Being easily modded is no reason to stop refining the main game.
Yes, but it if Toady spent all of his time on the petty stuff like this, he wouldn't get anything big done and the game wouldn't progress. This is why we have modding in the first place, to fix/add these things. If you want it, mod it! If one person thinks it should be one way there's probably more. Why shouldn't this be left to the modders? It takes five minutes to do.
'It's moddable, get the details right yourself'. And there goes good game design and consistent lore. Note: I'm not accusing Toady of this attitude... but this mindset keeps many games from reaching their potential.
Adamantine currently makes me want to avoid it, and not only because it doesn't make sense,
Yeah, I'm not buying this. You're telling me, that if Adamantine was just slightly better then steel, you would literally risk unleashing hell itself to mine it out? Why not just make steal then. The only reason it's a God Metal is that the risks far outweigh the advantages if you're to greedy.
I have no problem with adamantine being a powerful God Metal. I have a problem with it being self-contradicting Styrofoam God Glass.
For armour, steel is more balanced. While adamantine makes one almost invulnerable to the melee weapons that steel already stops adequately.
This is the temptation, you want to dig it because it is such a great metal.
Incomplete point quoted. For armour, it's most relevant against the opponents that are already the smallest threat. Goblins wielding slashing blades should just drop them and start wrestling against an adamantine-clad military. Dwarves in clown suits can still be turned into swiss cheese or whipped to death.
Ok, the latter is mostly a problem with whips working exactly as they shouldn't - another thing that could get a crude fix in a minute.
I think adamantine makes combat less fun on both fronts.
This is the Fun, while you have neigh invincible military, you will never be able to combat the countless demons that emerge if you dig to deep. Especially if they have a syndrome.
Without adamantine, most weapon types are worth considering, with defined strengths and weaknesses. If we faced invaders in better armour, even currently pointless ones would come into their own. Slashing attacks dismember those without adequate armour and can cause an opponent to bleed out even if nothing critical was hit, blunt hits and things like daggers/morningstar pokes reliably defeat armour but don't kill quickly, spears are a compromise and very good at reaching the vitals of large beasts.
While I think mining picks are slightly more equal than the rest, things are balanced quite beautifully.
Adamantine axes chop through enemy armour with ease, they can rend beasts apart before organ hits do the trick, and they're still good against the likes of bronze colossi. While strong materials naturally favour slashing weapons, adamantine is actively biased towards them with its extreme density and max_edge values.
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Quick question, are you aware what happens if you dig adamantine? If you don't, click the spoiler.
You breach 'Hell' a massive cavern made of undiggable slade that spawns unlimited numbers of demons. Usually in the dozens, but sometimes in the hundreds as soon as you breech it! Even in Adamantine armor you would still last mere seconds due to the toxicity of syndromes and the sheer numbers.
I am... and you mentioned the gist of it outside a spoiler