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[Ravenplucker]

My first suggestion.

It think it would add extra depth to the game if for instance, we selected to make a Bronze Short Sword, and it brought up another menu asking what style to make it. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it properly, I'll show you.

-->Make Bronze Short Sword
------->Serrated
------->Barbed
------->Curved
------->Normal

--> Make Steel Spear
------->Hooked
------->Barbed
------->Normal

--> Make Iron Bolts/arrows
------->Broad head
------->Bodkin

And so on...

Thoughts?

[Nikov]

I can see broadhead and bodkin bolts as a way to tailor your marksdwarves for elf killing or goblin killing, but the functionality of the other points needs some defining. Also unless I am mistaken weapons always deal the same sort of damage, so a straight shortsword, which one would think as better at piercing, would still do the same class of damage as a curved shortsword (slashing, limb-hacking). Is the new combat system going to be refined in a way I am not aware of to allow your curved sword to have improved limb-removal while a straight sword pierces targets instead?

[Capntastic]

This is a pretty common suggestion, and has been discussed in a few different threads.

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=46274.0
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=6365.0
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=36591.0

More and more complex weapons are also in the devnotes, and Toady's mentioned 'em in a few places.

[Ravenplucker]

damn, I thought i was being original 

[Aquillion]

Hrm.  I'm not sure it'd be good as an option for the player -- it feels like it'd be too fiddly.  Most of the time, does it matter what the player chooses?  Is it a meaningful choice?  I would say, generally, no.  So it's not one that's worth presenting to them, outside of maybe a few cases that clearly and decisively change a weapon's purpose.

Instead!  How about making it something the dwarf making the weapon decides, based on their personality, skills, and the material they're working with?  A highly-skilled dwarf will be more likely to decide to add an 'improvement' to the weapon, and the improvement will be decided by their personality.  Artifact weapons will almost always get such improvements.

Some of this might also be cultural; some cultures might always make their weapons in a certain way, or might not even know about certain options.

[Capntastic]

Hrm.  I'm not sure it'd be good as an option for the player -- it feels like it'd be too fiddly.  Most of the time, does it matter what the player chooses?  Is it a meaningful choice?  I would say, generally, no.  So it's not one that's worth presenting to them, outside of maybe a few cases that clearly and decisively change a weapon's purpose.

Instead!  How about making it something the dwarf making the weapon decides, based on their personality, skills, and the material they're working with?  A highly-skilled dwarf will be more likely to decide to add an 'improvement' to the weapon, and the improvement will be decided by their personality.  Artifact weapons will almost always get such improvements.

Some of this might also be cultural; some cultures might always make their weapons in a certain way, or might not even know about certain options.

Wait, you're saying giving players choices to customize their stuff is bad, but that crafting units should do it anyways?   Having cool weapon descriptions and stuff for different characters / NPCs / cultures / etc is important.   Being able to have it so a smith outfits your units with curved sabers and spiked mauls specifically would make specific squads / armies cooler, too.

[Phmcw]

What would be awesome, is if you can design entire weapon, with culturally generated element that can grant you an advantage over the weapon used by your enemies. Of course Ia should try to do this too : I mean, it's what everybody do all the time. If you look up medieval weaponry, it's obvious.

[Aquillion]

Wait, you're saying giving players choices to customize their stuff is bad, but that crafting units should do it anyways?   Having cool weapon descriptions and stuff for different characters / NPCs / cultures / etc is important.   Being able to have it so a smith outfits your units with curved sabers and spiked mauls specifically would make specific squads / armies cooler, too.

Presenting the player with choices that don't mean anything (or which barely mean anything) is not generally a good idea.  The blacksmith menu for making a weapon is already, what, three layers deep?  And this extra layer wouldn't really be of any interest to most people, but they'd have to click through it every time they want to make a new weapon.

Not worth it.  Maybe there could be some special way to force it somewhere, but I like the idea of having it be a natural expression of your fort's culture, or your blacksmith's personality, or their skill.  The player doesn't have to mind-control every little thing.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Capntastic: I don't think Aquillon was saying it's a bad idea that the stuff be customized, and there's lots of ways that players can already do that. You get to choose: What's made, what it's made out of, who makes it, how and where it's used (generally), etc. The dwarf--by right of it's person(v)ality--gets to choose only the particular stuff, that any human being might decide for themselves, if given orders by some faceless beurocratic entity.

