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[Jimmy]

I would like to see weight increased by studding a weapon with lead. Lead studded steel war hammers would be quite nice. Better yet, have it menacing with spikes of blue metal.

[Rafal99]

Even better make a hammer from whatever hard enough metal, then stud it with every possible metal and alloy, encrust with every possible gem, and decorate with every type of bone and shell.
I must try this!

[dakenho]

if you made it out of adamantium you would have an obscurely valuable weapon that is worth more than most artifacts

[Rafal99]

Well, decoriations don't multiply base item value, and since adamantive is so valuable already, decorations would add not much value proportionally.

[SirStrange]

I would like to see weight increased by studding a weapon with lead. Lead studded steel war hammers would be quite nice. Better yet, have it menacing with spikes of blue metal.

Awesome.

[Hyndis]

Even better make a hammer from whatever hard enough metal, then stud it with every possible metal and alloy, encrust with every possible gem, and decorate with every type of bone and shell.
I must try this!

I do this.

For EVERYTHING. 

Entire goblin armies are slain just by the sight of all that bling. Every single helmet, sword, or even a simple high boot is decorated in a way that rivals Planepacked.

[Rafal99]

Yeah I do this with some special items in my fortress. Usually the throne for my mayor/duke/king. Sometimes some weapons too.
I order many types of metals and gems from caravans specifically for this purpose.

[bombcar]

If quality or "value" still comes into play, they may still be useful.

But I think the "blue goo" is best saved for the armor.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Toady posted the new combat formulas somewhere in the future of the fortress thread; if you go through what we know so far of the material raws, basically, it looks like yeah, adamantine hammers would be worthless in combat (but potentially great to give to your Hammerer) and steel hammers are probably the best overall.

[Huggz]

Looks like my first modding project will be to add a process to make Heavy Adamantium, which will be a lot heavier, by mixing lead and adamantium or something...

[LegoLord]

Copper isn't near as malleable as lead.  Lead isn't as soft as gold, but a steel hammer can put a dent in a brick of the stuff.  And I don't mean a weapon hammer.  I mean a good old nail-bashing hammer.

Plating definitely seems to be the way to go.

[Schilcote]

What we really need are hammers like King DeDeDe has. Everything is better with rockets strapped to it.

[shadowclasper]

What yall are forgetting is that softer metals are probably gonna be taken into account. Sure, lead is freaky heavy, but it's not used because it's a softer metal than steel. It deforms, it'll break more easily, etc.etc. Isn't hardness taken into account this time?

You want something AWESOME, mod for Diamond Hammers (if I'm right about hardness being taken into account.)

[The Architect]

Alright, time for a little physics.

Hammers are the real topic here, right? In spite of the dalliances into swords and suchlike. So I'll stick to hammers.

First: A warhammer made of a dense, malleable metal like gold or lead will deform on impact and some kinetic energy will be lost with deformation. In addition, the impact will be spread out to some degree. The weapon would of course become increasingly less effective with subsequent strikes, but that's unimportant for current DF.

Second: Taking a normative approach to weapon size and mass, a lighter weapon is easier to swing and control, and recovery for the user will be much faster. It's also less tiring to use. However, given the effective range and leverages in which melee weapons are used, a heavier weapon (if the user can effectively swing it) will always deliver more energy per blow. This is even more the case when the user utilizes gravitational potential energy effectively.

Third: plating a soft metal with a hard metal requires that the two will chemically bond, and doesn't offer any practical advantage. The traditional method for increasing the mass of a weapon without compromising its strength or increasing its size is to hollow out a forged weapons-grade metal and fill it with a denser metal. An easy example is a lead-filled mace, although it wasn't unheard of to simply fill wooden clubs with lead to fill a need for highly effective weapons using limited resources.

Lead is common, with a low melting point and high density. Any advantage gained by using a rare metal like gold instead will be negligible. Of course if you could refine and use uranium or the like in DF, that would be a different story.

Edit: Oh yea, and diamonds are brittle like all crystaline solids. That is why even cheap industrial diamonds are not usually used to bash things.