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[squamous]

So, as you may be aware, the current system for assigning weapons to a particular skill is rather limiting, at least for more out-there projects.

For example, all melee skills except the pike spawn NPCs with a given weapon and a shield, even if the weapon is two-handed. This means that a two-handed weapon in the hands of an NPC, of any skill except the pike, is far less effective, because using a two-handed weapon with one hand carries skill penalties unless you are over the size or strength limit to do so. So how do you fix this? Do you move all two-handed weapons to the pike skill and rename it? If you do that, then all the two handed weapons are one skill, but all the one-handed weapons have their own skill. So then it balances out wrong. Well, my solution to this was put all one-handed weapons into the axe skill and rename that. Why the axe skill? Because any edged weapon that uses that skill can cut down trees, meaning it HAS to be the axe skill. If any other skill was used, you couldn't have woodcutters.

So now you're at ranged weapons. The hunter profession, as far as I am aware, will only use crossbow-type weapons. So, the bow skill is just the crossbow skill with less practical application, they can both now be merged. That leaves the last awkward one, the blowgun skill. But the blowgun skill is interesting because NPC blowgunners carry less ammo than bow or crossbow users and are thus much quicker to run out of ammo and charge into melee. This makes the blowgun ideal for any kind of "combination" weapon, like a gunsword for example. Or alternately, a "throwing" weapon skill, because NPCs don't know how to throw spears yet. So you'd have, for example, throwing spears and an atl-atl, or maybe a "last throwing spear" which has the same stats as the spear being thrown, but is kept by the NPC for when he runs out of ammo to use as a normal spear.

Basically, my concept is that if you are making a total overhaul mod with lots of exotic weapons, the most efficient basic setup is

-light melee unit (axe)- all one handed weapons
-heavy melee unit (pike)- all two handed weapons
-ranged unit (crossbow)- all quiver-using ranged weapons
-ranged/melee hybrid unit (blowgun)- all non-quiver ranged weapons

and then just wrestling and dagger skills unchanged except maybe names. Is there any observation I'm missing here?

[FantasticDorf]

Interesting. That tidbit about blowguns is particularly relevant, in which case you should probably factor something like grimlockes musket modified DFhack additions where the projectiles are very high velocity or somewhat custom, but due to rate of fire they could run out very quickly (or have spreadshot/special effects).

A oversight you've commited however is that, weapons above the twohanded limit for a given unit that might fit on a 1 hand of a larger caste are forcibly put in the hands of any siegers when they arrive (goblins arrive with 2handed mauls they can't possibly carry or pick up again when dropped), so you potentially get very uneven forces if its not carefully curated with armor and weapons outside of the tools listed on the entity page, and moreso done from reactions maybe with a DFhack build conversion-break so they're not "official" buildings or reactions to enter the mainstream goods.

• But you can edit this by tailoring the [POSITION:SOLDIER] class allowances, tailoring it to certain classes and societal groups, and this extends also over to animals and semi-intelligents unintentionally in vanilla df, hence beak dog and troll recruits (latter wearing armor)

I recently encountered this problem when doing a little bit of work for a homebrew mod, warhammer fantasy ogres, but i can't bring along Gnoblars into combat because they'd be culturally mismatched in ogre clothes/armor and weapons, so they stay purely in fortress mode.

[squamous]

Interesting. That tidbit about blowguns is particularly relevant, in which case you should probably factor something like grimlockes musket modified DFhack additions where the projectiles are very high velocity or somewhat custom, but due to rate of fire they could run out very quickly (or have spreadshot/special effects).

A oversight you've commited however is that, weapons above the twohanded limit for a given unit that might fit on a 1 hand of a larger caste are forcibly put in the hands of any siegers when they arrive (goblins arrive with 2handed mauls they can't possibly carry or pick up again when dropped), so you potentially get very uneven forces if its not carefully curated with armor and weapons outside of the tools listed on the entity page, and moreso done from reactions maybe with a DFhack build conversion-break so they're not "official" buildings or reactions to enter the mainstream goods.

• But you can edit this by tailoring the [POSITION:SOLDIER] class allowances, tailoring it to certain classes and societal groups, and this extends also over to animals and semi-intelligents unintentionally in vanilla df, hence beak dog and troll recruits (latter wearing armor)

I recently encountered this problem when doing a little bit of work for a homebrew mod, warhammer fantasy ogres, but i can't bring along Gnoblars into combat because they'd be culturally mismatched in ogre clothes/armor and weapons, so they stay purely in fortress mode.

Yeah, this sort of setup only works with the sorts of overhauls I make I feel, since I can exercise that level of control. Stuff that adds content to the base game needs to bend to the vanilla system.