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Author Topic: Weapon Question: Foreign or Domestic?  (Read 654 times)

MetalHead

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Weapon Question: Foreign or Domestic?
« on: March 25, 2012, 12:13:35 am »
I just started playing a fort in .34.06, and my embark site's got plenty of tetrahedrite and wood but no coal or iron ores to speak of so my metal industry's going to be hampered for a little while as I prefer decent relations with the tree-hugging cannibals for now (yes, I know this may make me sound like an elf-lover but I don't really have the ability to fight off ANYTHING right now... plus they supply me with my only guard dogs (or in my case, scorpions :D).

However, my taller neighbors were so kind as to bring a few halfway decent long swords with them as well as a few bars of iron and silver.  My dilemma comes to this: are long swords as good as or better than short swords of similar quality?  According to the wiki the long swords are much larger but have a wider contact area and only a little more penetration.

Of course once my metalworks gets off the ground I'm going back to short swords since I've never had a non-dwarven caravan or unit with better than well-crafted weaponry.
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Mitchewawa

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Re: Weapon Question: Foreign or Domestic?
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2012, 12:26:08 am »
Tetrahedrite? Make silver warhammers/maces and bronze (close to iron level) armour. Also, caravans don't bring enough smeltable goods to be a viable source of iron/steel.

Also, long swords are then short swords, but axes are better then both. Melt the sword and make a top-quality axe.
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luisedgm

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Re: Weapon Question: Foreign or Domestic?
« Reply #2 on: March 25, 2012, 12:31:25 am »
I second that, axes are the weapons you want, nothing is more dwarven, swords are for sissies.

And yeah, Silver is the best metal for warhammers, so everyone who can't have a steel axe must wield a silver hammer (or a crossbow)
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acetech09

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Re: Weapon Question: Foreign or Domestic?
« Reply #3 on: March 25, 2012, 12:34:22 am »
Dig down to magma and set up magma forges. Don't bother with coal burning.
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MetalHead

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Re: Weapon Question: Foreign or Domestic?
« Reply #4 on: March 25, 2012, 12:45:55 am »
Well I planned on using whatever silver I got from tetra smelting for hammers, I just wanted to know what to do in the short run.

Maybe a magma run is the best idea, even though I prefer to have a military on standby in case of breaches along the way.

Also as to the swords/axes debate, I usually use both along with hammers and spears as they apparently (from what I've seen) have different strategic uses and can allow for more flexible combat options.  Then again usually at least 1/4, usually 1/3 to 1/2 of my fortress pop is military anyway (Yes, I know its a bit wasteful but I'm trying to coax the game into giving me a real FPS-busting 1k+ siege once I get going).
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