.
Awesome! this brings up a thought i had a while ago, i just forgot to post it. with the different weapon damage types it would make some sense for certain weapons to do better against certain armor types. for example a slashing weapon would do good against cloth/leather while a crushing weapon would do good against metal armor. make sense?