Geas

So, I am slightly bummed, and hoping someone can slightly shed some light on the situation.
I have recently started training metal armours to see how I'd like them.
I have 2 pieces of steel armour, both dwarven made.
When putting the helmet and the chainmail on, and checked combat, it showed that they encumbered me a bit.
This includes a wooden shield.
I also, removed my warglove, and started to use a normal leather gauntlet.
With the rest of my armours remaining leathers.
With this new setup, my combat speed went from much slower then average, to slightly slower.
However, on the other hand, my weight went from 6 points up to 11.
I didn't think this would have so much of an affect.
However, I went from being able somewhat handle hobgoblins, orcs and goblins with somewhat ease to practly 0.
Even tackling groups of nibblers was horrible.
I feel like I went from having some kind of progress back down to completely newbie status with thildens.
My strength is far from strong, and my agi is far from swift.
Is there really that much difference between combat speed when typing combat, and weight under the vitality command?
I mean, I can hardly hit anything, and everything is just putting me in my place.
I am wondering maybe its just the lack of training in metal armours?
Or is this like a life long issue?
If someone can maybe shed some light on this, I'd very much appreciate it.
Thanks.

The more you improve your skill in medium and heavy armors the better you will fight with medium and heavy armors. Try to keep encumbrance lower. It might be that they are hitting you in lower armored areas. You mentioned adding a shield. So now you only get one arm hitting and your shield skill will come into play while defending, so you're running full turtle mode in that case and should expect less offensive ability. With more armor your specials such as knee and headbutt and elbow will hurt your enemy more. You could try lowering your delay limit to minimize time in between specials. Wearing armors and getting beat up will not be a lifelong issue, especially by npcs and with the new armor calculations implemented recently.

There are probably a few things going on here. Don't be discouraged. Tshahark can become plenty strong and powerful armoured fighters, and your new setup will get you there with time.

It sounds like you've jumped from unarmed fighting in light armour to weapon fighting in two or three types of armour. Your new setup has added in more skills that will affect your combat ability and they are probably much lower. Once they increase a little I think you'll find your new setup works just fine.
Yeah, this can be confusing. They are two completely separate values.

The 'speed' rating you see when you type 'combat' is your base combat speed value. This is affected by a few things like temperature, injuries, and magic. Wargloves and similar items decrease your base speed value. Tshahark also have negative base speed compared to other races by default.

On top of that, you can be affected by things like encumberance, armour, how heavy your weapons are and (now) whether you've just jumped into a river. These all add up to determine your actual combat speed, but won't change what you see in 'combat'.

So in the example above you removed wargloves (for a base speed increase) and added armour (for a weight increase).