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[Urist Da Vinci]

Experiment design:

Grand master Archer / Grand Master Marksdwarf standing on a pillar (safety) firing at an excess of goblins below. Effectively, he can kill as many goblins as he wants, at random ranges from 3 to 20 tiles distance. All goblins are wearing full suits of iron armor.

25x silver bolts:
2 dead (1 headshot brain bruise, 1 suffocate spine nervous bruise), 5 disabled. Bolts fail to penetrate armor and just chip/bruise underlying tissue.

The flying {silver bolt} strikes Goblin 13 in the right lower leg, chipping the bone through the small iron greaves!
The Goblin 13 falls over.
The flying {silver bolt} strikes Goblin 13 in the upper body, bruising the muscle and bruising the left lung through the small iron breastplate!
The Goblin 13 gives in to pain.
The flying {silver bolt} strikes Goblin 13 in the lower body, bruising the muscle and bruising the guts through the small iron greaves!

25x adamantine bolts:
4 dead (2 headshot brain torn, 1 suffocate spine nervous torn, 1 bleeding heart torn), 5 disabled. Bolts typically penetrated armor and fractured multiple bones or tore internal organs. More blood was visible on the arena floor from all victims.

The flying {adamantine bolt} strikes Goblin 20 in the right upper leg, chipping the bone through the small iron greaves!
An artery has been opened by the attack and a tendon has been torn!
The Goblin 20 falls over.
The flying {adamantine bolt} strikes Goblin 20 in the upper body, tearing the muscle and tearing the heart through the small iron breastplate!
A major artery in the heart has been opened by the attack!
The {adamantine bolt} has lodged firmly in the wound!
The Goblin 20 gives in to pain.
The flying {adamantine bolt} strikes Goblin 20 in the upper body, tearing the muscle and tearing the left lung through the small iron breastplate!
Goblin 20 is having trouble breathing!
The {adamantine bolt} has lodged firmly in the wound!
Goblin 20 has bled to death.

It looks like you want to use bolts in the edged weapon sorting order: addy>steel>bronze>iron>silver>copper>organic because of the armor penetration advantages. Silver and below can't cut bone due to shear yield, whereas iron and above can cut bone.

[Loud Whispers]

I think it was discussed that silver bolts were bone breakers picked for their deliberate ability to not penetrate iron armours and such, turning the edge attack into a blunt. Essentially the equivalent of a soft point bullet. So it's supposed to be a good support munition for use against goblins and other armoured humanoids, but not much else. Think of them as extended hammerdwarves.
I still stand by steel bolts for availability and effectiveness!

bronze>iron

Did you test this? If you did, we could have an answer to which metal's better

[MadocComadrin]

I believe that concerning edges, bronze slightly outdoes iron, but iron's blunt attributes makes it a bit more viable overall.

[Mageziya]

I still stand by steel bolts for availability and effectiveness!

Thanks to my stupid luck and unwillingness to us DF hack, I haven't found a fort with any form of iron ore. But I almost always find a form a silver.

[Buttery_Mess]

What? No. Bronze is softer than iron and harder than copper. If memory serves, its also heavier. Steel will penetrate all enemy armour, but iron is almost as good.

[Loud Whispers]

I still stand by steel bolts for availability and effectiveness!

Thanks to my stupid luck and unwillingness to us DF hack, I haven't found a fort with any form of iron ore. But I almost always find a form a silver.

I have zero iron ore on my map, an unwillingness to use DF hack and I use steel bolts

Although I would agree with you on the silver part. Because you have struck tetrahedrite. Although if you strike tetrahedrite, I'd still give advantage to copper - cheaper, sharper and almost as heavy.

[Canisaur]

I still stand by steel bolts for availability and effectiveness!

Thanks to my stupid luck and unwillingness to us DF hack, I haven't found a fort with any form of iron ore. But I almost always find a form a silver.

Besides goblinite, trading with human/dwarven caravans for all their cheap iron toys and weapons will give you enough iron crap to melt that you'll have loads of iron.  Just don't waste dwarfbucks on masterwork iron piccolos, get the base quality ones.

[Mageziya]

I still stand by steel bolts for availability and effectiveness!

Thanks to my stupid luck and unwillingness to us DF hack, I haven't found a fort with any form of iron ore. But I almost always find a form a silver.

I have zero iron ore on my map, an unwillingness to use DF hack and I use steel bolts

Although I would agree with you on the silver part. Because you have struck tetrahedrite. Although if you strike tetrahedrite, I'd still give advantage to copper - cheaper, sharper and almost as heavy.

My current fort has Native silver, tetrahedrite near and in the first cavern, and galena somewhere. It also has bismuthite, but I don't have tin, so that is out of the question. Finally, it has whatever the ore of nickle is/ the bright neon green ore.

[MadocComadrin]

What? No. Bronze is softer than iron and harder than copper. If memory serves, its also heavier. Steel will penetrate all enemy armour, but iron is almost as good.

From the wiki:

Metal  | Value | Density | I. yield | I.fracture | I. elasticity*| S. yield | S. fracture | S. elasticity*
Bronze |     5 |      8.25 |    602 |        843 |          547 |       172 |         241 |           156    
Iron   |    10 |      7.85 |    542 |       1080 |          319 |       155 |         310 |           189

I. = Impact - determines blunt performance
S. = Shear - determines edged performance
* = lower is better

As you can see, while being less dense than bronze, iron outperforms bronze by moderate amounts in two out of three of the blunt categories. On the other hand, bronze beats iron in two out of three edged categories by small amounts, so unless Shear Fracture determines more than Shear Yield and Shear Elasticity combined, bronze has the edge in edged. Nonetheless, due to the small difference in edged ability, the slightly lighter density and the moderately better blunt ability (making up for the density difference), iron is better in general.

