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[Cruxador]

Spear is enough ay, but against an armored horse, better use a halberd. Unless you are skilled enough to stick the spear between the plates the weight of the halberd will alow you to hack through them with inertia.

Nobody is skilled enough to stick a spear between plates. They overlap specifically to prevent that.

[Spinning Welshman]

Come on guys, let's not derail the thread.

With the additions to AI starting in the next update, will we eventually have things like Forgotten Beasts with more specific goals than just killing everything?

[Mel_Vixen]

Spear is enough ay, but against an armored horse, better use a halberd. Unless you are skilled enough to stick the spear between the plates the weight of the halberd will alow you to hack through them with inertia.

Nobody is skilled enough to stick a spear between plates. They overlap specifically to prevent that.

A spear with solid tip which has a triangular or Diamond crosssection and is very pointy tip digs into metal like a hot knife through butter if you hit the horse frontal (yes i exaggerate). Many helbards hat such a spike iirc.  I mean the tin openers late knights used (iirc like the estoc) were just that.

[Peacemaker636]

3 days between dev logs is about all I can handle    I hope all is going well Toady!

[BinaryBeast1010011010]

I was not clear about "sticking between the plates". I meant sticking it at joints, where the plates do not cover.

[i2amroy]

The main way of disabling a horse with a spear actually works best against a charging horse, and it works fairly well actually (one of the reasons the age of the knights ended was due to a spreading prevalence of pikemen, which if well trained can really devastate cavalry). You simply stick the but of the spear on the ground and brace it in front of you, and then wait for the charging horse to impale itself on it. Even if you don't have a very sharp weapon when you have over 1,000 pounds of horse moving towards you the sheer amount of force will cause your spear to go through any armor they might be wearing. Of course this then has the drawback of over 1,000 lbs of horse continuing to fall on top of you, but that problem can be easily remedied by having a longer weapon.

Really if you are on the ground and are facing someone on a horse, the only two good ways to counter them, the first being with a bow, and the second being with a long spear or other pole arm. Else wise they are just going to run roughshod over you and there won't be really much you can do about it.

[Rafal99]

Reading all this makes me wish we had cavalry charges and infantry formations in DF...
Too bad formations were taken out of DF2010 release, but the game probably didn't have the necessary framework to implement them anyway.
Now with the combat flow and unit AI improvements perhaps there would be a bigger chance for them again, but unfortunately it seems formations are not planned anytime soon, since they don't appear in the Development page.

[Elone]

Very well.

Everyone interested in defeating a horse in melee, which is indeed a challenging endeavour, should look at this thread specifically made for combatting equines.

The thread is ►here◄.
I'm serious. Check it out. And, if you want to further discuss horses, use it!

[gordogomez]

3 days between dev logs is about all I can handle    I hope all is going well Toady!

The lack of devlog hits you in the head, jamming the skull through the brain
You have been struck down

[Rafal99]

3 days between dev logs is about all I can handle    I hope all is going well Toady!

The lack of devlog hits you in the head, jamming the skull through the brain
You have been struck down

He has been unhappy lately. He has been accosted by terrible lack of devlog recently.

[tfaal]

3 days between dev logs is about all I can handle    I hope all is going well Toady!

The lack of devlog hits you in the head, jamming the skull through the brain
You have been struck down

Not once this release hits! Then you'll just get knocked out, captured, and stuck in a black cell somewhere unpleasant!

[Peacemaker636]

3 days between dev logs is about all I can handle    I hope all is going well Toady!

The lack of devlog hits you in the head, jamming the skull through the brain
You have been struck down

He has been unhappy lately. He has been accosted by terrible lack of devlog recently.

I got quite the good chuckle out of that, thanks for the playful humor 

And a few questions born out of my thinking in the horse thread...
Is there currently any code handling velocity of creatures?  A charging horse is not dangerous simply because it can reach you quickly, but because of the projectile-like force you receive when it hits you.  If not, are there currently plans to add anything like this into combat?

I looked at the dev page and it doesn't mention anything like this, but it seems like it could be a consideration given the ongoing minor (major?) combat overhaul.

(Edited for clarity, and later to de-green due to questions being answered)

[Mr S]

Inasmuch as collision physics, yes, it's there.  Is there room for refining that process?  Sure.

Those collisions physics are what cause a falling kitten to knock the teeth out of the unfortunate dwarf undrneath said downward flight path.  Likewise, Combat announcements of:

Creature X has collided with Creature Y, sending Creature Y tumbling to the ground.
Creature Y skids along the floor, the Third Finger, Right Hand taking the full force of the blow.  x29

There may (likely?) be further fine tuning to this as the speed/combat split continues.  Not a guarantee, mind you, but a pretty natural fit, one might think.

[trees]

If not, are there currently plans to add anything like this into combat?

I think that sort of thing falls under this, from the dev page:

Mounts

    Movement speeds, turning and inertia
    Combat effects (velocity addition, body part selection, trampling)

It was also brought up in DF talk 9:

Toady:   So it's not a hard problem, I think we can have pretty cool velocities for the horses, and then you can do stuff like having the velocity of your animal add to the velocity of the strike - the strikes all have velocity numbers now anyway - it's just a trivial kind of one-line thing to tag that on there.

[greenwatering]

oh shi, mounts are going to be so much fun. if we could train war mounts or buy them in adv mode: it's going to be so sick riding some underground dragon thing with big teeth bought from the trainers of the mountainhome around those big towns!