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[sambojin]

Copper isn't really that bad of a material. It's heavy, so it's good for some things. Any armour is better than none. And if you have silver (which you do) then you can make quite an effective military out of just those two materials.

Good:
Copper or silver bolts. (best of breed)
Copper or silver hammers. (best of breed)
Copper shields. (good for bashing but heavy)

Average:
Copper picks (they'll remove more limbs and pierce more brains/organs than you'd think)
Copper spears (anti-big-thing weapon. Clowns basically)
Wooden shields (just as blockable but lighter than copper, and slightly flammable)

Bad:
Copper armour (heavy, crappy, but way better than just clothes/cloaks. Get a high armour user skill and you'll be fine).

With a decent sized, well trained military with just these weapons, you probably can take on the HFS successfully. You'll definately be able to combat the goblins without too much trouble. And then use the lovely iron they bring for better weapons/armour (or make it into steel if there's any flux at all. There's often marble down at the lower z-levels). ANY addy you can get your hands on is worthwhile. Even 5 addy axes and 5 addy spears will up your kill ratio a stupid amount. Don't worry about the armour, clowns will rip apart dwarves sometimes anyway, and one fully armoured dwarf is 10 or so weapons worth of candy. Just make weapons.

Try dwarves with: 1 copper crossbow, copper bolts, copper pick, copper shield, full armour. Swap the pick for a spear or a silver hammer for different squads. 5x3 dwarf squads (2 of spears, 2 of picks, 1 of hammers) will repel most seiges once they've run through your traps. In fact, give every non-military dwarf(barring miners/woodcutters) you can a crossbow, a wooden shield and a pick/spear/hammer. It's makes it pretty scary for things to invade a fort when you've got off duty militia everywhere. Then arm every dwarf in your fortress like this, armour them as you can and invade hell.

Report the results 

[Urist_McArathos]

I really hate to be a wet blanket, but there is NO guarantee that goblins will bring iron.  Do NOT count on goblinite.

I've had two forts back to back where they only brought silver and copper; copper armor, silver weapons.  Not that silver is worthless (not by a long shot, even for military use), but if you were COUNTING on iron, well, you'd be worse off than an elf in a bauxite-walled trade depot.

[iceball3]

I really hate to be a wet blanket, but there is NO guarantee that goblins will bring iron.  Do NOT count on goblinite.

I've had two forts back to back where they only brought silver and copper; copper armor, silver weapons.  Not that silver is worthless (not by a long shot, even for military use), but if you were COUNTING on iron, well, you'd be worse off than an elf in a bauxite-walled trade depot.

You didn't quite do the research. Silver is best for hammers and bolts in this game, mostly due to weight.

[RAKninja]

I really hate to be a wet blanket, but there is NO guarantee that goblins will bring iron.  Do NOT count on goblinite.

I've had two forts back to back where they only brought silver and copper; copper armor, silver weapons.  Not that silver is worthless (not by a long shot, even for military use), but if you were COUNTING on iron, well, you'd be worse off than an elf in a bauxite-walled trade depot.

You didn't quite do the research. Silver is best for hammers and bolts in this game, mostly due to weight.

still, goblins dont always bring iron.

[Urist_McArathos]

You didn't quite do the research. Silver is best for hammers and bolts in this game, mostly due to weight.

Ahem.

...Not that silver is worthless (not by a long shot, even for military use)...

I did do the research, and mentioned it specifically.  My point was that if you're thinking "I'll just make my armor from goblinite!" and you get SILVER, you cannot make ANY armor.  Since goblinite is, in the current version, whatever metals they happened to blunder across, it's not always iron.

Ergo, until you know what metal the goblins will bring, it would behoove you to plan on them bringing nothing of use.

[MrShovelFace]

I really hate to be a wet blanket, but there is NO guarantee that goblins will bring iron.  Do NOT count on goblinite.

I've had two forts back to back where they only brought silver and copper; copper armor, silver weapons.  Not that silver is worthless (not by a long shot, even for military use), but if you were COUNTING on iron, well, you'd be worse off than an elf in a bauxite-walled trade depot.

You didn't quite do the research. Silver is best for hammers and bolts in this game, mostly due to weight.

silver bolts are terrible
contrary to the above post silver is great for hammers. Even better is platinum

[Lagslayer]

The first goblin ambush brought some iron armor. then they sieged me and brought silver/copper whips and copper armor. So, yeah. I'll just keep making copper stuff and if my soldiers feel like upgrading on their own, then they are welcome to do so.

[iceball3]

You didn't quite do the research. Silver is best for hammers and bolts in this game, mostly due to weight.

Ahem.

...Not that silver is worthless (not by a long shot, even for military use)...

I did do the research, and mentioned it specifically.  My point was that if you're thinking "I'll just make my armor from goblinite!" and you get SILVER, you cannot make ANY armor.  Since goblinite is, in the current version, whatever metals they happened to blunder across, it's not always iron.

Ergo, until you know what metal the goblins will bring, it would behoove you to plan on them bringing nothing of use.

Ohwait. I misread. My bad.

[sambojin]

Read up zagibu's posts on the effectiveness of different materials vs different armours. It may have been from a few versions ago, but to me has been almost the gold standard of effectiveness of materials simply due to the amount of information and the sample size of each one. It's an interesting post if you can ignore peoples' thoughts on medieval weapon design, etc. If it had some data on different crossbow materials, bolt materials and the data for picks in one handy place it would be the be all and end all.

He also gives you the scripts he used and a link to the AutoIT proggy (this is from memory, could have been another one) so you can run a huge amount of tests yourself. Bugger around with armour, weapons and skill levels all you want and then happily do it another hundred times.

I'll see if I can find the link to the post.....

Here it is:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=53571.0

Enjoy.

[RAKninja]

silver bolts are terrible
contrary to the above post silver is great for hammers. Even better is platinum

silver bolts are great.  perhaps slightly less effective against unarmored foes, but against anything with armor, they are outstanding.  they are usually plentiful.  i think you get more out of the resources by using silver for bolts instead of, say, bronze, iron, or even steel.

i use combined arms.  the marksdwarves are not really there to make kills, but to chip bones.  chipping bones causes knockouts which means easy kills for my melee militia.  this is also why i have a lasher per melee squad.  the same effect is seen with silver hammers.  my hammerdwarves are there to knock enemies out so my sword, spear, and axedwarves can make the kill.