As for steel and iron, judging from the numbers, steel is much better than iron in all categories except Shear Elasticity, the only category where it is worse and density, which is the same.

[Sutremaine]

I always thought silver bolts worked best due to their density, but other peeps in this threads claim otherwise. If RAWs gurus could explain why that is (As in, why silver bolts are so good.) that would be nice.

Resource allocation. Silver and copper aren't much good for anything else and marksdwarves don't need to make every attack count the way melee types do, so why not use the stuff on bolts? Even if the heavy bolts don't kill outright, the enemy is immobilised and can either be mopped up by a melee crew or bludgeoned from afar until a lethal injury occurs. More shots fired means more XP gained as well.

If you're at the point where you're drowning in bronze, iron, or steel, those become the better materials to use for bolts.

[Buttery_Mess]

What? No. Bronze is softer than iron and harder than copper. If memory serves, its also heavier. Steel will penetrate all enemy armour, but iron is almost as good.

From the wiki:

Metal  | Value | Density | I. yield | I.fracture | I. elasticity*| S. yield | S. fracture | S. elasticity*
Bronze |     5 |      8.25 |    602 |        843 |          547 |       172 |         241 |           156    
Iron   |    10 |      7.85 |    542 |       1080 |          319 |       155 |         310 |           189

I. = Impact - determines blunt performance
S. = Shear - determines edged performance
* = lower is better

As you can see, while being less dense than bronze, iron outperforms bronze by moderate amounts in two out of three of the blunt categories. On the other hand, bronze beats iron in two out of three edged categories by small amounts, so unless Shear Fracture determines more than Shear Yield and Shear Elasticity combined, bronze has the edge in edged. Nonetheless, due to the small difference in edged ability, the slightly lighter density and the moderately better blunt ability (making up for the density difference), iron is better in general.

As for steel and iron, judging from the numbers, steel is much better than iron in all categories except Shear Elasticity, the onley category where it is worse and density, which is the same.

Experience tells me that iron is better able to penetrate armour, and that agrees with the real life fact that iron is harder than bronze. I don't really know what the raws mean, I don't know the maths. The wiki is a great resource, but its just like the Bible; written by strangers that didn't necessarily have any idea what they were talking about. I'd say its wrong in this case.

[Urist Da Vinci]

What? No. Bronze is softer than iron and harder than copper. If memory serves, its also heavier. Steel will penetrate all enemy armour, but iron is almost as good.

From the wiki:

Metal  | Value | Density | I. yield | I.fracture | I. elasticity*| S. yield | S. fracture | S. elasticity*
Bronze |     5 |      8.25 |    602 |        843 |          547 |       172 |         241 |           156    
Iron   |    10 |      7.85 |    542 |       1080 |          319 |       155 |         310 |           189

I. = Impact - determines blunt performance
S. = Shear - determines edged performance
* = lower is better

As you can see, while being less dense than bronze, iron outperforms bronze by moderate amounts in two out of three of the blunt categories. On the other hand, bronze beats iron in two out of three edged categories by small amounts, so unless Shear Fracture determines more than Shear Yield and Shear Elasticity combined, bronze has the edge in edged. Nonetheless, due to the small difference in edged ability, the slightly lighter density and the moderately better blunt ability (making up for the density difference), iron is better in general.

As for steel and iron, judging from the numbers, steel is much better than iron in all categories except Shear Elasticity, the onley category where it is worse and density, which is the same.

Experience tells me that iron is better able to penetrate armour, and that agrees with the real life fact that iron is harder than bronze. I don't really know what the raws mean, I don't know the maths. The wiki is a great resource, but its just like the Bible; written by strangers that didn't necessarily have any idea what they were talking about. I'd say its wrong in this case.

I fixed the obsidian sword problem by increasing shear yield, so it is the determining factor for edged attacks. Fracture and elasticity are used in the armor side calculations as far as I know.

Experience tells me that lead is heavy, so I'm going to mention it whenever we need a good reference to a heavy metal, despite the fact that I don't know what I am talking about and that gold is 1.7 times as dense as lead. Gold is only used to make small rings and coins, and lead is used to make weights, so I'll assume that lead is heavier.

[MadocComadrin]

Experience tells me that iron is better able to penetrate armour, and that agrees with the real life fact that iron is harder than bronze. I don't really know what the raws mean, I don't know the maths. The wiki is a great resource, but its just like the Bible; written by strangers that didn't necessarily have any idea what they were talking about. I'd say its wrong in this case.

The wiki has values taken from the raws. If you have a problem with the game's values, you need to take it up with Toady as what is is what is.

Anyway, for the testing I'm doing, I've gotten the first 5 out of 80 ( D: ) rounds done. As for the materials I'm testing, I'm using candy, iron, steel, copper, bronze, platinum, leather, and birthday suits for armor and candy, iron, steel, copper, bronze, platinum, silver, featherwood (lightest wood), ash (a medium density wood) and bloodthorn (heaviest wood). I wanted to stick mainly to things that can be made in fortress mode, with the only exception being platinum bolts/armor, as it's most dense metal and I wanted an outlier to balance with candy somewhat.

[crazysheep]

Another seemingly related question from the Q&A thread:

Does bolt quality level affect damage or accuracy? Or both? The only thing i found relating to that is a quote from Toady but it's all the way back from 40d.

Does anyone care to test this?

[Buttery_Mess]

OMG I just did a test in the arena and bronze swords beat iron swords, iron warhammers beat bronze warhammers. I can't believe this I had no idea bronze had an edge over iron and iron was better for blunt.