I absolutely think it would be a great idea to allow some serious depth to weaponmaking. And I think it's only a natural progression, considering the nature of DF, that our dwarfs themselves do atleast some of the customizing and creative expression.

To the point where ordering two bronze shortswords from two different dwarfs of equal skill might actually get you two entirely different types of swords, one of which--outside of any quality issues--just might happen to be a better and/or more efficient design. And you might start going to the one that made the better design more often than the other, and that design might even spread to the other dwarf, apprentices, society at large.

Natural weapon evolution, in other words. Unconcerned with what we know to be true from our 21st Century perspectives. Which would make it a lot more interesting to watch and see what your dwarfs will do next.

Ofcourse, you might start to see Mozart/Salieri (or better: Masamune/Muramasa) jealousy situations, but that would be entertaining in it's own right, too--especially when the ignored weaponsmith goes Fell, slays the trendsetting genius, and makes his bones into an artifact weapon, which sets the genius's young apprentices on a montage-laden path of revenge, and so on and so on until your Fortress is an eternally feuding bloodsoaked pile of murderous bizarrely-overthought-weapon wielding fashion designers.

[Detoxicated]

SirHoneyBadger: I find your idea of evolutionary weapons quite intriguing, do you have any idea how to implement it? Also does the evolution start at the beginning of worldgen or once your in the game? How would you implement such a system??? Also how would the comp know which type of weapon to produce once you improved it...

Oh i have an idea. Okay...

You have a procedual item enhancement raw with specific enhancements that are only cosmetic. Names like: Serrated, barbed, waved, etc... Thesewill appear in the item description... Then when a dwarf creates a masterpiece sword for instance, it will get one of these enhancements and a bonus such as more damage, or more speed... Then once youre notified of the weapons creation you can decide to make this the mainstream model by pressing the yes or no button. from there on all your dwarves of your fortress will create said weapon in such a way up to the point where you enforce another improvement. Such things happen to other civs as well so it becomes an arms race...

[Funk]

if civs gen up some weapon changes so you get X fort design that is still a short sword but is not a Y fort.

i.e. the sword of one fort that fights elfs a lot so have swords built with no point and a double-edged straight blade with saw teeth.
the fort that fights Goblins have sharp points and smooth blades angled to the point.

the idea is that you have a basic your fort style weapons, other forts/civ styles and classic(normal) style.
 
more cos i got ninja'd
if all civ start with weapons at a starting type but can change there weapon for resons i.e. easy to make,easy to use,to better be vs armor/shield/other weapons,to do more damage,to make the weapon last longer,to be showy.

both in wars and peace can lead to weapon changes.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Well, it would be nice to see weaponry evolution start with world generation, or shortly after, but it also might be fun if the game began with the dwarf "steel age", or shortly after steel is invented, since they're the only ones using it. That way, you might see a lot of different weapons, in other materials, but you'd be able to witness the complete evolution of steel weaponry.

Not that it would all be going on in your Fortress alone: You might start seeing more interesting designs coming from the Mountainhome, giving you more trade options, and in a roundabout way, more player options via imports.

As far as implementation, I think it would be best handled with a deep set of random lists for the computer to select from, with the items on the list (barbed, smooth, wavy, serrated, whatever) trended from the dwarf's personality, skill level, cultural and other factors, but based off of compatible designs and (when possible) real-world examples.

Each dwarf weaponsmith could then work from a narrow (but still somewhat varied, for the sake of interest), range of possibilities.

Probably, this would best be handled by ToadyOne creating the basic structure, and then giving us the tools to mod it properly.

As far as how the comp would know what to produce: I really like Aquillon's suggestion of style based on the dwarf's personality. So the comp wouldn't really know, but you as a player could choose to have one dwarf making all your spears, for example, and another, say, making all your swords.

Whichever one you liked the best, you'd use the most, giving more and more examples of that weapon style, which possibly students might be able to learn from.

This is historically fairly realistic. Weaponsmiths often tended to produce in a limited range.