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[cephalo]

I did some interesting weapon testing in the arena today with v.31.10. Here are the scores of the tests in terms of dwarves left standing. Each match has 20 combatants, 10 on each side, starting in line formation 2 paces apart.

All dwarves have the following skills:
Skilled Fighter
Skilled Shield User
Skilled Armor User

and where applicable, Skilled *weapon* (mining pick uses mining skill which is unsettable in arena)

The armor is:
Steel Mail Shirt
Steel Breastplate
Steel Helm
Steel Gauntlet x2
Steel High Boot x2
Steel Greaves
Steel Shield

First I wanted to test whether silver was really the best choice for blunt weapons:

Silver war hammer vs. Steel war hammer: Winner, Silver war hammer with 8 dwarves standing.
Silver war hammer vs. Steel battle axe: Winner, Silver war hammer with 9 dwarves standing. (* this surprised me a bit *)
Silver war hammer vs. Silver battle axe: Winner, Silver war hammer with 10 dwarves standing.
Silver war hammer vs. Adamantine battle axe: Winner, Adamantine battle axe with 8 dwarves standing.

Then, Ive seen some really crazy stuff happen with mining picks, like my legendary miner wiping out a squad of goblin ambushers, and getting killed by a goblinized human miner in adventure mode after killing their general and other soldiers easily. Also, in arena mode, you can't set the mining skill, but skills increase very rapidly. Unskilled miners are up to expert or higher by the end of these battles.

Unskilled copper pick vs. unskilled steel battle axe: Winner, copper pick with 7 dwarves standing.
Unskilled copper pick vs. Skilled steel battle axe: Winner, copper pick with 4 dwarves standing! (* this surprised me alot... kinda*)

So anyway, it looks like that embark mining pick is one of the best weapons in the game. I knew it!

[Cruxador]

But edged weapons are supposed to be better against unarmored or lightly armored foes, which I notice you didn't test.

[Jay]

Relevant.

Spoiler: Backstory (click to show/hide)

[cephalo]

But edged weapons are supposed to be better against unarmored or lightly armored foes, which I notice you didn't test.

I haven't seen alot of unarmored foes in game, so I wasn't super interested in that. In the wiki, it says that picks are considered edge weapons. I thought it was interesting that a copper one beat a steel battle axe twice, even at less skill.

[Daetrin]

First, Digger is badass.

Second, 31.10 seems to have made weapons pretty screwy in general (except adamantine war hammers are still useless), so this could be an edge size issue, the same one that makes copper bolts penetrate adamantine armor.

[cephalo]

If you think about mining picks, it's pretty much impossible to design a hand held simple tool that can put more force behind a small contact area. Its designed to bust rocks, so it's easy to imagine that no armor could be made that would slow it down in any way. You can't make a more powerful weapon than a mining pick.

The issue, and this is one that is not modeled in DF at all I don't think, is that mining picks are so heavy and unwealdy that you couldn't possibly defend yourself while holding one. When you are up against a rock wall that's not fighting back, all you care about is power. When you're up against an armed enemy, you need both a speedy attack that is difficult to evade and also the mobility to counter enemy attacks.

If you tried to hit some random anyone off the street with a mining pick, even the clumsiest most untrained individual would probably be able to side step it.

It seems to me that the game is trying to model only the force of the weapon, which if you do that right, would make it easily the most powerful.

[Simmura McCrea]

If you think about mining picks, it's pretty much impossible to design a hand held simple tool that can put more force behind a small contact area. Its designed to bust rocks, so it's easy to imagine that no armor could be made that would slow it down in any way. You can't make a more powerful weapon than a mining pick.

The issue, and this is one that is not modeled in DF at all I don't think, is that mining picks are so heavy and unwealdy that you couldn't possibly defend yourself while holding one. When you are up against a rock wall that's not fighting back, all you care about is power. When you're up against an armed enemy, you need both a speedy attack that is difficult to evade and also the mobility to counter enemy attacks.

If you tried to hit some random anyone off the street with a mining pick, even the clumsiest most untrained individual would probably be able to side step it.

It seems to me that the game is trying to model only the force of the weapon, which if you do that right, would make it easily the most powerful.

Warhammer. Like a pick, but smaller.

[Spectre]

If you think about mining picks, it's pretty much impossible to design a hand held simple tool that can put more force behind a small contact area. Its designed to bust rocks, so it's easy to imagine that no armor could be made that would slow it down in any way. You can't make a more powerful weapon than a mining pick.

The issue, and this is one that is not modeled in DF at all I don't think, is that mining picks are so heavy and unwealdy that you couldn't possibly defend yourself while holding one. When you are up against a rock wall that's not fighting back, all you care about is power. When you're up against an armed enemy, you need both a speedy attack that is difficult to evade and also the mobility to counter enemy attacks.

If you tried to hit some random anyone off the street with a mining pick, even the clumsiest most untrained individual would probably be able to side step it.

It seems to me that the game is trying to model only the force of the weapon, which if you do that right, would make it easily the most powerful.

Warhammer. Like a pick, but smaller.

I did some reading inspired by your posts.
Post here:http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61203.msg1398190#msg1398190